ONE WORD, ONE HUNDRED WAYS

by Michelle Robinson

I was busy minding my own business when I found myself copied in on a (non-publishing) person’s question to an illustrator: “Do you think we could just make books without writers now?” The illustrator was just as astonished as me.

Talk about putting the twit in Twitter. Zero marks for knowing your audience, minus ten for understanding picture book chemistry, straight to hell for underestimating the art of the author. That's right, ART. 

A few snippets from my notebooks.

Just because the writing process doesn't lend itself so readily to showboating, doesn't mean we're not crafting away like billy-o. A snapshot of a scribbly, crosshatched notebook may not be as visually pleasing as a sketchbook, neither is it as simple to interpret, but us writers have some serious skills. It's harder to prove it, but then we shouldn't have to.

We create heroes - and not just on the page. Read our words aloud and you become a joy conjurer, memory maker, child whisperer. We weave the words whispered into waiting ears. "We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams." Perhaps the Twitter twit could do without the likes of O'Shaughnessy, but I'd rather not.

So anyway, I thought I'd lay myself bare to ridicule and failure and attempt to showboat.

Finding a story is a bit like finding a gem. In order to dig one out, you must first dig your way through a lot crappy rock. But us writers can't find that gem, can't weave the magic words, without first creating the crappy rock. All of it. From scratch. So here I am, starting from scratch, brainstorming 100 different ways with just one word: ROCK. 

ONE HUNDRED WAYS WITH ROCK

1. Rock on (Tommy).
2. Rock 'n' roll. Rollin' rock. Gathers pace and just can't stop.
3. Rock music.
4. Rock around the clock.
5. Rockabilly.
6. Rockabetty.
7. Rockabenny, too. I like a rockabilly band, how about you?
8. Rockabilly goats gruff.
9. Rockabye baby, on the treetop. Call social services, this must stop.
10. Rocks in your socks.
11. Stick of rock. Stuck of rock. Stack of rock. Rock stock.
12. Crocodile rock.
13. Rockodile.
14. Get your rocks off. (What an odd phrase, honey. Write it down now, need a hundred, wow.)
15. Rocks in your head, heavy as lead. Rocks on your head instead? SPLAT. You're dead.
16. Rock hard.
17. Rock solid.
18. Rock steady crew.
19. Rock teddy in your beddy, god bless you.
20. On the rocks. Off the rocks. Over the rocks and far away.
21. Rock buns. Mmm.
22. Sit down, you’re rocking the boat.
23. Rocking horse.
24. Rocking chair.
25. Rocking stocking.
26. Rocky road.
27. Precious rock.
28. Rock layer.
29. Solid rock.
30. Tick, tock, get ready to rock.
31. Rick.
32. Rock, paper, scissors.
33. Rockstar.
34. Rock hammer.
35. Rock climber.
36. Dashed upon the rocks.
37. Rock pool.
38. With rocks on her fingers and rocks on her toes, she shall have blisters wherever she goes.
39. Rock of ages and ages and ages. And ages.
40. Rocky Mountain High.
41. Rocky Horror Show.
42. A rock and a hard place.
43. Glam rock.
44. Rock bottom.
45. Rocky Balboa.
46. Jailhouse rock.
47. You’re my rock.
48. 100 ways with one word? I must be off my rocker.
49. Rocking, rolling, riding, out along the bay, all bound for morning town, many miles away.
50. Hard Rock Cafe.
51. Roxanne.
52. Rocky Raccoon.
53. It's hard, being a rock.
54. The Rock stars in "Another Bad Movie".
55. Rock up.
56. Rock god.
57. Rock me, Amadeus.
58. How much rock would Woodstock stock if Woodstock could stock rock?
59. A flock of rocks.
60. Rock, stone, pebble, grit, gravel, sand.
61. Bedrock.
62. Shamrock.
63. Mary Mary, quite contrary, how is your garden rockery? With silver bells and cockle shells and a splendid set of crockery.
64. Did stone age women wear f-rocks?
65. Do rockhopper penguins wear clodhopper shoes? 
66. Get your rocks off, get your rocks off, honey. 20% off rocks today.
67. Rocket.
68. Rocketeer… rocket there. Ride a rocket, everywhere.
69. Rock slide.
70. You call that rock? What a crock. 
71. Why did you set yourself this challenge? It’s almost impossible. But you can do this. You’re an author. You set yourself difficult word challenges every day, and you rise to them with tricks like added alliteration and internal rhyme all the time, so come on. Keep going. Don’t forget to think catchy. Think commercial. Think great to read aloud, like rolling a sweet around your mouth. You can do this. You rock.
72. Rockin’ Robin.
73. Is this even how you spell ‘rock’? It’s starting to look weird and between you and me I’m beginning to doubt my own existence. Rok? Rokk? Wrock? 
74. Throw a rock upon the ground. Hit a number, hop around. What am I…? Hopscotch.
75. If you hide a rock in that snowball, I’ll hide my fist in your face.
76. What rock did you crawl out from under?
77. Ayer’s Rock, actually, sport.
78. I am a rock, I am an island.
79. Rock dweller.
80. Number 80? What rock have you been hiding under?
81. School of hard rocks.
82. Chock-a-block, full of rocks: a giant’s hole-y walking socks.
83. River bed rocks, so slimy and wet. Off with your socks, paddle in, go get.
84. Michelle, meet enormous house spider. Enormous house spider, meet heavy rock. True story.
85. ‘Hey, big human - that’s my home. Leave my rock, go find your own.’
86. Rough rock. Tough rock. Made of stronger stuff rock.
87. Rock carving.
88. Does a statue have a heart of stone? (Okay, that didn’t contain ‘rock’ but I love it so I’ll go to 101).
89. Curl up your fingers. What have you got? A fist that’s hard and round as a rock.
90. I named my dog Rock. He won’t shift. I should’ve called him Rover.
91. Moon rock. Space rock. Space ROCKS.
92. Saw this sign at a car boot sale: ‘RARE ROCK, FIFTY QUID’. Thought, ‘Can’t fail.’ Traded rare rock for my cow. Hope to grow a beanstalk now.
93. 'Who threw that rock? Was it you?' 'No, I threw a kangaroo.'
94. Holding a rock is like holding a piece of history. A really boring, grey piece when nothing much happened.
95. If mum won’t let you keep a pet, keep a rock, the best pet yet. Rocks are quiet, rocks are cheap. Rocks spend all their time asleep.
96. They puts rocks in boats, but dem boats still floats.
97. What’s big, red and eats rocks? The big, red rock eater.
98. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but rocks will really squish me.
99. Race you to the rock and back. Which rock? The big grey one. They’re all big and grey. GO!
100. Take a rock and draw on eyes. Instantly the rock looks wise.
101. Bonus rock! Free rock with every 100 nonsensical rock word plays created! Enjoy your free rock.

This is just stage one, where stories and books start, all thanks to some story chasing, idea hunting, thesaurus loving buffoon who just cannot help mucking about with words, glorious words. Go ahead, try making all books without writers. Meanwhile, I think I'll just carry on digging.

★★ Michelle Robinson's latest book, 'Goodnight Spaceman', illustrated by Nick East and published by Puffin, will be read from space by ESA astronaut, Tim Peake on CBeebies at 6.50pm, Monday 30th June ★★

Find out more about Michelle and her books at http://michellerobinson.co.uk/

Let’s play! Some fast and fun writing games to try.

Moira Butterfield
 

I’m in the midst of writing something that’s pretty off-the-wall at the moment. I hope it’s funny. It’s meant to be, and to do it I have to get into a different mindset away from my everyday concerns. 

To get into ‘anything goes’ mode I need to free up my thinking, so I’ve made a list of quick writing games to try at the beginning of writing sessions. I thought you might like a list, too, to have handy whenever you fancy a bit of writing play. I think of it as taking a lovely warm cleansing brain shower! Use the games to kickstart any kind of writing, from picture books upwards. Tailor them to suit.

In general the idea is to chuck away what you’ve written as it’s for pure fun, but if you decide you’ve hit on something, then good luck!

Add your own suggestions and favourites in the comments section and I’ll then create a document of creative writing games that we can all share as a writing resource in the free download section of this blog. When it’s ready we’ll tweet about it on @PictureBookDen.

I’ve found some of the game suggestions online. A couple I’ve experienced in workshops and a couple I’ve made up for myself. I haven’t tried them all yet, so I’ll be working through them and perhaps tweaking them a bit. I’ve not put them in any particular order, but I’ve given them my own names.

As a rule of thumb I reckon that none of these should take longer than it takes to sit and drink a cup of coffee. 

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Story photobomb

Grab a magazine or a catalogue that you’ve got lying around. Open it and select a photo (do this really quickly - no going through the pages and making involved decisions). Now write one paragraph of story about it (for any age you like, depending on how you feel). Stop after 5 minutes (you could put your phone alarm on to stop yourself). 

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Snake eats bus

Write down the numbers 1 to 12. Now quickly write the name of a character by 1. Then write a plot sentence by each number, taking this character onwards. It doesn’t have to be good because nobody is going to see it. It can be as mad as anything. That’ll be all the more fun for your brain. Here’s one I’ve just started quickly for the blog, as an example.  

1.snake 2. eats bus 3. bus keeps driving 4. snake has to go where bus goes.      

You get the idea. 

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 Brain takeover

Open a book or a magazine. Choose a simple everyday word (point at one randomly with your finger). For just a couple of minutes at most write down lots of other ways of describing that word, and gradually just let yourself go off in any direction. Go as off-the-wall as you want. I’ve just done one quickly, and I began by pointing to ‘no one’. 

No one, nobody, no person, nix persona, lots of twos, all alone, no humans, hold on, there’s an alien, does that count? so if someone said ‘there was nobody there’ but there was an alien were they lying or not? 

I went an unusual way and ended up with a fun idea for a sci-fi short story (which I will probably never write but who knows).  

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 Head yoga

This exercise comes from a psychologist, to encourage ‘thinking fluency and flexibility’ apparently. Maybe we need to keep exercising our brains this way to keep them flexible, hence my title. 
Begin by choosing a four-letter word. (The example I saw was IDEA). Now write three or four sentences using the four letters as word initials. Eg: 

I Don’t Enjoy Apricots

If Dogfish Eat Apples

Interview Didn’t End Angrily

India Elephants Dawn Attack  

Then swap for another four letter word. It doesn’t matter one bit if your sentences are nonsense. It’s the word association that’s the brain-stretching part. 

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 Eureka writing

Varying the words in a given phrase can bring about exciting problem-solving  breakthroughs and once led to a man inventing an entirely new type of food (a microwaveable egg cube). Or so I read in Thinkertoys. A handbook of creative-thinking technique, by Michael Michalko. His book is about solving problems using creative thinking, but I’ve adapted the idea to make it purely for fun. 

Write a simple sentence or find one from a picture book. Spend a little time substituting new words for the key words in the sentence. Do it fast. Here’s one I just tried: 

a teddy loses a hat

a dog finds a hat

a hat finds a dog

a girl finds a dog
a girl finds a hat
with a teddy in it 

I think I’d be happy to do this all day! It’s oddly soothing and it could go anywhere. The sentences could get longer or you could start a new sentence. It's your game!

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Describotron

Quickly choose a noun, any noun. Spend five moments writing one word to describe it, thus:

Door - big door, blue door, rotten door, ancient door, metal door, cold metal door 

Don’t give up if it gets hard, Just allow yourself to go a bit crazy:

jelly door, talking door, lizard door 

(No idea where that lizard door came from!). 

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I’m little and I like…

Make quick lists of three things you loved as a child: 

Food

Smells

Places

Toys

Pieces of clothing

Activities 

Mmm, I’m thinking of the smell of clean sheets that billowed all day on the line…

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 Alphabonkers

Write the letters of the alphabet down. Then write a word by each letter that’s as silly and as personal as you like (it’s for you, nobody else). I’ve got one on my wall that says g for gaullimaufry!  It was created by Peter Chasseaud at his Tom Paine Printing Press in Lewes, Sussex, and I've got it on my wall, handprinted on lovely handmade paper. Here it is for some inspiration.