Brainstoryum: Short Stories and Writing Prompts

• #80. What Can We Learn From the Miss Peregrine Series? (Plus New Short Story Ideas)

  Joinaward-winning fantasy and dreampunk author, Anna Tizard, in a journey into the writer’simagination – at once profound, surprising, funny, and extraordinary. Anna usesthe surrealist word game of Exquisite Corpse to generate short story ideas bymixing listener’s word suggestions into weird sentences. The results areimagination-bending, and a real workout for your creative writing.Listen to brandnew short stories and scenes as Anna drafts them (she uses the “pause” buttonto compose them) and learn from tips, techniques and tools she shares along theway: practical ideas that you can use to write suspenseful fiction, especiallyfantasy.It’s theultimate writing prompt challenge. Your weekend is not weird enough (orcreative enough) without Brainstoryum!Subscribe forfree to Anna Tizard’s private email list and receive an e-book to begin yourjourney into The Book of Exquisite Corpse (includes exclusive material notpublished anywhere else). Go to annatizard.com.INTRO: Hello imaginative people! I’m Anna Tizard and this is episode 80 of Brainstoryum.As I mentioned last time, today I’m going to talk a bit about a series I absolutely love that has monstrous themes at its heart: Ransom Riggs’ Peculiar Children series, which begins with Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. They made that one into a movie; didn’t like it, haven’t watched it since, but my goodness, I don’t know how many times I have read the book – or the whole series, because I just love it. As an author, I have to ask, why? What is it that I love so much? And can I pin-point these story elements, themes or types of things going on, to transform them into something that’s uniquely my own, in my writing? This is a great exercise for any writer for honing in on the real stuff that excites you. The better you know yourself as a reader, and why you enjoy what you enjoy, the more you can tap into the same kind of magic in your writing. And that sort of excitement is infectious: if you’re excited about what you’re writing, this will come across in the style – let alone your fundamental choices about what you write about.Now, while the Peculiar Children series is mainly built around monsters, the threat of these monsters who have tentacles coming out of their mouths and basically eat your soul (pretty way out there stuff), Riggs casts the philosophical net a bit wider. The peculiar children who have various oddities and strange powers are effectively outcasts from ordinary life, and are wrongly considered a threat to others. They have to live apart from the real world, in time loops. So there’s this lingering question of “What is a monster? Are some people labelled monsters unfairly?” And the protagonist, whose life is painfully banal, or so he feels, gets to experience this incredible acceptance and belonging in the peculiar group when he finally meets them, who become less peculiar to him once there’s acceptance and understanding on both sides. A thought-provoking element of the story; I appreciate a bit of chin-stroking, when it’s cleverly incorporated into the story itself and the protagonist’s emotional experience.But grey areas aside, the real, undeniable monsters inthe story...

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• #79. New Approach to Short Story Writing – and a Chocoholic’s Confession!

  Join award-winning fantasy and dreampunk author, Anna Tizard, in a journey into the writer’s imagination – at once profound, surprising, funny, and extraordinary. Anna uses the surrealist word game of Exquisite Corpse to generate short story ideas by mixing listener’s word suggestions into weird sentences. The results are imagination-bending, and a real workout for your creative writing.Listen to brand new short stories and scenes as Anna drafts them (she uses the “pause” button to compose them) and learn from tips, techniques and tools she shares along the way: practical ideas that you can use to write suspenseful fiction, especially fantasy.It’s the ultimate writing prompt challenge. Your weekend is not weird enough (or creative enough) without Brainstoryum!Subscribe for free to Anna Tizard’s private email list and receive an e-book to begin your journey into The Book of Exquisite Corpse (includes exclusive material not published anywhere else). Go to annatizard.com.INTRO: Hello imaginative people! I’m Anna Tizard and this is episode 79 of Brainstoryum. I hope you’ve had an excellent Easter by the time you listen to this: I recorded this just before Easter, which, let’s face it, is a difficult time for chocoholics. Every time I’ve been into our local supermarket in the last two months just to buy ordinary groceries, I have been faced with walls of tantalising boxes containing that unspeakably amazing stuff wrapped in glistening purple foil. I usually take my husband with me, not just to do the heavy carrying, but to help me through this… difficult time!And when the egg I really wanted was selling out, so I couldn’t leave buying it to the absolute last minute – I really like chocolate buttons – I bought it the weekend before Easter, asked Duncan to hide it… but he wasn’t quick enough, so I caved and I ate the buttons that came with the egg. It was only a small packet. And the way I see it, it’s the egg part that’s for Easter, right? So that’s okay, isn’t it?But I digress! Moving swiftly on, I have to tell you about some changes I’m making to the show. Nothing massive, but I would love your feedback anyway. Now, over time, I’ve got into the habit of feeling compelled to draft a short story or scene based on pretty much every single Exquisite Corpse result that comes up. This is quite an intense challenge – I think I’ve just been like, “I’ve got to prove that it can be done! Even with the really crazy ones.” And if you’re a regular listener, you’ll know I love surprises in fiction. I love to be surprised, and I love to write in surprises to my stories. And this is a great way to find those surprises – to go looking under every rock. So that might be why I got a little bit obsessive over this, trying to write every story– and it's also why the show’s become just that little bit longer than I’d like, and I haven’t been able to bring it down closer to half an hour.And while this has been going on...

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• #78. And Now for Some Dragon-Related News (With Lots More Short Story Ideas)!

  Join award-winning fantasy and dreampunk author, Anna Tizard, in a journey into the writer’s imagination – at once profound, surprising, funny, and extraordinary. Anna uses the surrealist word game of Exquisite Corpse to generate short story ideas by mixing listener’s word suggestions into weird sentences. The results are imagination-bending, and a real workout for your creative writing.Listen to brand new short stories and scenes as Anna drafts them (she uses the “pause” button to compose them) and learn from tips, techniques and tools she shares along the way: practical ideas that you can use to write suspenseful fiction, especially fantasy.It’s the ultimate writing prompt challenge. Your weekend is not weird enough (or creative enough) without Brainstoryum!Subscribe for free to Anna Tizard’s private email list and receive an e-book to begin your journey into The Book of Exquisite Corpse (includes exclusive material not published anywhere else). Go to annatizard.com.INTRO:Hello imaginative people! I’m Anna Tizard and this is episode 78 of Brainstoryum. It’s finally a really gorgeous summery day in the UK. I hope you’re getting a bit of sunshine wherever you are, if that’s feasible, but if not, don’t worry because the same sun is shining down on us from whatever part of the world you’re in. It might be just be covered by clouds for now, but it’s still there, the way that ideas can sometimes hide behind other thoughts, or other necessities of your day. They’re still there. That creative potential awaits just beyond the reach of your senses; or, it might be time for that inspiration to shine is here.I thought I’d share some writing news with you this time, because I almost never do that (why do I never do that?), but instead of saying, “Here’s some writing news”, I want to say, “And now for some dragon-related news” (because how often in life do you get to say that sentence?): I’ve been drafting a short story based on an Exquisite Corpse from the last show and which I nearly – well, not nearly… I felt like dismantling the words and putting them back into the socks of destiny, I was so stumped when the sentence was first formed. Sacrilege! (I hear you cry.)But I never actually do that, because each time I even think about doing it, I know how haunted I would be by those unexplored possibilities… (What if it turned out to be the most amazing story in the history of stories?) And then, even if it might not turn out to be the best story in the world –the power of randomness steps in, or the power of imagination, or something – something magical – “proves” to me that putting the words back into the socks would have been a big mistake.The Exquisite Corpse in question was “The duplicate pet dragon struck a bargain with the porcelain dinosaur” which, being kind of inexplicable (it still hurts my brain just to re-read that sentence – hence my original temptation to just give up), but after enough pondering, it turned into: “The owner of the duplicate pet dragon store struck a bargain with the porcelain dinosaur” (which I took to mean another breed of the same general species of dragon, with pale skin). And so, after a bit of scene drafting which I shared in the episode (number 77, if you haven’t heard it), I rolled up my sleeves and got writing, because the idea began to expand. Set in a world only slightly different to ours, Tam, a long-time owner of a pet store which sells genetically modified dragons, perfectly legally and above board (they’re all the rage these days), meets the mysterious Bill, who likes to keep to the shadows; likes to keep the lighting low in his shop – which is really Tam’s shop; it’s a “duplicate”, or a second shop in the beginning of a chain for her. A new business venture. But Bill reveals himself to be part-dragon; the result of some terrible, cruel experimentation; and his sister, who is a full-blown dragon, except for her flightless wings, is still trapped in the lab where they were both made...

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• #77. Monsters of the Soul: Erie New Short Stories

  Join award-winning fantasy and dreampunk author, Anna Tizard, in a journey into the writer’s imagination – at once, profound and hilarious, existential and quite silly. Annauses the surrealist word game of Exquisite Corpse to generate short story ideas by mixing listener’s word suggestions into weird sentences. The results are imagination-bending, and a real workout for your creative writing.Listen to brand new short stories and scenes as Anna drafts them (she uses the “pause” button to compose them) and learn from tips, techniques and tools she shares along the way: practical ideas that you can use to write suspenseful fiction, especially fantasy.It’s the ultimate writing prompt challenge. Your weekend is not weird enough (or creative enough) without Brainstoryum!Subscribe for free to Anna Tizard’s private email list and receive an e-book to begin your journey into The Book of Exquisite Corpse (includes exclusive material notpublished anywhere else). Go to annatizard.com. INTRO: Hello imaginative people! I’m Anna Tizard and this is episode 77 of Brainstoryum. When I look backover the some of these more recent shows where I’ve been exploring my new theme of weird creatures, I recognise an underlying theme cropping up, as it’s come up in my writing before, just in different form: loss of control. I’ve often thought that the hardest stresses to bear in life are usually the ones that seem to render you helpless. Whether that’s illness, bereavement, or other practical limitations which a life situation presents you with, like not being able to earn enough: these make us feel out of control. And we might wonder then, if we ever had any control, if the feeling of control we usually think we haveis just an illusion. (Please get help, by the way, if you’re suffering from any of these things – don’t suffer alone.) Writing fiction is not therapy per se, although it can help you face your demons a little better. It’s why I wrote TheEmpty Danger, my first book in my series, because in March 2020 I realised was facing the same fears that most people around the world were facing at the same, and while it was terrifying and made me helpless, I also saw an opportunity to explore this potentially unifying force. Could there be something positive in there, somewhere, if I searched hard enough? I hunted with my pen, and The Empty Danger is the result. But I digress. I think what I’m getting to is the idea that the element of lack of control is something we can explore through suspenseful creature fiction, perhaps fantasy that helps us imagine confronting monsters; and maybe this is why the plot structure is so satisfying, when the protagonist goes from being terrified and threatened by the unknown; gradually piecing together scraps of information about the monster, so that it becomes less unknown by degrees; and then, they have a go at fighting it, and even killing it. We get that vicarious joy and relief at being able to destroy something that has stressed us out.But as I’ve been reading about writing monsters, I’ve realised that a lot of this kind of stuff is very much applicable to longer stories – novellas, novels – where you have the space in which to take a protagonist through that journey, of coming to understand and in some way, hopefully, overcome a monster. Turn a feeling of lack of control into a sense of having some control. And I’m sure that I will be writing longer pieces that use these plot devices, because I love them – there’s something in there that I just love. But that doesn’t mean I can’t still use the practice ground of short stories, in fact, you can still fit some of these elements in a shorter piece, it's just that they can’t all be realised to their fullest extent. You can show a glimpse of some of these plot elements rather than necessarily have them play out completely, and dabble in different aspects. And I already know from experience...

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• #76. Unique New Short Story Ideas – Writing Weird Creatures and Other Curiosities

  Join award-winning fantasy and dreampunk author, Anna Tizard, in a journey into the imagination with tips, techniques and tools you can use to write suspenseful creature fiction. Anna uses the surrealist word game of Exquisite Corpse to generate short story ideas. The results are imagination-bending and a real workout for your creative writing.It’s the ultimate writing prompt challenge. Your weekend is not weird enough (or creative enough) without Brainstoryum!Subscribe for free to Anna Tizard’s private email list and receive an e-book to begin your journey into The Book of Exquisite Corpse (includes exclusive material not published anywhere else). Go to annatizard.com.INTRO: Hello imaginative people! I’m Anna Tizard and this is episode 76 of Brainstoryum.Last time, I went quite in-depth in the introduction about a theory I came across as to why, psychologically and culturally, we might in these times find monster fiction a bit more satisfying. Sometimes I think about my own personal psychological reasons as to why I like monster fiction or want to write monster fiction, and I will probably talk about that in another show, but there’s a time to get deep about these things, and there’s a time to just appreciate things for what they are on the surface, and right now, with the sun out for the first time in ages, and I’m not quite in the zone for deep psychological digging, and in fact, that reminds me that creature fiction is not all about darkness. The darkness in fiction, unless it’s the grisliest type of horror, is surely there to help illuminate, to show up the light more brightly. I know when I read a story, I want to find the protagonist not just relatable, but to find in him or her something hopeful, a light that stands out against the darkness.And in a more general way, on a more light-hearted note, I think I just like variety in fiction. The theme of weird creatures (not just monsters, but weird creatures) is so appetising to me because it’s like a challenge: what new weird things can I create? How can I find unique ideas for stories that genuinely surprise me (and I’ve said it many times, I refuse to publish anything that doesn’t surprise me at least twice).Well, the game of ExCo is a great start, and I’ve had some amazing words coming in, filling up the Socks of Destiny – thank you, people. Keep them coming!But on thinking about the psychology of writing, why we write what we write: there’s a time for reflection on that, certainly, and that’s a very useful tool. But equally, there is a time to play. And in fact, there is no better way, as a writer, to hunt down the themes that are to become ‘your’ themes, the underlying ideologies or attitudes to life that emerge in the undertones of your fiction – than to set aside all the thinking, the reflection, and just write. Open your mind to new crafting techniques, suggestions, writing prompts, books about how to write, like this one I’ve reading about Writing Monsters. Learn all you can; but ultimately, the practice is the learning; and the discovery is in the doing.So let’s do it.

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