Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Boosting Our Creativity - Part Two


Regular readers will remember that some of the Bootcampers are doing a creativity challenge - a lucky dip envelope full of photos to stimulate our inner story tellers.

I picked with eyes closed and chose a plain white envelope. It didn't look much, but the treasure contained inside! "Breaking the Mould" the newspaper headline screamed. It was the first thing I pulled out. My envelope has three characters- a hip young woman, slightly older well dressed man and a child of about 8. Add in a hand drawn Christmas picture (the real deal from someone's child), a real estate ad for a historic property, a family photo of three generations of men taken about 1900 and a birth notice.

Historical story was my immediate thought. No, you're supposed to be breaking the mould. So I've decided to let my imagination run wild - time travel, secret portals, paranormal activity. And that man has got to learn to loosen up. Not sure where this is going, but I'm on board for the ride.

Roseanne's envelope had a fabulous photo of a woman is a slinky dress surrounded by hundreds of pairs of different fire-truck red high heels, something that looked suspiciously like a Leo Sayer album, and a man who looked a little bit like Australian TV host Tony Barber.

Eleni's envelope had an Asian themed room, an appointment for a tournament and a one of a kind ceramic chess set. Oh, and a gardening and haircutting by the moon calendar.

All of these envelopes came from the same basic list, and I for one can't wait to see the stories we produce.

4 comments:

AJ Blythe said...

How fascinating Fi! Are you going to share any of the end products? I hope so - I'm dying to know what their stories are :)

Anonymous said...

Fabulous idea, Fi. The envelopes spark off so many different ideas. Even if you all had the same envelope each story written would be unique.

Janine

Fiona G said...

Anita, our face to face group has six weeks to turn the stories around, then we're all sending them out to market. So I'm hoping to send mine to a short story comp and everyone will see it.

Janine, I agree. That's the beauty of the envelope - everyone sees something different. At our face to face group we all laid out our photos, then filed around the table to look at everyone else's. It was great. Just looking at everyone else's pictures had my creative juices flowing.

Eleni Konstantine said...

Gulp, still haven't sat with my envelope. Big fail on my part. I will get there Fi, I will get there :)

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