5.4 Puppets, songs, and more
Puppets.
Go online and find some hand puppets that call to you. Maybe people, maybe animals. And use them to do dialogues with your characters, your chapters, your inner guides, or yourself.
Or if puppets are too expensive, maybe you can find some little plastic action figures at a toy store. Or you can cut out figures from construction paper. Or you can make your own figures out of Play Doh or clay. Or if you’re writing a science–fiction series about robots, you can use legos.
One more strategy that’s quick and easy and doesn’t cost a cent. Sometimes I get an idea for a dialogue I want to play with and I just use my hands without the puppets to talk to each other.
Songs.
Think of a song, but without thinking of it. Let a song pop into your mind and you don’t know why. Then step into that song, be the singer, or a character in it, or the emotion of it and write from there.
Paintings.
Look at paintings online or in one of your old art history books, and when one calls to you stop and step into it. Become a character, become the action, become the mood, and write from there.
Dress-up.
Try writing in different outfits. Put on what you’d wear when being interviewed about winning the Pulitzer. Next day try beach attire. Or don’t wear anything at all and see if that makes you more emotionally vulnerable as you write.
