Inspiring Idea: Randomizers

Sometimes my mind goes blank. Not just about a name or a date or something trivial like that, I mean about everything.

Imagine that white, empty expanse in The Matrix, but instead of Laurence Fishburne laying down some serious exposition, it's just nothing.

Peaceful, but not very helpful. Especially unhelpful when you're trying to come up with, or finish an idea.

That's why, occasionally, I need to get others to think for me. Specifically, I'm talking about The Internet. You may have heard of it; that shrine of all human knowledge and achievement. That amazing, omniscient gestalt - raining down brilliance and filth upon us all.

Ahhh - Refreshing.

"But who are you..." I hear you say, "to harness such a wild, dynamic and untameable force of nature?"

Well for one, I am someone who can hear what you're saying over the Internet. Pretty damn impressive. For two, I am one who has mastered the use of 'the randomizer'.

"But what is a randomizer?" I hear you interrupt again, "And why are you using the American spelling?" Well, I'll tell you.

A randomizer is simply a list. A list of ordinary, everyday things that the computer will pick and mix arbitrarily.

"But that sounds boring" I hear you say. Seriously though, can you stop interrupting? You're ruining this for everybody.

But in reply, may I say this: They are kind of boring.

But in an exciting, helpful way! They 'greenlight' without discretion. They labour tirelessly to present endless arrangements of stochastic splendour. Without concepts of what makes sense - they often invent things that no mortal was meant to know.

I've found randomizers for everything, and I list them here for your convenience. If you know of any others, just shout them out. I know you don't have a problem with talking out of turn.

Writing Prompt Generator
Useful for getting an idea started - but I use it as a noun randomizer.

3CH
A topic randomizer - My personal favourite.

Quick and Dirty B-Movie Plot
The next big hit
Random-Generator: Character Concepts
Random-Generator: Character Quirks
For quickly filling out those Ancillaries, or even expanding a Main

Random-Generator: Multi-genre Plot Randomizers
To kick-start that framework

Rinkwork's Name Generator
This name generator is like an old friend.
Fake Name Generator
Give tedious details to characters with a click!
Batch Name Generator
Got a crowd? Need to write a list of names?
RPG Random Name Generator
For extensive lists of name 'flavours' - not just Fantasy
DnD Name Generator
Good high-fantasy sounding names

Random Word Generator
Quick and Simple
The Random Pairing Machine
Just keep clicking, and eventually something will click.
The Random Verb/Adverb Machine
Your character walks into a room and '...'
The Directors Bureau Idea Generator
A really nice looking match-up randomizer

Random-Generator: Super Powers and Origins Randomizer
Just as a starting point, of course

Buzz Phrases
Writing something set in an Office? Here's your punchline
Elsewhere: Band Name Randomizer
Works better than you'd think
Elsewhere: Post Modernism Generator
Pseudo-Intellectual Gibberish
Elsewhere: Badly Written Angst Poetry
Just in case you can't do it yourself
Elsewhere: Brag Generator
Personally I find this this works best as Insane Dialogue
The Video Game Name Generator
Just to get the brain working
Authentic Tweet Generator
Just to stop the brain working
Internet Rubbish Generator
WARNING: Do not look directly into it
Fantasy City Encounter Generator
Can be easily converted to other genres

Flash Face
Sometimes to write a character, you just need to see them.

Tone Matrix
And this a Music randomizer, just because it's so much fun.
I challenge someone to make something that sounds bad with this.

And these three are specifically designed for Role Playing, but still useful:
Green Box Generator
Random-Generator: Treasure
Your characters open a box, what do they find?
Random-Generator: Crunchy Bits
Random-Generator: Descriptions
Add background details - I especially recommend the Benign Encounters in 'Crunchy Bits'
Magic the Gathering Search
Struggling with a monster or event? Magic cards are great inspiration. Just don't plagiarise.
Gozzy's Random Map Creator
Skeleton Key Dungeon Generator
Location randomizer - Where are the exits? Where can they hide? Good for planning out complex choreography.
Insanity Generator
For that special idea - Unfortunately it is only military themed

Have A Slogan
Hilarious slogans

And there will be something for you here:
Seventh Sanctum
Creativity Tools
Random Generator

Updated: 15/11/09

Inspiring Idea: Items & Imagination

Can you tell I'm a fan of alliteration?

If you're a writer like us and find yourself lacking in inspiration like we all-too-often do, then here's a neat little challenge Mutt and I came up with when at a swanky café the other day.

There was a section of the café that had all sorts of neat little things you could buy to decorate your house. This challenge was made better by the fact that they were very eccentric items. We started taking it in turns picking up items and then coming up with stories based around and inspired by them.

It turns out this is a blast to do, forcing you to stretch your creativity and it's hella fun trying to out-do your opponent. So if you're ever feeling a need for inspiration then grab a creative friend and drag them to a local antiques shop or trinket store. And should one of the items really inspire you, buy it! We did. Behold!

You guys have no idea how many awesome ideas we got from holding this giant key in our hands. The hand in the photo is for size reference.

Project: The Book Illustrations

Rather than a conventional blog post, this is more of an excuse for not blogging more often. You see, I have good reason. Stumped, the children's book now in its second round of (shockingly positive) audience testing, is to be illustrated.

For some as of yet unexplained, completely arbitrary reason my fellow Silent Knight decided it should be my responsibility. So after an effortless year of writing the entire book, he now kicks back polishing the script for our next project, (a Proof-Of-Concept animation). Honestly, how hard is it to press buttons on a keyboard. Am I right?

But that's okay, I'm used to carrying this partnership - it was I, after all, that wore my fingers to the bone spending minutes upon minutes of my life writing emails telling him to work harder. But that's all in the past now.

In all seriousness, illustrating the book is quite a large undertaking. Our vision for the book was always a 'my first novel' approach (somewhere between a 'Spot Looks At Colours' and 'Spot Thinks About Aesthetic Ideals For Four Hundred Pages') with pictures making up for the comparative length. The book weighs in at 116 pages, and we're aiming for about five pictures for every six pages. That adds up to just under 100 pictures - with about twenty being wider scenery shots.

It requires lots of back and forth emailing - I kind of rely on Luke's 'nice jerk' ability to know when a picture needs to be completely redrawn. He's a true director at heart.

At this stage I've 'roughed' a bit over half the book. Once I finish roughing them, and we've tried laying them out, I can start the inking process which will hopefully be considerably shorter.

Here are a couple of roughs now:

These pictures make sense in context, I promise.

Blog: For The Children

As of... well... five weeks ago, I embarked upon a noble quest bestowed upon me by what I sure as hell hope was a king to perform a book reading for a class of 6th Graders from Ivanhoe Girls Grammar School. But it wasn't just any book! It was an unpublished children's book written by two guys who've commonly been referred to as "traumatizing".

I mean us. We wrote the book.

Yeah. Feel the envy.

Anyway, much to our surprise the girls absolutely adored the book. An encouraging response to say the least considering we didn't know if it would appeal to girls. The crazy voices may have helped a little. So far, in fact, we've gotten nothing but overwhelmingly positive feedback on the book. I got through the first five chapters and after each one they were dying for more.

Not that I poisoned their drinking water or anything... look! See? They were fine!

Just look at 'em! They were so ecstatic that their faces pixelated! What? Kids' faces do that, right? If not, someone might wanna get some doctors down there... might be contagious.

All in all it was a blast and I.G.G.S. has asked me back for more readings, so I'm off to brainstorm more horrible things that I can do to them. Gotta be memorable!

EDIT: Apparently there was another, far larger scale book reading even I didn't know I'd done.

Rule Of Thumb: The Stakes

You know those rules that are so painfully obvious that you forget they exist? This is one of those for me.

If your character/s embark upon a mission outside of their normal circumstance, make the cost of failure as high as plausibly possible.

In an episode of The West Wing (oh how I love thee), Toby Ziegler secretly proposes a brilliant plan to the President that will fix social security. However, when that plan starts to go horribly wrong he realizes that he may be responsible for bringing down the entire presidency.

In The Producers, Leo & Max's entire elaborate scam will either see them become millionaires retiring in Rio or spend the rest of their lives in prison for fraud. The need to not to screw up is made even greater because their scam is being carried out right in the public eye.

It is also important to remember that raising the stakes isn't enough. You have to rig it so they can't go back. Once your character/s have made their choice it needs to be victory or bust.

Personally, I find putting "Earth's very survival" on the line to be pretty lame these days. Everybody does it. If you want there to be big ramifications try aiming for something that won't destroy the world, but rather will change it for the worse like the start of World War III or the loss of personal privacy.

And if you're like me you'll also forget that the stakes don't always have to be big picture. They can be personal and intimate too.

Rule Of Thumb: The Toilet Rule

Now I know I'm not the only one bothered by this.

If you imply that something will be a continuing problem unless dealt with, you cannot proceed to ignore it and move on.

The most common example of this rule being broken (which you will see all over the place) is when a character expresses that he/she really badly needs the bathroom, usually done as a cheap joke. The story then moves on and you spend the rest of the movie/episode empathetically feeling their pain with no resolution.

In City Of Ember when Lina and Doon discover the boat deploying mechanism designed to escape Ember, they activate it only to discover that the water levels aren't high enough and the first boat is obliterated. They then fail to shut off the mechanism and move on as if the problem will resolve itself. As a result the viewer can't focus anymore because they are under the impression that every passing second another boat is being needlessly destroyed.

See, in normal circumstances this sort of tension would be used to ramp up the stakes in any given sequence or at the very least get a laugh. But all too often writers neglect that if your viewer is along for the ride, you can't have your side mirrors fall off and not acknowledge it.

Did that metaphor make any sense? Eh, you know what I meant.