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.