Sunday, November 1, 2009

I DID have a post today, and this...

...had something to do with my procrastinating last night before the NANO hour (I didn't make it - I fell asleep on my computer quarter to). I was looking up idioms, and found a website with a list of the more popular idioms, organized by alpha.
Here - http://www.idiomsite.com/

I read through and thought about a fun exercise for a future novel, and this may be something I take advantage of if I start wuthering off the deep path (or something mixed up like that).

Take the first idiom of every alpha and set it as a Chapter title. You would use that chapter title as a theme for that chapter, as you develop your plot and push forward.

I would honestly change the order of some of those chapters and trim out the ones that I find less inspiring or whatever, but overall this gives you a theme for every single chapter, and gives you a focus point for when you otherwise might be floundering in between plot points.

So:

CH1 Back seat driver
CH2 Dark Horse
C3 Feeding frenzy
CH4 Get down to brass tacks
CH5 Jaywalk
CH6 Make no bones about
CH7 Nest egg
CH8 Off on the wrong foot
CH9 Pass the buck
CH10 Raincheck
CH11 Saved by the bell
CH12 Under the weather
CH13 Van Gogh's ear for music
CH14 Wag the dog
CH15 X marks the spot


***

My (writing buddy) sister and I used to play the same game when we were bored. We'd write down the first line of every single page of a book we were reading, and figure out a story from the muddle. It could be hilarious sometimes what we came up with.

2 comments:

  1. Wow, that's a great idea for my students...both games, really! Thanks for the ideas!

    ReplyDelete
  2. No problem. Tell them to have fun. :)

    ReplyDelete

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