#11 Limitless Interpretations: Expand Your Imagination with New Story Brainstorms (Could This Be the Most Bizarre Episode Yet?)

Today’s show is all about you! Anna Tizard shares listeners’ comments, feedback and some brand new (and incredibly weird!) interpretations of an Exquisite Corpse plucked from the Socks of Destiny in episode 10.

Is there no limit to the interpretations of these writing prompts?

It’s all in your imagination – literally!

Please send comments and ideas to the main Brainstoryum page.

SHOW TRANSCRIPTION (does not include Exquisite Corpse game play at the end):

It seems my own imagination has been taken into new, unchartered territory by some of you, my listeners! I’ve had some wonderful comments about the last show, episode 10 on the 20min Magic, but also some ideas – fresh interpretations – of what I thought was a pretty difficult Exquisite Corpse that came up on that show… There are some real eye-openers among them which have challenged my preconceptions when I do these story brainstorms. Really interesting stuff! But be warned – today it’s all getting extra specially bizarre. There are some really surreal ideas coming up in this show. So keep listening… if you dare – if you are weird enough. Come with me, with an open mind if you want to expand your imagination and the limitless possibilities for your writing! And if that doesn’t max you out on zany ideas for the rest of the week – for the rest of the month - in the last section of the show I’ll be playing some fresh rounds of Exquisite Corpses so have your pen and your newly expanded imagination at the ready!

I must dive straight in to the amazing comments that have come in about the last show. Alessandro Bozzo, a regular listener – whose name you will recognise if you’ve listened to the show a few times before, as he is a frequent contributor of words to the Exquisite Corpse game, summed up episode 10 beautifully in a tweet:
Brazen maggots, stompers, pompous dieticians and more await you in the 10th episode of
@AnnaTizard's deeply weird Brainstoryum podcast along with a beautiful short story by the fantastic @FrasierArmitage

! What more could one ask for? Have a listen! #socksandtea (Got to have that hashtag!)

Thank you, Alessandro – and thank you also for inspiring me to try my hand at podcasting in the first place! For it was Alessandro who heard a short sample I once put up on “Play Exquisite Corpse” page and said he thought I had a good voice and that I should try it. So, I have lots to thank you for.

Frasier Armitage, who wrote the short story I read out in ep 10, called The Forgotten Melody, said:

“Anna read (the story) so beautifully. I wish I’d have written a longer one so I could’ve listened to her reading more! It was a cracking episode. The exquisite corpse games were particularly brilliant.”

He then said, “I feel so privileged to be featured on your show. And the tips and techniques for story writing you’ve shared across the episodes are so much fun to try out. I hope others give it a go, because it was a blast to do!”

Thank you so much Frasier – I’m so glad you enjoyed it and that you felt I did justice to your story! And of course, the episode was really made by your short story.

Joseph Clark is a new listener who tweeted: “fun, funny and inspired, googleplex kudos, Anna!” Well, thank you – I didn’t know there was such a thing as Googleplex kudos, but I’ll take it!

T. Scholtz sent me a message and mentioned the visual art version of Exquisite Corpse:

“I actually play Exquisite Corpse by myself, drawing weird stuff on a page, folding it. I grab a few pens and go nuts…. digging my old drawings out of a box wherever. (I start another idea without seeing the previous doodle at all.) SUPER FUN to play with my artist friends, always a blast. )” Then T says about the podcast, “Yay for more inspiration and you have had really fun themes…. seeing your subscribers do their thang. Thanks so much! T."

Brilliant stuff, thanks for getting in touch, T! Your art game sounds like a lot of fun. And if you’re listening and you’re not familiar with the drawing version of Exquisite Corpse that T’s referring, it’s actually much better known than the original word game from which it was derived. I talk about this in some of the earlier shows on the history of Exquisite Corpse, but if you Google Exquisite Corpse you’re more likely to come across the drawing game, because it became very popular and more or less overtook the word game for a long time. Basically, one person draws a head, another person draws a torso, another one the legs, and with each go, you make sure the other parts are covered up so you don’t know what kind of bizarre creature you’re adding to. A great game for parties.

Thank you everyone for your comments on the show – it really makes it all worth it. Making this podcast – planning what’s going to go in the next show – is another creative outlet for me, balanced with my writing, marketing and the day job – but it’s so special to me when I get feedback like this because my ultimate ideal for this show is for it to be an interactive space, somewhere I can connect with other imaginative minds. And it seems to be working! Which is fantastic.

On that note, I’m going to move on to some new and bizarre interpretations I received of an Exquisite Corpse result in the last show:

Joseph Clark, who commented earlier, also sent me a message about the Exquisite Corpse that came up in ep 10: “The brazen maggot saved, from the stompers, the pompous dietician.” This was one I struggled with quite a lot – but it was very funny to try. Anyway, Joseph says:

“Your recent ‘maggot-saves-dietician’ could relate to the dietician’s fear of food which is represented by the stompers.”

Interesting idea, to flip it around so that the dietician is the one who has issues about food, rather than being the genuine expert to give advice to another. Perhaps this is the root of her pompousness. Joseph then says “the maggot teaches her how to really eat the good stuff of life.” OK, because maggots have no qualms about what they eat, and are completely natural and impulsive in just letting their appetites go.

Joseph goes to suggest that the stompers could be “the bullies and abusers in terms of mental, physical violence or neglect, causing mental illness. So a maggot comes along and makes dietician see stompers (her fear of food). The stompers are ruiners of positive dreams, causing an eating disorder (based on) fear. Magical maggot teaches her to see her positive dreams  again and eat of the fun, good stuff of life to regain happiness.”

This is all so different: I’m beginning to realise that I have a tendency to try and interpret the Exquisite Corpse results very literally – who or what are the stompers, what’s physically going on here – whereas Joseph points out that you could approach these as metaphors. Stompers being fear; dreams of happiness… Yes, in any story, you need to have actual, physical events going on, but who’s to say that you can’t begin working on an idea from the point of view of the metaphysical or psychological journey of the characters? Start from what happens in the characters’ inner worlds and emotions, and then build a story outwards from that point.

Now, Alessandro Bozzo who I mentioned earlier, has been listening to the show with his two sons aged 12 and 9, - perhaps my youngest listeners, I don’t know! They like to brainstorm story ideas together based on the Exquisite Corpse game in the show – particularly, Alessandro’s 9 year old son, Nicholas.

Nicholas was really drawn to the same prompt, “The brazen maggot saved, from the stompers, the pompous dietician." And his idea goes like this:
 
“The dietician is a skinny grasshopper who is a dietician for insects and the maggot (who is a bit overweight) goes for a consultation with the dietician. The dietician is pompous, insulting, and condescending towards the maggot who reacts to this by becoming more and more brazen. While they are arguing, giant stompers try to squish them and the maggot ends up saving the dietician after which the two become best of friends. The dietician apologizes and tells the maggot that he will help him eat more healthily but that he should be okay with his body type. In all of this, the reader will discover that the stompers were really humans who were walking around, unaware that a maggot and a grasshopper were having a nutrition consultation, literally right under their feet."

This is so surreal – I love it! Thank you so much, Nicholas and Alessandro for your idea.

It just highlights: there are so many ways to interpret these Exquisite Corpses.

And I confess: I think I’ve been species-ist in assuming that the dietician is human. It seems so obvious now that Nicholas has said it. The stompers are the humans. The dietician is another kind of creature that needs to be saved from those humans.

This would make a really good story for children. Really good. I’m not a children’s writer, but I do sometimes read middle grade fiction because it is just so vivid, and nowadays there’s so much out there that is beautifully written – I will have to a show one day on this, because I think we’re living in a golden age for children’s fiction and there’s a lot we can learn from it even if we’re not consciously writing for children. But coming back to Nicholas’s idea, I think this could also work as an adult’s story as well, if you approach it in the right way.

I’m thinking - What if you wrote the beginning of this story as if the two main characters – the maggot and the dietician – are human. You don’t give away the fact that they are other creatures. You just leave out any physical descriptions of them, except perhaps the way they’re sitting, their facial expressions (let’s just imagine that creepy crawlies have facial expressions – go with me on this!). Leave out any defining details like mention of legs or arms or hands, you just focus on the conversation between them so the reader is tricked into thinking that they’re just two people in a room, in a consultation about nutrition. These characters keep getting interrupted by very loud noises upstairs, or perhaps it seems like there’s something or someone on the roof. Every time the maggot (who we don’t know yet is a maggot, so it’s just a guy who’s come to this appointment for help) – every time the patient asks the dietician, what’s that awful noise? She brushes it off as “They’re having some works done on the roof, nothing to worry about.” Although she does keep throwing worried glances at the ceiling, though, and at one point, she opens the window to have a look outside.

Anyway, there’ll come a crunch point – maybe that’ll be a literal crunch! – as there’s a terrible noise in the adjoining room. They rush out to discover the room next door has been crushed by a giant foot! Except, as the descriptions are beginning to come out now in the narration – so, it’s not necessarily a room in normal building, it’s more of a hole, a burrow, something under the ground – it becomes clear to the reader that these two characters, patient and dietician, are not human and in fact the humans are the stompers trampling on this mound of earth where creepy crawlies are trying to administer or receive medical advice!

I almost want to write it just for the surreal twist – to see how long I can get away with describing the characters and the story without letting on the nature of where they are, and what they are, until right before the very end, when the building – the burrow – starts collapsing under a giant foot, and the maggot must save his grasshopper dietician from the clumsy humans above them.

Oh, but if I wrote it, you’d already know about it, so I couldn’t surprise you! I’d have to write it or release it far, far in the future so that you won’t remember…

Now, it’s nearly time to play some new rounds of Exquisite Corpse and see where our imaginations take us.
Feel free to pause the show whenever I’ve read out a complete Exquisite Corpse result and have a go at brainstorming it; or just jot down the results as they come and have a think about it, go for a walk maybe, have a little a daydream and see if you can come up with any other ideas. Get in touch at annatizard.com, click ‘Contact’ at the bottom of the page or drop me a comment in the comments box on the Brainstoryum page; let me know what you come up with and I may feature it on the show. And if you try a 20 min writing exercise – or however long you fancy trying – I’d love to hear from you. If you write a short story, preferably up to or around 1k words, consider sharing it with me, because you never know, yours might be the next one I read out on the show.

I just know there are some stories out there waiting to be written. I can feel it…

So give it a go…

Now, it is time to bring out the Socks of Destiny!

Exquisite Corpse game play is not transposable... Please listen the last section of the show to enter a realm of deep silliness and inspiration!