Can An Old Dog Learn New Tricks?

Excuse the cliche of a title, but it is a very important question.

It is not the sort of question I hear asked of published writers, particularly those that have been in the game for years. But perhaps, when you are published, you don't need to learn new tricks?

Photo courtesy of  www.speedpropertybuyers.co.uk

I have a new trick up my sleeve, a very good one at that. I am not saying that I am either old, or a dog, but like many wirters I have been writing and reading about writing for more years than I care to count. And the old problem of the blank page is one we will always battle with. There has been much written about overcoming that fear of the blank page, mostly 'Just Write Something'.

This new trick sort of follows the 'Just Write Something' school of thought. The something you should write? Emma said that.

Fancy that! It doesn't have to be Emma, it could be Simon, Jayne or Thomas. You get the idea. The suggestion is that you use the name of the character you are writing about.

Here is how it would work:

Let's say we have a story about Emma, who is a 'boy racer', and her mother is an estate agent. Emma is depressed and her mother is sympathetic. It's a snowy day and Emma is in the attic of her home and she finds a photo of a dog with mismatched eyes.

We have an inkling of a story, so where do we go from here? Let's see:

'Emma said that' she needed to get away from her mum. The snow had made the roads impassable, so it was a 'Snow Day' for everyone. She had been fighting with her mum for a while, though her mum tried to be sympathetic to Emma's depression. So Emma decided that she would go upstairs to the attic and just look through the boxes. She came across the photo of a dog with mismatched eyes, and her mum was cuddling it's neck. She went back downstairs to ask her mum about it.

There! This was a start that I have written off the hoof. But I would not have written any of it, had I not put 'Emma said that' at the start. It launched me, as I asked myself 'What does Emma want to say?'.

From that point, I could reconcile the relationship between mum and daughter as they bond over a story of a dog with mismatched eyes! Perhaps the dog got killed by a boy racer!

The other option, for those who like to write in first person, is 'I remember'. Used exactly like 'Emma said that' and off you go!

This is a trick I will definitely keep. Please let me know if you like it, if you used it and whether you got success from it.