The Mind of Bryan Lee Peterson

Coming from the flammable hills of Westlake Village CA, I bring you Stories from a hat #2. Sorry for the lateness, traveling for work has kept me busy.

First, haven’t set pen to paper for Stories from a Hat #1, but I know what my story is. Just needs to settle just a little bit on some details, then it will write itself. This week however, I have drawn again, and I think you’ll like it. I know the direction I’m heading with it.

Artificial intelligence

Antarctica

captured super entity

dark fantasy

settlement

As always, if your writing bears fruit on this, send it my way, and I’ll post it.

I know, it’s late. Been a day. You know what I mean. A Day. Actually a good day, but a day nonetheless. Almost got to upload at lunch, but the place I was at, the Wifi took a crap. I think I actually saw it on the can. So here’s my first chance to upload. Here’s an image. Write something about it. The start of a story. Some description. Something. Send it to me by Sunday. I’ll put what you get out up here. Also try writing Stories from a Hat. I may have something for that by Sunday. Story’s in my head, but I’m already booked most of the weekend. Go figure. But here. Now write, dammit.

And I don’t know who to give attribution to. If you know, let me know.

So here’s the idea. I want to have some writing prompts to help me get some flow back in my creative life. Writing prompts are a good way to do that, they break the writer’s block better than a hammer, I think. So I’ll be posting a couple of writing prompts a week, Fridays, some images or phrases to start something off for a quick one, and then Sundays I’ll post stories from a hat, where I’ll draw a number of archetypes, time periods, styles, genres, settings, and plot points, and that we’ll get a week to work on them. I hope in that amount of time, we’ll be able to produce longer pieces. Maybe it will give a good lead on a short story, maybe not.

I hope that the chance collision of unexpected combinations will give your writing some new directions. I also suspect that we may try a stories from a hat novel someday, where when one batch of prompts plays itself out, we can draw again, throw a new character or object into the mix and continue the story.

If you post the piece you write on your site, or get something published as a result of this, I’d appreciate a reciprocal link or mention. If things go stupendously well, maybe we can do a stories from a hat anthology.

I would like to expand my list as much as possible, so in my next post (there some organizing of the file to do), I’ll post the file for you, and you can send me suggestions on what should be in it.

So here we go: the first draws:

• rival
• logician
• ghost town/desolate area
• the misguided savior
• lost knowledge
• renaissance
• creature of nightmare

Send whatever you may come up with to me, along with any kind of links you want to send traffic your way by Sunday and I’ll get it up here. I have a story brewing already.

I’ve been constructing a new plot, and the way I’m assembling it is something new to me. It feels very open and energizing and new, while at the same time a great challenge. I won’t quite say what this new plot is, or how I’m putting it together, but I want to take it a step further for a specific purpose, namely to write more short work. I’m going to toss genres, story elements, character archetypes, conflicts, settings and the like into a hat, pull some out, and see what I come up with. Maybe it will lead to a story, maybe not, but it will likely spur something. So I’m looking for some comments of these kinds of things to add to my list. So, here’s the list I’ve compiled. Some of it isn’t standard, but I’m not looking for standard. I’m looking for options. Please, add in the comments and help the exercise out.

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