 |
Brainstoryum: Short Stories and Writing PromptsAuthor: Anna Tizard
Brainstorm stories using the surrealist word game of Exquisite Corpse - a creative writing challenge you'll never forget! Hosted by award-winning dreampunk & fantasy author Anna Tizard. The game produces strange, often hilarious sentences, but after a bit of head-scratching (and tea drinking!), they inspire weird & unexpected stories. This show has evolved: Shows 37 & later focus more on storytelling, and the story brainstorms are deeper & richer. Shows 28-33 are Alice in Wonderland specials. Earlier shows include profound discussions on writing before game play. Dive in and don't look back! Language: en-gb Genres: Fiction Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
Listen Now...
#79. New Approach to Short Story Writing – and a Chocoholic’s Confession!
Episode 79
Friday, 25 April, 2025
Join award-winning fantasy and dreampunk author, Anna Tizard, in a journey into the writer’s imagination – at once profound, surprising, funny, and extraordinary. Anna uses the surrealist word game of Exquisite Corpse to generate short story ideas by mixing listener’s word suggestions into weird sentences. The results are imagination-bending, and a real workout for your creative writing.Listen to brand new short stories and scenes as Anna drafts them (she uses the “pause” button to compose them) and learn from tips, techniques and tools she shares along the way: practical ideas that you can use to write suspenseful fiction, especially fantasy.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 79 of Brainstoryum. I hope you’ve had an excellent Easter by the time you listen to this: I recorded this just before Easter, which, let’s face it, is a difficult time for chocoholics. Every time I’ve been into our local supermarket in the last two months just to buy ordinary groceries, I have been faced with walls of tantalising boxes containing that unspeakably amazing stuff wrapped in glistening purple foil. I usually take my husband with me, not just to do the heavy carrying, but to help me through this… difficult time!And when the egg I really wanted was selling out, so I couldn’t leave buying it to the absolute last minute – I really like chocolate buttons – I bought it the weekend before Easter, asked Duncan to hide it… but he wasn’t quick enough, so I caved and I ate the buttons that came with the egg. It was only a small packet. And the way I see it, it’s the egg part that’s for Easter, right? So that’s okay, isn’t it?But I digress! Moving swiftly on, I have to tell you about some changes I’m making to the show. Nothing massive, but I would love your feedback anyway. Now, over time, I’ve got into the habit of feeling compelled to draft a short story or scene based on pretty much every single Exquisite Corpse result that comes up. This is quite an intense challenge – I think I’ve just been like, “I’ve got to prove that it can be done! Even with the really crazy ones.” And if you’re a regular listener, you’ll know I love surprises in fiction. I love to be surprised, and I love to write in surprises to my stories. And this is a great way to find those surprises – to go looking under every rock. So that might be why I got a little bit obsessive over this, trying to write every story– and it's also why the show’s become just that little bit longer than I’d like, and I haven’t been able to bring it down closer to half an hour.And while this has been going on...
