Foxee

You have gotten good feedback in previous threads on how to fire the imagination up...these are the closest ideas we have to a switch that turns your imagination on. Considering what I read in the link that you provided, though, there may be a unique set of triggers for someone with your condition.

You can't be the first person with Asperger's Syndrome who wishes to strengthen the creative connections of your brain. In all seriousness you may want to try sites that deal with Asperger's and see if there is some input there.

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Noirllyn

THAT'S all you were asking for? Well, then...

Reinvent the world around you, or at least the way you see it. "Explode & Explore"

Go some place you are often... take for example... your house. Spend time moving around it in a different way. I'd assume that most of us walk... except we few of the spidey sense, but changing that little detail changes everything. Sure, it's awkward to explain to a family member why you are crab-walking through the kitchen, but when you decide to mop the floor or clean the underledges of the counters because of the experience, it seems more practical to others. Get taller if you can, too--putting on high-heeled shoes for the first time really can change the way you see the top of the fridge. If you don't know how to walk around in a way that you can safely see things upsidedown, then hang off the edge of the couch. Clean off your table and lay on it. You can do it stretched out, like a wounded viking dragged in from battle and slung up there to be kept out of the way and tended to, or you can fold your body up and pretend to be a turkey waiting for a big knife.

Do other normal things... differently. Literally wear someone else's shoes for the day. Look at your food with a magnifying glass, microscope, telescope, or glasses that aren't yours, before you eat it. Chew each bite a hundred times before swallowing. Eat your food with chopsticks, or through a straw (not always safe or practical), or with a little shovel (for the garden or beach). Wash your clothes by hand. Sit differently at the PC (Or don't sit at all--I do yoga and belly-dance while I'm working on the computer. Totally different feel to simply sitting in a chair and typing.).

Basically, experience something differently.

If that fails you, you could do the normal thing, and simply experience something different.



Yeah, stuff like that is weird, and people have even told me that it makes writers look bad. When I was in 6th grade, there were two teachers for the gifted enrichment program. One of them was very technical and despised these "imagination-enriching exercises", especially for people who were "no longer children", the other was a total fruitbag and had us converse with teddy grahams. One of them is a published author, doing quite well for herself. The other has never been published, despite many attempts. Sometimes getting a little freaky gets people a little further.

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SevenWritez

Ox, write a story about some dude who has OCD, because every time he thinks he's about to embark on something, he lets all his friends know, and then crawls back to them saying, "I quit," three days later. Every thought that goes through your head while you're busy fucking up your magnum opus--why can't I do this? Blah deh blah? Should I start another How-To thread?--make it is his, instead. Every line on this forum that has ever made you smile or made you laugh, take it and reword it and change the names and bring on the the wit and the humor. Make your character a talented son of a bitch who's too fucking lazy to just go through with his plans, and make this trait obvious to the audience, but not to the guy himself.

It'll sell.

The Backward OX

Maybe I’ve been asking the wrong questions all along; if I did it’s understandable I’d get the wrong answers.

Perhaps it’d be more accurate if I tell you that plotting is my weak point and give you an example of how this writer I know uses his imagination to plot a story. Perhaps that will explain what it is I seek.

My writer mate imagines first one thing, and then he imagines how that first thing leads to a second thing, and then how that second thing leads to a third, and the third to a fourth, and so on, and before you know it he’s got a plot.

The example he gave me was something like this:

Male No. 1 meets Male No. 2 in a pub, and No. 2 tells No.1 an anecdote about his phenomenal memory. That was my writer mate’s first imagined thought . . . THEN No. 2 leaves. That’s his second imagined thought . . . THEN No.1 notices No. 2’s wallet on the floor – that’s the third . . . THEN he puts his foot on it until no one’s looking – that’s the fourth . . . THEN he picks it up and takes it to the Gents and looks through it. No money, just a lot of business cards . . . THEN, the next day, he comes back to the pub and the barman says “Hey you know that guy you were talking to yesterday? He came back looking for his wallet and we couldn’t find it and THEN he walked outside and was hit by a bus and killed.” . . . THEN the guy with the wallet thinks Wow and has another look at all those business cards and on the back of one of them he finds a signed IOU for $25,000 and it’s signed by . . . . . . my writer mate hasn’t worked that out yet. But he says he’ll write it all out in detail and by the time he gets to that signature, something will have occurred to him for the next THEN. And he told me that in the back of his mind he knows that Male No.1 has to find out who Male No. 2 was, and who the IOUist is, and why a man with an incredible memory has no money but is owed $25,000.

I can’t do stuff like that.

So I figure if I’m ever to come up with a plot, I need to unlock my imagination.

ash somers

welcome back

ash somers

okay, so you can't plot, but you can write
that's evident from your mutterings on here
you are more than capable of writing a book

i don't know about you, but i personally werk
or write (same thing) much better to deadlines
have you set your self time lines/frames as yet?

and would you be willing to have another, let's say me *uhum*
set you werk tasks each day, mutually agreed upon by us both
that you were to complete, by said time, regardless of quality

do you think this could be of any value
to you *completing this damned story>?

edit: correction *starting

Non Serviam

There are active users of this site with AS, mate, some of whom are bloody good. Therefore AS in itself is not an insurmountable obstacle to writing.

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Born naked, helpless, unable to care for himself and completely open-minded, Non Serviam has subsequently surmounted all these difficulties and gone on to become a decently-clothed, self-sufficient, close-minded sod.

Non Serviam

Incidentally, I can't plot for toffee. So I don't. I just find a plot I like, and rip it off. Because if it's okay for Shakespeare to do that, it's bloody well okay for me.

"$1,002" that I posted here was the plot from the Shipman's Tale from Chaucer. "Aunt Davinder's Donkey" was the plot from Curried Cow by Ambrose Bierce. Etc.

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Born naked, helpless, unable to care for himself and completely open-minded, Non Serviam has subsequently surmounted all these difficulties and gone on to become a decently-clothed, self-sufficient, close-minded sod.

CodeRed

Gah! You beat me too it!

I was going to suggest perhaps re-writing a story, at least to begin with. You could pick one that you didn't even like, and re-write it to your satisfaction.

I find that plot follows the logic of the characters I'm writing about, therefore characterisation comes before plot for me. The plot - or events that drive the story further - present themselves in the course of discovering who the characters are. (By that I mean I have a character, and sometimes I just look at the page and go "well, what are you going to do if .... happens, since you're such a....". Hopefully you can fill in the blanks. If the question is how to fill in the blanks, look at the kinds of situations your characters would least like to deal with).

Welcome back, by the way.

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All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients. Ralph Waldo Emerson

BOURBON

Ox. I popped in to snoop because I hit a block and because I miss the chatter. I wish you were in my office so I could make you tea and biscuits and you could eat/drink while you watched what idiot rituals I go through to get a word out. You are not alone.

Perhaps I am not as incisive as I like to think I am, but I suspect you are trying to write from the outside, looking in; that you are totally conscious of what you're doing, from breathing to bending your finger-joints. Some of what NS says is not to be dismissed lightly. Sit there. Type like you're writing a journal to yourself. "I am trying to write this story about....but I am having problems....". Don't be entertaining or clever, just be honest with yourself. Keep regular hours. Reward yourself with cake, chocolate, beer, vegemite sandwiches, a new hat with cork dangles...whatever makes you happy.

Eventually you will find you are writing from the inside looking out. Then the magic will happen. Don't give up. Whatever you do, take away the " " from around what you are trying to write.

I'm willing you on from the stands!

BB

Foxee

Ox, plotting is essentially a logic function, you certainly do have the capability for this. That doesn't mean that plotting is easy. It's an area I feel that I'm weak in so I'll leave the commenting up to others.

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Non Serviam

Haha, that's such an apt description!

I've got this shoelace thing I do where I retie my left shoelace, then my right one, then re-do it with the right one first then the left, and then when I look at the screen again, sometimes the correct word is just, er, there, floating around in my mind's vestibule.

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Born naked, helpless, unable to care for himself and completely open-minded, Non Serviam has subsequently surmounted all these difficulties and gone on to become a decently-clothed, self-sufficient, close-minded sod.

BOURBON

I'm currently locked into this thing with coffee and halva. Then I have to play Edith Piaf on loop. I'm thinking of putting a swiss-cheese plant in my mind's vestibule, but am worried I'll spoil the ambience of clammy anxiety...
BB

The Backward OX

I've pm'd you on this.

BOURBON

Do you know how your story ends?
Can you identify specific cause and effect events which occur between the beginning and the end which bring it about?
If so, think of these as junctions on the road of your journey.
Between the junctions are towns : events which your journey/story breaks down into, they will influence its pace and texture. Can you identify them in your story?
Between the towns are villages and you must to get out of your car at every one of them and interract with the people you find there. Some will tell you a short-cut for your journey. Others will lie to you.

Events are not random. They are either part of the complex cause and effect equation or are there to build and illustrate character.

Just like life ha ha

(The above is probably more confusing than helpful. I am clearly not the queen of analogies)

Best wishes

BB