So, I have a couple of workshops coming up and I thought maybe I’d make this a bit of an online workshop forum, bounce some of the ideas and tasks I bring to my writing workshops off you folk way all the way over in Australia.  I’ve got two workshops coming up: the first one is on VOICE and writing IN VOICE, the other is about comics and comic book writing.

One of the first things I do whenever I go into a workshop is to ask students to write down three things about themselves.  I like this better than just having people talk about themselves on the fly.  Whenever students talk about themselves on the fly they only ever tell me two things:

name

age

Sometimes this gets peppered in with some talk of what their favourite colour is or whether or not they have any pets.  All of this is fine but not really interesting.  What I want to hear is something WEIRD, you know? Something DISTINCT and bizarre.

Something YOU.

Sometimes I’ll tell students to write down the strangest thing about themselves.  Sometimes I make them write down their greatest wish or what they dream about.  If they can’t think of anything I tell them to lie.

This one boy (13) told me he was in the middle of a steamy love triangle.  It amazes me to know when the knowledge of “love triangles” comes about.  13 seems a little young to me but still….

Another girl told me that she falls asleep every night looking at Johnny Depp’s face (amazing).

My favourite story came from this girl who told me that the one thing she knew about her adult life was that she planned to outlive her husband.  What a plan!  What a great start for a murder mystery!

The best part of this exercise is it forces people (especially when they hear other students stories) to start thinking about their own fascinating personal factoids.

Three things about me?

1. When I have my headphones on, I am always in the act of starring in my own personal music video.

2. All my animals (except one) have human names: Stanley (cat), Charlie (cat), Karl (fish), and Henry (fish).  The exception is my other fish Barracuda whom I did not name.

3. I’d almost always rather eat frozen sweet things than non-frozen sweet things.

You?