At times, it can be hard to think of topics for free writing. It’s not that life is dull and provides little to write about, it’s the opposite: there are infinite topics and numerous genres to choose from. When I’m feeling lazy, I prefer to choose two opposing ideas and try to put them together in a single cohesive mass of words. While it’s a tough exercise, it drove much of my essay writing in college. After four years and hundreds of pages of writing about opposites, comparing the dissimilar, and doing my favorite “for this piece, I will pull this topic straight out of my ***,” I wanted a way to force myself out of my writing element, if you will. Naturally, I looked at my favorite program, Microsoft Excel to help me with the job. Out came the Writing Idea Generator, version 1.0.
Here’s what it looks like in Excel:
Simple, right? The left column numbers are generated through the RAND function and the third column uses that random number in an INDEX formula to grab a term from lists on different worksheets. I’m only generating three items right now: an –ISM, a verb, and a literary device. As you can see, I’ve left a lot of room for possible expansion. I hesitate to begin wildly adding more items, because I think that would only lead to worthless clutter in my writing.
The goal of this generator is to push my writing to places I haven’t tried to go yet. Above, you can see iambic pentameter had been generated when I took the screenshot. If I had generated this for a writing topic, I would have cooked up some poetry. Of course, I could just click the “Calculate” button again to get something I liked, but what would be the point of that?
Below I will list the pieces I write using this generator. Don’t hesitate to drop some constructive criticism in the comments section, as this is intended to help my writing grow.
1. Shopping, stealing, and a brief conversation
