Posted inInstigation

13 Cannibal Conflicts

Give your cannibal character a dietary restriction. Have your cannibal review a restaurant critic as they dine on him. Put your cannibal on a fat farm. Play referee in a new sporting event: Cannibal vs. Cannibal! Depict the chores of the dishwasher in the back of the cannibal cafe. Your cannibal has lost his teeth. What now? Write The Constitution for the country of Cannibali. Convert your cannibal to a new religion. Poison your cannibal in an inventive way. Describe the day job of your cannibal without ever referencing his or her insatiable appetite. Invent a TV show for the…
June 13, 2014Posted inInstigation1 Comment
Posted inArnzen News Instigation

Diabolique Strategies: Random Provocations into the Dark Side

I've long admired the "Oblique Strategies" -- an infamous deck of creativity cards invented by musician Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt that has a cult following among artists and musicians. It is one part thinking game, one part fortune cookie. They made it as a way to spur them into thinking differently about their current projects, by drawing random lateral thinking triggers from the deck (like “destroy the most important thing” or “give the game away”). But I've always wondered: What would they look like if Eno had been in a Death Metal band instead of Roxy Music? Or…
March 23, 2014Posted inArnzen News, Instigation
Posted inArnzen News Instigation

THE RESOLUTION: A Twitter Story Contest – Sponsored by AuthorBee!

ANNOUNCING A NEW YEAR'S WRITING CONTEST in the Instigation Playground at AuthorBee Deadline for entries is 12/29/13 at Midnight est. WIN AN AMAZON GIFT CERTIFICATE FROM OUR HOST, @AUTHORBEE! Let's write a twisted tale together to ring (or is that "wring"?) in the New Year! The story is called "The Resolution." And it all begins with the following line: You're bound. A TV shows Times Square. "What's your resolution," a man holding a knife asks, "for the afterlife?" Consider yourself "instigated": YOU GO NEXT! You simply need to be a member of twitter to play along (it's free -- check…
December 20, 2013Posted inArnzen News, Instigation
Posted inArnzen News

Special NaNoWriMo Offer on Instigation

ALERT, HORROR WRITERS! For the rest of November, you can get my creative writing helper, Instigation: Creative Prompts on the Dark Side at a 50% discount (just $1.99) if you order directly from Mastication Publications. Available only on the Mastication Publications weblog. [Sorry...special offer period has ended. But you can subscribe to the Mastication Pubs newsletter for another opportunity to get Instigation at a discount!]
November 9, 2013Posted inArnzen News
Posted inInstigation

Live Instigation

Thought I'd toss up a quick reminder that I've been erratically posting Instigation prompts to twitter all month, which are feeding into the new Instigation Showcase page. I conceive of all this as being not only an extension of this department on the blog, but also the recently-released ebook. If you're on twitter, just follow @MikeArnzen -- if you're not, you can always see what I'm posting to that nefarious site on the archive I keep called "The Nest" right here at gorelets.com/nest. Here's a sampler of some recent favorites:     "Construct a scenario involving a contemporary equivalent to…
April 14, 2013Posted inInstigation