Are you kidding me, you want me to spoil my Sunday so that I can crack or create a new idea for a screenplay or a novel.
The thing is it's not a workshop in which you have to sit for 5-6 hour, just listen a mentor and doing some question and answer session, but it's alive technique that you can implement in your day to day life and it's very simple. It just requires your one Sunday your whole day.
The purpose of this exercise is to get to know what's happening all around you as if you are working on your big screenplay or a novel, that you don't even recognize that's what's happening in the world. this practice will make your mind fresh and open your mind to look at the world in different perspective. So you get an idea of how the people are interacting with each other in the present world.
It goes like this and I want to call this exercise -- "Exploring Sunday"
The thing you require:
- The Notebook
- Pen
- Your Smartphone
- And dedicated one day
Take your above-mentioned tools and decide in your mind that you gonna write each and everything when you step out of your house. You going to capture each and every essence, small details, imageries, unique peoples, little talks of people and so on.
So you can start like this. when you lock your door, first you see your corridor, describe that and make a note in your mobile, is it empty or it's filled with people. What feeling that triggers in your mind.
When you enter into your left, whom did you encounter male, female or old person? how this person looks like. Does this person attract you, if not why? write it.
As you are walking in your Colony, does the view gives you a pleasant feeling, douse the view trigger your past memory and if you like the view just take a photo.
Can you look at different people in your Colony, have their dressing sense changed over the period of time, you can compare all the changes later.
While having tea in Cafe, you can listen to what people are talking. It's similar to jumping in the middle of the scene and try to figure out the subject of their talk, are those people talking about politics, family matters or the latest show on TV or Netflix, keep making notes of the small details.
While doing lunch you can repeat the above techniques and also you can take photos of all the food you eat. How the restaurant is serving the food, do you find any difference in taste? try to talk with the waiter and ask some question about food and the chef.
You can switch your location to any mall that you like to visit. Notice the people how they are behaving, their nature, what new words they are using in their talk. You might also research a new brand in the market or you can enter any electronic shop and ask for new mobile in the market. Try to talk with the salesperson he or she might tell you about the technology, try to capture how they are dealing with you and try to sell their product. When You Walked out, write all those small things you have noticed.
In the evening you can walk into some park, can you feel the increased density of people in the park. By looking at them can you figure out, are they really health conscious or not. You can pick any random person and count his or her jogging around, what can you say about him or her.
Look for a family with their child, what can you say about their relation and their love for each other, write two-three lines about that moment.
Look for some couple, how they look like, can you relate to them, is there love true or not. Just try to capture little things or detail you are attracted.
I know you can get bored. If you can't write long sentences, write in words like a young couple, college love, that small kid is like me, that old person seems very spiritual etc.
As you take your dinner and return to your home. Open your notes. At first, all the materials look very disorganized and no relation to each other, but as a writer try to connect one dot to another. You have captured many peoples life, can you figure out a character which might be interesting and you can write a story or an essay on him or her.
Look at those photos you have captured, can you set your above-chosen character in one of your photographed locations.
Can you describe the job of a chosen character, just by looking at the notes you have made? can you imagine his/her relationship with his/her parents, with his/her lover etc?
By looking at the notes, can you imagine what he or she wants in his/her life? you can interlink different stuff with your character. Try to hybridized your character so you can create a three-dimensional character.
Make a list of things that you have encountered very different and very unique list them separately.
Example: New technology, new food, new words and accents and different dressing styles of people etc.
If you can write a 5-6 page story on your character I think your Sunday is worth exploring. I am pretty sure you can come up with some story because you always get a story when you explore your world.
Don't be disappointed if you can't figure out any story in your research. Just keep it aside and go through it after 2-3 days.
You can do this exercise every weekend or you can continuously notice while you are going office while traveling, having coffee in Cafe, having dinner. the small practices eventually help you to become a good writer and also you have a good database of people, their nature, locations, different subject etc.
