Amongst other things, Nic is a writer and director for theatre and film...
... so doesn't have a lot of time to update this site.
If you are a fan of stochastic living and the spirit of old-fashioned Burroughsian cut-ups you might like to play with Join The Dots, one of the writing toys I developed in order to stimulate new ideas and as an exercise in epic procrastination.
Join The Dots is the digital equivalent of pulling pieces of paper out of a hat. By cunning random means, it sets up a script for you with some intriguing lines of dialogue dotted throughout the otherwise blank pages and challenges you to fill in the rest. You copy and paste it into your word processor and then must somehow tie the whole thing up into a comprehensible narrative with a beginning, middle and end. It should make sense; some sort of sense.
You could think of these pages as individual scenes in a larger work or as a complete, stand-alone playlet. I like to think of them as torn scraps of parchment I've found on the deck of an abandoned galleon.
Obviously this is not intended to produce groundbreaking works of theatrical genius (not least because you will find several authors sharing the same lines of dialogue) but rather as an exercise in mental and verbal dexterity or as a means to shake yourself out of habit.
You should find it fun, challenging and a step up from crossword puzzles or sudoko. It's a great way to oil the mental gears or limber up before attempting something big and important. It's also an infallible way to avoid getting down to work. Sorry.
Join The Dots also offers you the opportunity to add some lines of your own, which will be included in the randomly generated scripts. This makes it more interesting for yourself and for other writers.
The more lines there are in the hat, the more unique scripts Join The Dots can generate. Once you get the hang of how it works, why not add a few choice lines of your own and see if they challenge other writers to come up with ever more interesting contributions?
Due to the way Join The Dots puts them together, some lines of dialogue are better than others.
'Huh?' - is all right, if a little dull.
'Let go of it or I'll scream!' - is more stimulating, since it makes an offer to the author. What is 'it'? Why should he or she let go of it? Why will the character scream?
'I know why you murdered your husband, Mrs Swelt; it is because he had an affair with Susanne over there. Now I, Inspector Gunwangle, have apprehended you despite your attempts to poison me with a rare and subtle toxin harvested from the skin of a tropical amphibian only moments ago. Come with me, wretched woman, I'm taking you to prison.' - is not great, for various, painful reasons. Mostly, it's far too specific.
Click here to give it a go: Join The Dots
Try it out, play around, add some lines and make some suggestions in the forum about how to improve it.
