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Often the best motivation for a short story or article is restriction. Given the whole world to write about, I spend about an hour sitting at my desk wondering what would fit. Given a restriction, I start tapping away immediately and usually end up with two, if not three good ideas that I can follow through with.

One technique my writers' group uses is the one-liner. The object of the one-liner is not to introduce something particularly deep and meaningful, or inspirational. In fact, the opposite is usually more helpful: the more random the one-liner, the more helpful the prompt will turn out to be.

One project the group undertook was to write a book of short stories based on the song titles from a CD brought in by one member. Apart from the owner of the album, none of us had ever heard the music. We each chose one or two song titles to begin with, and the project produced an amazing variety of stories, from romances to horror to sweet and meaningful.

If you choose to use this method of one-liner inspiration, I highly recommend you stay with albums you're not familiar with - choosing a much-loved song for inspiration might seem like a good idea at the time, but trust me - it takes much more work to write something that will end up your own.

A brilliant one-liner challenge that cropped up in the fanfiction community was the 'page 394 challenge', which dictated that your story needed to contain five sentences, one each from the five thickest books nearest to you at the time you begin to write. With each book, turn to page 394, and use the second sentence on that page. Weave them into a story. (credit to Doomspark from the Harry Potter fic realm)

Another restriction exercise I use regularly when tapped for inspiration is not strictly a one-liner, but I will include it here because it usually ends up providing me with the opening line of my work for the day. Natalie Goldberg in 'Writing Down the Bones' recommends that you begin journal work for the day by writing about your environment. For me, this has turned into an exercise that produces the first line for the work - I close my eyes, clear my mind, and open them again. The first thing my eyes land on will invariably produce a sentence, eg. 'Oh, it's bloody raining again.' I let the words run on from there.

The most important thing I have found when using one-liners for inspiration is not to self-edit as you write. This is a habit that is incredibly hard to shed, if you, like me, prefer to edit as you go, but it is essential. Let the words flow from the inspiration you've received from the one-liner, and *do not* read over your work, cross anything out, or make corrections until you have finished. When you run out of words, you can begin to polish the work.

Random one-liners are by far my favourite inspiration for writing, just for the wide variety of work I've written from them. The 'writing from environment' exercise has provided me with tales of rugged private eyes terrorised by tiny whale bath toys, fairy tales, vampire mysteries and love songs. The CD exercise inspired tales of sensuality and a story of a psychotic episode told from the experiencer's perspective. At the moment, my writing group is embarking on 'Songs of Innocence and Experience,' which already has resulted in a comic soap opera involving action figures!

I hope I've provided you with some sources of one-liners for future inspiration, and have fun writing!

Learn more about this author, Clare Callow.
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