Writing games are tricks, exercises, things to try to get your writing brain in the mood. I find them useful when a story's giving me trouble - I can't think of a way out of the corner, or I can't think of a corner to get into, or I'm just not feeling in the right mood to write that story - as well as generating new ideas, and just keeping my writing-mind in shape. And on the plus side, they're usually fun to try, and you can end up with the germs of some great little stories.

Working Backwards

I find this helps on the days when everything coming out of your brain is foul sludge from the OverWritten Swamps of the planet Cliche, when I know where I need to be, but not how to get there, or for [insert individual reason here] I'm finding a scene particularly impossible.

It breaks your mind away from the standard word-after-word process, and stops you focussing on the wrong areas of your craft, and frees you from the standard "what happened next" approach that can stall your mind.

You can do this one at word level, sentence level, paragraph level or even chapter/page level. My personal preference is sentence level - it's far easier to put a paragraph together backwards than it is a sentence, and inserting entire paragraphs behind each other feels to much like cut-and-paste - your mileage may vary, of course. So:

Write the last sentence of your story (or chapter, or scene). Write the sentence that comes right before that.  Write the sentence that comes before that. Work your way back to the start of the paragraph. Repeat with either the previous paragraph or the next paragraph, depending on which works better for your brain.

And you have to build it backwards - no cheating by deciding working it all out fowards first. I find it works best on a computer, where insert-stuff-before-here is simple. If you're stuck with a notepad and pen, write them one after the other, so the story's in the "wrong" order, then transcribe it into the right order when you edit.

Alternatives

• Word level - build the actual sentences backwards. Last word, then second-last word, then third-last word, etc.
• Paragraph level - build the scene or chapter backwards, writing each paragraph forwards. So, write te last paragraph in a scene, then the secon- last, third-last, etc.
• Chapter/Page level - build the entire story backwards. Write the last chapter (or page, if it's a short), then the second-last, then the third-last, etc.
• Combine any or all of the above.

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