Writing is difficult when you don’t have the knowledge of what or where it is you are going with it. Especially when you start to talk about something that is being graded with a total of 15% of your final grade for the semester. And this isn’t your elective, 12 credit point subject, it’s your 24 credit point studio in which I’m the underdog. I’ve got to get 500 words, or I’m afraid it might cost me my life.

I’ve hired a Hit man to come and get me if I don’t get to the 500 word limit of this exercise. I’ve only got 2 minutes to finish the 500 word limit. I think thats an unfair constraint, but, I was the one who was smart enough to hire the Hit man to come get me. I’m 150 words in, yet – ‘the sound of the downstairs door smashes’ – He’s come early. He’s going to kill me. (Footsteps are slowly approaching, the stairs are creaking under his feet) I type and type faster, that alk hte wordss Im tyipong haev spelling erorrs. I’m barely up to 200 words. Theres no chance for me to finish the 500 words.

I’m not going to have it, I’ve got to defend myself. I stand up and hide behind the door of my bedroom. The hit man runs in, expecting to see a blog post with 500 words. instead he sees one, which ends with the statement ‘I’m barely up to 200 words.’ He was given strict instructions by me, to kill me if I hadn’t finished the 500 words. He is outraged and pulls out his gun. He hasn’t seen me. Before he turns around I dive on him. He is completely unaware, as was I, as up until 25ish seconds ago I was trying to finish my blog post. I dive on top of him and grab his gun from his clenches. I point it at him whilst I’ve pinned him to the ground. He screams out, “Why didn’t you just do this post earlier? You could have made it truly special!” I say, “Because I didn’t know what I was going to write about!”

Then he says, “I was coming here to tell you something.” I scream, “Tell me what?!” He suddenly throws me aside, and stands up and says, “I’m your father.”

END SCENE.

Well that was weird. But as it turns out, its not just any other initiative blog post. This was an exercise I set for myself to come up with a narrative out of nothing. As a screen writer I’m sure there would be many stories that would need to be adapted from nothing. And I feel as if this kind of exercise shows that I was talking about nothing at the start. In a period of about half an hour-ish, (excluding me having a break from this to do some chores) I feel like I created a scene. I realise there are some plot holes, its not formally written and there a fair few cliches, yet apart from the stupid situation I wrote up, I feel like this kind of exercise helps to think on the spot, and in any sort of writing position whether it be screenwriting, copywriting, advertising etc, I’ll have to be writing under the pump. Hopefully this can show you that you can make something out of nothing. I definitely don’t see this as a masterpiece, but I think it’s good for me to write some things that come from just rambling on. This is highly informal, but it’s something that I can do as an experiment just to exercise my writing skills.

And look at that. I got my 500 words.