James Cairns

A blog. They say you need to have a blog. They say you need to have a blog to drive traffic to your book. You’re a writer and you need to write about stuff.

Okay. I nearly broke my mind thinking about the kind of content I’m going to put in here and the only thing that didn’t feel like bullshit punditry was the following…

I used to do a solo show called James Cairns Against Humanity, which like the card game of a similar name, is improvisational. I dealt the cards out to the audience and using a flipchart for the title and main characters, launched into an hour improvised long story, pausing all the while to take cards from the audience at regular intervals (the first three rows had cards) based on nothing more than who showed me the need to take their card more than their fellows.

Sometimes it sucked.

But, it also sometimes produced the best moments I had on stage in 20 years of acting.

I’ve found a way to translate this into a writing practice using Rory’s Storycubes. I pick a number of dice, usually nine and then roll them and use the sequence they give me to write something.

Sometimes it sucks. Sometimes it’s genius.

I’ll do one a week up here for the foreseeable future. Let’s see how that goes…

Here’s the first picture:

Rules are: Roll the dice and line them up as close to the way they land. The order has to be read left to right top to bottom. Only one throw of the dice and no changes.

Now you can do a micro take where you use the sequence tightly and squeeze everything into a paragraph like this:

The cup, whether it runneth over or runneth under is a balancing act. Sometimes it’ll have you wary, sometimes be cause for alarm, sometimes just plain old danger. Sometimes it’ll reveal a strength you didn’t know you had, a signal to creation that something hitherto unseen is rising up from the depths of your swampy soul.

Ooh, that’s a thesis statementright there. Chuck Palahniuk would have my balls for this.

So turn it into a monologue:

He looked around the room fixing the pinched faces with a glare. “The cup from which we drink, whether it run over or under forces us into a balancing act. Should we be wary of it? Of course. It can be cause for alarm, even danger. But what it’s more likely to do dear friends is reveal a strength we didn’t know we had, a signal to the world around us that something hitherto unseen is rising from the depths of our swampy souls.”

Cool – I kinda want to hear more. There’s something there.

Let’s make it dialogue.

“There are jewels on that thing. Got to feel weird drinking from it. You have to hold it so the jewels are not against you lips, otherwise you’ll dribble on that nice white robe you have to wear.”

“I don’t even know if I want to do this. I haven’t even made up my mind yet.”

“Whoa there your royal highness. Making up your mind’s not under discussion here.”

“Yes it is! There are alarms going off in here!” She tapped her head so loudly Juana heard it across the room. “This chalice not only has dribble inducing jewels on it. It’s poison, Juana.”

“Hold that thought. I hear you, I hear you. I mean… in a sense every cup has poison, doesn’t it?”

“Your cup – what’s the poison? How much poison you got in your cup? Let’s have a look at that?”

“How is that going to shed any light on what you’re going to have to do later today?”

“I just want to make myself invisible. I’ll just disappear and then I won’t have to drink anything.”

“It is possible, but remember, you become the monster for all of us. You’re doing it for all of us.”

Now there’s a story… see you next week.