So when I’m really stuck on things to write, and I’m actually really trying to write as opposed to pretending to intend to write I’ll knock out some Last to the First. The idea is simple, start writing names, the first letter of the last name becomes the first letter of the first name for the next name in the list. Just carry on until your brain is like, “hey dude, I can do some writing now!”
Alice Bumblesnatch
Beatrice Netting
Nigel Westerhouse
William Sandbrow
Sylia Main
Mario No
Natalie Snow
Scorpion Blaster
Bernard Topplecower
Titania Il’Fara
Illiana Nagumi
Norman Pilepounder
Prattle Pioner
Patricia Montigue
Mitsu Walker
Wendigo Moonbeam
Marshal jr. Alberbach
Ali Liao
etc…
Now, what often happens for me is I’ll like some of the names and immediately have an image appear in my head for a character whose fit to do something interesting, or not interesting at all and then I’ll flesh them out a bit and take them for a walk in a tiny bit of flash fiction and see what they do.
Sylia Main is a freelance journalist whose always getting herself into trouble in a noir-style world of powerful villains and anti-heroes. She has a small yet nice apartment in the Camden, she has a rabbit and two cactus plants which combined are more or less her only family and are often her muses for new stories.
Sylia finds herself on a trail of a rogue meat selling company that’s been dumping unfit meat onto the wholesale market by using direct sales. She’s tracked the gang behind the operation to a rundown warehouse, after scouting the place out she thinks there’s nobody inside so she breaks in and starts looking for evidence of the crime.
Throughout the warehouse she takes photos of illegally stored meat and other food stuffs, covered in flies and maggots, she has to cover her face at times to avoid some of the smell. She finds an office in the back with a laptop, unable to get into it she decides to steal the whole laptop and leaves.
Little does she know that hidden security cameras have captured her and she has a laptop that has evidence of a far greater crime on it that the gang will do anything to get back…