Chameleon Cues 2: Son of Chameleon Cues

Chameleon Cue 5: Many of us once enjoyed Dr. Seuss's rhyming tales as a child. Now it's your turn to make up a story. Take your favorite Dr. Seuss story and change the title, thus providing you the inspiration for the theme of your book. For instance, instead of The Cat in the Hat, you could do The Spam in the Clam or The Mayor in the Chair.

Chameleon Cue 6: Pick three words at random and make them into a character for a story. For instance, you might choose traits like pretty, smelly, and slim, and write a story about Suzy Slim, the girl with the smelly sneakers. Or you might choose words, like cow, whistle, and plaid, and then write about Freida the plaid cow who learns to whistle.

Chameleon Cue 7: Write a run-on sentence story. In case you don't know, a run-on sentence story is one of those things where you try to keep on talking and talking and talking and still making sense in a way, you know, like, your punctuation or your linking words almost make it a normal sentence, but it just goes on forever like the time I went to Alabama and tried to find a man whose name was really named Cletus, because you know people are always saying that there are hicks named Cletus in Alabama and I wanted to see one, but of course I never met any and I was simply heartbroken not to find a nice Cletus to chat with, and I felt like it was a sort of false advertising, meant to lure innocent people to Alabama, and I wrote a letter to the President and told him he ought to do something about it. See how long you can make it go on without having to start a new sentence.

Chameleon Cue 8: Try a stream-of-consciousness story. Like my run-on sentence above, it simply follows the flow of your thoughts without pausing to try and make things make sense. Whatever you associate with what you just wrote, write it next. For instance, I might start out talking about a girl named Cindy who drinks Coke, and I would then say that she enjoys Yogi Bear cartoons, because the name Cindy reminds me of Yogi's girlfriend, Cindy Bear. Then I would have Cindy the Coke-drinker go to a quiz game at a local restaurant, because Cindy Bear reminds me of the time I got a trivia answer about that character right at a quiz game. Then my Cindy character would eat potato skins, because the place I played the trivia game at serves them and that's what I eat there. And that makes me think of Mr. Potato Head, so I would write about how someone offered to give her a Mr. Potato Head if she would give them a potato skin. And so on and so forth.

Chameleon Cue 9: Make up five nonsense words, and then write a story that uses them and in some way explains what they are. For instance, you might make up the words kamahama-ding-dong and manarkin and decide that Kamahama-Ding-Dong is a leprechaun holiday celebrated on the fourth of August, and manarkin is the drink they share on that day. (This is surely how many fantasy authors and writers like Lewis Carol operate. After all, what in Phawoozle is a jabberwocky and where is Xanth?)

Chameleon Cue 10: Find a friend or three (or four) and take turns adding one word at a time to a story (also known as a word-at-a-time story). For instance, I might say "The" and Sabrina might say "wiggle" and Michelle might say "worm" and Gretchen would add "calculated" and I would say "his" and Sabrina would say "weight" and Michelle might say "in" and Gretchen would finish that sentence with "kilograms." Thus I would've written on my paper "The wiggle worm calculated his weight in kilograms." You would continue on with that until someone ends the story or there is a world-wide disaster or the matter of a missing loofah that demands your attention. Whichever comes first.

Did you try the first set of Chameleon Cues? If not, go back and give it a go! Or if you've finished a Cue and want to share it with the world (or at least the other five people who look at this site regularly), click here and send it to me to post!