Using Found Materials

Techniques for Writing Workshops

Jun 23, 2008

Brochure adverts can make good starting points., Elaine Walker

Two ideas for group workshop exercises using found materials, just to flex the writing muscles or as starting points for new work.

Writing exercises make a pro-active opening to a workshop, generating material and ideas for discussion. Found materials provide a strong stimulus and are, by their very nature, readily available and easy to obtain.

Articles, Adverts and Features

Everyone in the group brings several printed articles, adverts or features.

They can be chosen at random, or even deliberately as varied as possible. However, some loose themes can give a useful initial focus.

Try a collection of adverts from a gardening magazine, articles on climate change from various sources or features from women’s magazines.

Exercise 1

Choose a piece from the gathered material and read it through, then read it again and highlight or underline any phrases that are particularly interesting.

Drawing primarily on the found material, write a poem on the same subject including at least three of the underlined phrases exactly as they appear in the original.

Variation i

The workshop leader distributes the material or everyone chooses a piece that appeals to them but then passes it on to someone else.

Variation ii

The material could be made up entirely of images.

In this case, the second phase would be to consider the image a second time and write down anything that is particularly interesting as a short phrase (e.g. long yellow dress, tanned skin, dog running along the beach) and include three of these phrases in the poem.

Developing the Exercise

Each writer has two unrelated pieces of starting material but has to draw them together in the poem.

Each writer completes one poem and then passes it on to someone else who has to rework their own piece to include it.

The writers use the material to write the opening or middle section of a story. This can be a lot of fun because they are under no pressure to know what will happen next or what has come before.

Adding a genre requirement (e.g. romance, sci-fi) a setting (e.g. a café, a space-station) or a key moment (e.g. the hero falls in love, the truth is revealed, the cliff collapses), can really make this a challenge.

Exercise 2

Each writer chooses an image from the gathered material and uses it to write a list of ten helpful hints for the activity chosen.

The images could be chosen to deliberately make the subject matter very familiar (e.g. ten helpful hints for bathing a baby, cooking a meal or cleaning a house) or set out to stretch the imagination (e.g. ten helpful hints for catching a giraffe, flying an aeroplane or gathering clouds).

Pass the list along to the next person and use it to write a poem, using at least six of the tips.

Variation i

The poem has to be about love, world peace or something else quite unrelated to the original list.

Variation ii

Instead of a poem, the writers have to include the list in a fictional scenario (e.g. a man comes home and finds that his wife has sold the house; three city children discover a cowboy hiding in their shed; a woman finds a suitcase full of money in her attic).

The choice of images and variations can be used to adapt the exercise for the level of the group so that it is straightforward or very demanding.

Footnote

Whenever people are asked to bring something to a session, it’s a sure thing that at least half of them will forget.

Even in a peer-led workshop, whoever devised the session should always have enough material to supply the whole group.

The copyright of the article Using Found Materials in Writing Techniques is owned by Elaine Walker. Permission to republish Using Found Materials in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.