I have The People's Friend themselves to thank for the inspiration for my latest story
When In Rome in the June 4th edition. I'm still
going to claim the payment though. After all, I did all the hard
work.
I attended their workshop
in York last October and one of the exercises involved the use of
story cubes. For those of you who don't know what these are – they
consist of a set of dice which have symbols on each face. The images
include a magnet, a keyhole, a bee, a set of scales etc and, with 9 dice,
have a total of 54 little pictures. I threw one die and it came up
with a depiction of a water fountain. I scribbled down a few ideas
and came up with a scenario that I worked on back home. The final
story takes place in Rome and features a famous fountain which was
also the backdrop for a 1960s film.
I've had a set of these
cubes for a while so I was familiar with the concept. You can throw
just one or a number of them and then try to fashion a story from the
images that finish face up. They can also be used to amuse children
either at home or while travelling. You can get them from Amazon and
they only cost a few pounds.
I also have a story
coming up in the June 18th edition and there are about
another ten in the pipeline so it's all going pretty well so far.
