Ray Bradbury would keep lists of nouns. When he needed ideas, he would scan his list.
The verb he used to refer to creating his lists was “conjure.” He conjured his nouns.
What nouns could go on a list?
- robot
- savannah
- Winnipeg
- marsh
- elephant
- Thursday
- princess
- envelope
- hospital
- treasure
- sandwich
- calendar
- building
- distance
- medicine
- umbrella
- sentence
- champion
- November
- fragment
- sunrise
- soccer
Chuttersnap from Unsplash
How could you combine them in different ways?
- Thursday’s Elephant Princess
- The Envelope
- The Hospital Treasure
- The Calendar Sandwich
- Robot of the Marsh
- The Umbrella Building
by David Zhou from Unsplash
What if you used different combinations?
Putting the words together differently would give you a different idea for a story, wouldn’t it?
“The Umbrella Building” might be about a building where umbrellas are made or one shaped like an umbrella or one where lots of people have left their umbrellas.
“The Umbrella Princess,” on the other hand, would suggest wealth and exclusivity and focus on a person rather than a place.
- Thursday’s Savannah
- Winnipeg in an Envelope
- Soccer Sunrise
- November Hospital