Be Your Own Editor

I came across the fairly wacky website SeventhSanctum.com recently and can’t help sharing. It’s mostly a collection of “generators,” described by the site as “tools for writers, gamers, and artists; randomly assembling names, concepts, and more for when you need inspiration, or just a bit of amusement.” If you’re searching for your next idea (big or small), you just might find it there. Or something that leads you to it.

Seventh Sanctum focuses largely on fantasy, sci fi, adventure, etc., so it might prove particularly useful for writers who work in those genres, but I encourage everyone to play around and have a little fun with it. They also feature a “Romance Story Generator,” as well as several generators for non-genre-specific stories and characters. (Look in the “Writing” category for these tools.)

What do these generators do, you ask? I’ll tell you by way of a few examples, and then you can play with them yourselves. (The site also offers contests and other features, but the generators are quick and fun.)

• The What-if-inator: “Generates scrambled histories for writing and gaming inspiration.” I received the results: “. . . Roger Bacon was directly responsible for the invention of soft drinks?” and “. . . Benedict Arnold was a legendary hero?”
• The Romance Story Generator. My results: “A linguist who loves children falls passionately in love with an indecisive movie reviewer—all thanks to a joke,” and “A starship security officer who is prone to odd statements moves in with a cynical cartographer. What starts as loathing becomes true love—all thanks to research being done.”
• The Writing Challenge Generator, in which you can choose the number of elements (one to five) that must be included. My results: “The story is set during a thunderstorm. During the story, a kidnapping occurs. The story must have a zebra involved in the middle. The story must involve a sceptre in it.” On a second try: “The story is set in a sunken ship. During the story, a kidnapping occurs. The story must have a bull at the end. During the story, a character is involved in a legal dispute.”

Of course, you’re not likely to embark upon a new story about a bull who lives in a sunken ship within which court proceedings are going on. But perhaps one word or phrase in one of these results will give rise to a story idea or provide a solution to a plot or character issue you’ve been struggling with. A cartographer—that’s the perfect profession for Character X!

If nothing else, Seventh Sanctum provides a website on which you can procrastinate and fish for ideas simultaneously. What could be better?

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 12:19 pm and is filed under Tools & Resources, Web & Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.