rowyn

I'll be glad when I'm done with this chapter. I can see how this is a useful technique, but gosh, it's booooooring.

List story ideas that come from the last list of characteristics
* Dianna meets someone at a club that she decides she actually likes, and has to figure out how to get around the fact that everything she said about herself to this person was a lie.
* A friend tries to convince Dianna that she should try out for an amateur production of a musical.
* Dianna finds out that some of the vampire-wannabes at the local Goth club are vampires.
* Dianna gets offered a job dancing at a strip club.

Generate a setting and take it three or four levels deep, to see what you find

Grandmother Kildare's house:
two stories plus a basement, old well-made furniture, old well-made everything, stone block walls, small despite being two stories, cluttered with a lifetime of knickknacks, but scrupulously tidy, kitchen smells like cinnamon, always warm, fires in every hearth from fall to spring, cozy, workshop/study in basement where Kildare's uncle does his thing -- workshop is masculine while rest of house is masculine, sewing room, old delicate furniture in the tiny parlor, family room where the beat-up comfy sofa and the patched armchair with a footrest that his uncle loves and won't let her throw out sits, Kildare's room on second floor, still just the way he left it only neater

next level

The workshop:
Tinkerer's shop, open shelves lining walls, little glass canisters like the kind you see in candy shops for holding fiddly little bits, mundane tools -- hammers, wrenches, socket wrenches, saws, jeweler's tools. Everything in its place but the logic to it only evident to the uncle. Gangly sort of stool/chair on wheels with pouches and bags hanging off it. Hooks in the ceiling to hang other stuff from. High ceiling. Arcane tools -- enchanted gyroscopes, cut crystal analysis gizmo, chalk composite layerer device, mechanical rune drafter. Complicated, unidentifiable mechanical doohickeys of metal armature and lenses.

next level

Fiddly little bits:
Nuts, screws, bolts, lenses, rune stones, chalk powders, sand paper, nails, crystals, polishes, grit, oils, unguents, glue, solvents, paints, cotton balls, rags.

OK, I think that's enough of that one. It's surprisingly hard to come up with gizmos and stuff out of my imagination, without having a room or something to draw from. I'm not that good at visualizing things. Of course, I suppose that's exercising is for -- to make me better at it. :)