Does Anyone Here Use Generators?

Rhoda Nightingale said:

Ah--see, when I go there, I almost always have a first letter in mind already, or a . . . color. I'm a synesthete, so words and letters all have color to me. So when I wind up on a site like that, I'm already thinking, "Okay, I need an orange name, something in Gaelic. Whaddya got for me?" And I narrow it down from there.

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Do you find it jarring when words and letters have colors that don't match the ones your mind gives them?

Sorry.

Silver-Midnight said:

I just recently found this Writing Challenge Generator:

Link: http://www.seventhsanctum.com/generate.php?Genname=writechallenge

I just kind of wanted a second opinion on it. Do you think this is a reliable generator, or should I only stick to writing prompts?

Thanks

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As prompts..perhaps they could be useful

But I find my own weird mind is better

If you use them as a spring board, fine. If you use them as template (an I've seen people who do) not so fine.

Just make sure that spring board flings you far from the source (you make it yours)

I love the stuff on Seventh Sanctum, if just for the entertainment value!

Though my favorite on there is the name generator. I'll generate maybe fifty or so names at a time and look through them to see if I like the feel of any. I'm not overly familiar with names outside of where I live, so it's a really useful tool for me.

On rarer occasions I'll use the character generators. Mostly for a medieval setting, just to give me a jump on some new idea I haven't previously tried.

I ransacked Seventh Sanctum and a couple of other generators for things like names, epithets, nicknames, and professional or aristocratic titles for a fantasy world. I was able to find output that matched the style I wanted, and I just pulled tons of likely options wholesale and saved them into a file. Now, whenever I need a new name or reference for something, I go into that file and either find something that fits or alter something to fit whatever I need.

I chose what to save for my future use based on how I reacted to whatever popped up on the screen. For instance, on the tavern name generator, if a generated name had a good flow, sounded plausible in the setting I had in mind, and prompted a vision in my head of what the place would be like, I saved the name. So far, I've only used a few of the hundreds of things I pulled, and only a few of those have been used as-is.

I did that because I have issues with such details. I believe they are very important for carrying through the style and mood of a story, but I also think it's a waste of time to obsess over them. If I make up something myself, I will obsess over it and have a real hard time finalizing it. It's a mental thing I have. Having the generator suggest stuff helps me decide.

Silver-Midnight said:

What do you mean by template? I understand spring board, but what's the difference.

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Okay the difference I mean here is this. (This entire post IMO, and no, not a bash at outlining, which is also your own mind brewing the possibilities)

For instance I just generated this at that link:

This is a buddy story. The story is about a dungeon delver. It takes place in a city-state on a volcanic world of forbidden magic. The story begins with a journey, climaxes with the taking of a test, and ends with a natural disaster.


If you use it as a template, that's the story you'll tell. It won't change, and (unless you're very good) will possibly come across as cardboard. However, if you springboard off the idea - Ooh volcanic world! What if he doesn't delve dungeons, but ... and then he....and he averts the natural disaster at the end! What if he's actually the bad guy, and the 'buddy' doesn't realise it's not a buddy story after all when the MC flings him into the volcano! You add your own twists and whatnot, then you make it yours.

The template...well let's just say I've read a few that were either obviously 'My D&D campaign, exactly, never mind if those characters would do that or the world doesn't work that way, dammit, he rolled a crit!' or where the author admitted they'd used something like this and stuck to it religiously. And it showed.

While you can take any plot line and write it well, for me, it only really comes alive when it becomes yours. Because it's your input, your writing and ideas that make it what it is. The magic ingredient if you will (again, this includes people who outline, because they are brainstorming using their own ideas to twist the prompt).

Generators make a great prompt. But the story should be yours.

ETA: Re names, they're quite handy too, but again even better if you twist the result to make it fit what you want.

I'm kind of picky about names and such. I like them to have some sort of symbolic meaning or intertextual allusion. I have to stop myself every now and then and go, "Come on, Lucy, stop being so damn literal-minded. It's okay sometimes just to call a character "John".

For me, those little 5-6 statement generators generally produce a story that's about 1500 words long. I do use them for a change, when I feel like I'm getting in a rut and writing the same thing all the time, because they force me into thinking about a plotline that's different.

How did I miss this thread? I must have been doing something else in February.

Here's some generators, they could be useful for prose/story writing, even though they're made for songwriting.
http://muse.fawm.org/plotspline
Okay, the struxxure tool might not be useful.

Man, I feel so old and un-hip. I had no idea that things like generators even existed!