My writers group over on DDW’s Discourse served up a Random Nouns Writers’ Prompt entitled The Jar of Nouns.
The initial low-tech version requires you “cut up a sheet of paper in several two by three inches pieces. On one side write a noun (some can be proper), just make them random, and place them in the jar. For an on-the-fly writing prompt, pull five nouns from the jar, and write for fifteen minutes using all five nouns.”
I didn’t have time to mess with jars, so I pulled nouns using some word randomisers online. One of them gave me a default random word on opening which happened to be MY OWN NAME (cue spooky music).
So I told it to deal me five and it gave me:
- Rest,
- Injury,
- Journey,
- Pets,
- Politics
I used those in sequence for the story Beyond the Borders which will find its way into a future WIP novel.
The next generator gave me:
- Citizen
- Ideal
- Monastery
- Paw
- Security
Which I aim to use one of those quiet days when I need to blitz some short fiction unrelated to any ongoing projects.
The last generator give me:
- preparation
- adze
- power
- song
- republic
This is now The Song of the King’s Bridge, an offshoot of my series Book Three, City of Vipers.
You can give these a go yourself:
- Random Noun Generator
- Random Word Generator
- Desi Quintans Random Noun Generator
Here’s a list from AGT:
orantugang
love
sanitser
motorcycle
orange
Kev: I might struggle getting those into my fantasy genre.