The Cube – Part 1

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Yesterday I wrote about The Cube – A Writing Exercise. Today I will do the first of the six parts of this exercise. I chose a leaf yesterday, and I will work with that leaf through all the questions. The first question was:

What is the item making you to think about? 

The leaf makes me think about something floating at a river. I can see a clear picture of a child in China. It is a dark and very late evening, the candles are burning, and that child just made a boat out of a leaf. The child released the leaf at the river. It is very fragile. That  pictures makes me think of freedom.

I think about softness. The child, the freedom and the candles are all soft things for me. And warm. But I´m also thinking about the colors of the autumn; red, green, orange and brown. I can hear the scraping sound of a leaf being blown over a street a cold and windy night. There is loneliness sadness, still the softness but also death. The leaf is has fallen off its tree and is now slowly dying, reminding us of the way we all are going.

Discussion: What are your stories usually about? Are you into something special, as horror, fantasy or memoirs? What kind of stories are you not into? Why not? What makes you think of certain topics and not other? How is it with your characters – in what way do they usually think and act? Do they all think the same or do you have a broad band of very different characters? In what whey do you characters not work or act, and why not? In what way could this exercise help you to think in ways you usually do not think?