17th January “Yesterday’s Eyes”

This week’s entry comes directly from a “title challenge” I set a team of students last week, and ended up entering the spirit of the task and joining in myself. Based around generating certain keywords, the challenge was to create lists and then try combining words from the different columns to see if any ‘good title ideas’ were thrown up (the students played a blinder, there were some absolute crackers). You then try to write a song or lyric starting with the title. It works like this:

Columns are separated into colours, places, times, names, and numbers, with an added ‘random noun’ column at the end. you then have 5 minutes to fill the columns and combine them in the hope you will come up with anything resembling a half decent title or idea, with a further couple of minutes briefly outlining a plot based on what that title could be about.

Out of my list I was drawn to Yesterday’s Eyes. I began to see it as a narrative based around a character serving a lengthy sentence her majesty’s pleasure for an unspecified crime. The idea centered around this character having plenty of time to reflect on his actions and ultimately regretting his choices, but not being able to rectify the past regardless of the amount of time spent reflecting on the events.

So here is week three. Title and lyrics first, music second. Not my usual approach, making up an idea purely out of thin air certainly had it’s challenges, but an enjoyable diversion. I stored a few more titles from this game that I’ll probably attack at some point throughout the year.