Ross examines the power of the unexpected. We meet the visionaries whose fractured sentences pushed the written word in new directions and we embrace chaos by using random words to revolutionise our writing.

The Exercise:

1. In your notebook write out “that night the moon was a [BLANK] [BLANK]”
2. You’re going to describe the moon by filling in those blanks
3. Pick a random book
4. Open a random page and stick your finger on a word - that word fills in your first blank
5. Repeat stage 4 - the second word fills in your second blank
6. Keep repeating stages 4 and 5 until you find words that feel like they’ve never sat next to each other before - the whole point is to generate a surprising effect
7. Use the sentence you’re left with as the starting point for a story or a poem
8. You can also scrap the moon and use any word you fancy - this is a powerful technique for any time you need unusual descriptive words