A Writing Exercise

My boy came up with a delightful little writing exercise with which we had quite a lot of fun yesterday.  It would be particularly useful for genre fiction writers, say those interested in science fiction, fantasy, or superheroes, but it could also be used just to get the creative juices flowing.

1. Come up with the most useless power you can imagine.  Here are some of the examples we came up with: detect all guacamole within ten feet [and you can't look for it why?];  compel all hippos within a twenty-foot radius to do the Macarena [they could still attack, after they're done dancing]; transform actual goldfish into a cracker [soggy cracker]; ability to transform everything you touch into rats [that could then bite you]; telekinesis on small items usable by touch only [and you can't pick it up because ..?]; power to emit a mooing sound whenever you rub your hands together [say what?]; ability to tickle your own toes [scientists have done studies that show tickling is a social behavior, and you can only tickle someone else]; the ability to see halfway through a wall [so what about the other half?];  gift of telepathy, only useful on arachnids [you'd learn what from the mind of a spider?]; the ability to put food in your mouth without opening it [and that's so much easier than actually opening your mouth?]; ability to teleport one inch [really?]; ability to make chickens explode into glitter.  You get the idea.  We spent close to an hour coming up with these ideas, laughing the whole time.

2 Create a scenario in which this useless power is actually useful.  Say you are blind and have an enemy whose weakness is guacamole.  Then it may be useful to detect it.  Or let's pretend you need to pass through a field of killer hippos in order to steal a diamond.  If you can get them to dance the entire Macarena, you'd be able to slip through that field and get to the jewels without dying.  Imagine you are starving, and all you have on hand are goldfish.  You can take them out of the water and turn them into goldfish crackers.  Perhaps you have a lot of snakes and can't afford food for them.  Turning items into rats could really come in handy.  And so on.

3.  Write the story.  Expand on your exercise.  It could end up just being a writing exercise, but then again, you may be able to spin this into a children's story, short story, novel, etc.  Have fun!