Jessica Harper Uncanceled

Oblique Strategies were invented by the musician Brian Eno and multi-media artist Peter Schmidt in 1975 and they take the form of a deck of 7x9cm printed cards in a black box.

Each card offers a challenging constraint intended to help artists (particularly musicians) break creative blocks by encouraging lateral thinking. I have listed them all at the end of this post, or you can have this website choose you a random one here and for those with money to spare you can even buy them from Mr Eno’s shop.

I love them. They’re great for writers. Here’s why.

Let’s say you were entering a writing competition in which you had free rein: you could write about anything you wanted. Urk. That can be quite difficult. You might find yourself stuck, not knowing which way to walk across the limitless desert.

But if the competition stipulated that the story had to be about a girl who is lost in a jungle with her father when they stumble across a crashed plane – which has a locked trunk in the hold – well, ideas begin springing to mind immediately.

So, constriction is good, and that’s where the cards come in. Because if you use them the way I use them, you force yourself to come up with a solution to the deadlock by using the card you’ve (randomly) selected.

Let’s do a quick, live test on a plot impasse I’m having with my novel, Jessica Harper and the Culture War Murders.

This morning, as I sat at 7am with my second coffee, I found myself staring at the plot plan and wondering for the umpteenth time how to bring a scarf that the Jessica character (ie me) wears into the climax of the story in a clever way. The scarf has been a comic device throughout so I need to tie it up (no pun intended) at the end.

I will now consult the Oblique Strategies.

I’ve just asked ChatGPT to pick me a random number, 1-135 and it has said 74. Which from the list below is “Mechanize something idiosyncratic”.

How could that relate to my story?

The scarf is an “infinity scarf” which everyone hates (except me) because of its bright color. It’s a running joke in the book and it’s certainly idiosyncratic. But how can you mechanize a scarf?

……………… (thinks about it for a minute or two) ………………….

The scarf would be kind of mechanized if it got caught up in some machinery, of course. And the killer owns a car so how about the scarf gets trapped in the wheels or engine or steering wheel and disables the automobile at a crucial moment, thus thwarting the perp’s evil plans?

The scarf would get destroyed but finally finds dignity and meaning in death. The Jess character mourns it. Could be a funny scene.

I probably won’t go with that for the final book because now I’ve spoilt it for anyone intending to read it and there are undoubtedly better ideas but I hope you can see the potential.

Of course, you can come up with your own list of Oblique Strategies or Google those of other people who have done just that.

Here’s the full list and here’s also wishing you a creative and happy new year.

1. Abandon normal instruments
2. Accept advice
3. Accretion
4. A line has two sides
5. Allow an easement (an easement is the abandonment of a stricture)
6. Are there sections? Consider transitions
7. Ask people to work against their better judgment
8. Ask your body
9. Assemble some of the instruments in a group and treat the group
10. Balance the consistency principle with the inconsistency principle
11. Be dirty
12. Breathe more deeply
13. Bridges -build -burn
14. Cascades
15. Change instrument roles
16. Change nothing and continue with immaculate consistency
17. Children’s voices -speaking -singing
18. Cluster analysis
19. Consider different fading systems
20. Consult other sources -promising -unpromising
21. Convert a melodic element into a rhythmic element
22. Courage!
23. Cut a vital connection
24. Decorate, decorate
25. Define an area as ‘safe’ and use it as an anchor
26. Destroy -nothing -the most important thing
27. Discard an axiom
28. Disconnect from desire
29. Discover the recipes you are using and abandon them
30. Distorting time
31. Do nothing for as long as possible
32. Don’t be afraid of things because they’re easy to do
33. Don’t be frightened of cliches
34. Don’t be frightened to display your talents
35. Don’t break the silence
36. Don’t stress one thing more than another
37. Do something boring
38. Do the washing up
39. Do the words need changing?
40. Do we need holes?
41. Emphasize differences
42. Emphasize repetitions
43. Emphasize the flaws
44. Faced with a choice, do both (given by Dieter Roth)
45. Feedback recordings into an acoustic situation
46. Fill every beat with something
47. Get your neck massaged
48. Ghost echoes
49. Give the game away
50. Give way to your worst impulse
51. Go slowly all the way round the outside
52. Honor thy error as a hidden intention
53. How would you have done it?
54. Humanize something free of error
55. Imagine the music as a moving chain or caterpillar
56. Imagine the music as a set of disconnected events
57. Infinitesimal gradations
58. Intentions -credibility of -nobility of -humility of
59. Into the impossible
60. Is it finished?
61. Is there something missing?
62. Is the tuning appropriate?
63. Just carry on
64. Left channel, right channel, center channel
65. Listen in total darkness, or in a very large room, very quietly
66. Listen to the quiet voice
67. Look at a very small object; look at its center
68. Look at the order in which you do things
69. Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them
70. Lowest common denominator check -single beat -single note -single riff
71. Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame
72. Make an exhaustive list of everything you might do and do the last thing on the list
73. Make a sudden, destructive, unpredictable action; incorporate
74. Mechanize something idiosyncratic
75. Mute and continue
76. Only one element of each kind
77. (Organic) machinery
78. Overtly resist change
79. Put in earplugs
80. Remember those quiet evenings
81. Remove ambiguities and convert to specifics
82. Remove specifics and convert to ambiguities
83. Repetition is a form of change
84. Reverse
85. Short circuit
86. Improve his virility shovels them straight into his lap)
87. Shut the door and listen from outside
88. Simple subtraction
89. Spectrum analysis
90. Take a break
91. Take away the elements in order of apparent non-importance
92. Tape your mouth (given by Ritva Saarikko)
93. The inconsistency principle
94. The tape is now the music
95. Think of the radio
96. Tidy up
97. Trust in the you of now
98. Turn it upside down
99. Twist the spine
100. Use an old idea
101. Use an unacceptable color
102. Use fewer notes
103. Use filters
104. Use “unqualified” people
105. Water
106. What are you really thinking about just now? Incorporate
107. What is the reality of the situation?
108. What mistakes did you make last time?
109. What would your closest friend do?
110. What wouldn’t you do?
111. Work at a different speed
112. You are an engineer
113. You can only make one dot at a time
114. You don’t have to be ashamed of using your own ideas
115. [blank white card]