Creative challenge
Exercises to create. What you make stays yours, your name goes with it everywhere, and nobody judges: here, the gems are imperfect.
Click the card: it draws a random challenge from the novel, to write, draw, compose, film, translate, teach or pitch something else. Don’t fancy that one? Draw the next. All the challenges are also written out below, one by one.
The 37 creative challenges, one by one
Every challenge starts from the novel The Hammock and the Hummingbirds. Pick one, do it your way, even short, even imperfect, then share your creation in the gallery: it stays in your name.
Write
- Invent your comeback — Pick a scene from the novel and rewrite it your way. If someone tries to force a script on you that isn’t yours, answer back with humour and pull the other person into your world.
- Invent your scene — Is a scene missing? Write it, starting from a “what if…”.
- Write your ending — What if the story ended differently? The concert scene doesn’t exist in the novel: over to you to write it.
- Write the secret line — The little red carpet: the enigmatic line that drops hints about what’s going to happen in the next chapter. Pick your chapter.
- Find the title — This book is still looking for its title. Suggest yours.
- Slip in some quotes — Tell us a funny story and slip in your quotes, then share your nuggets to make our little hearts beat.
- Keep a notebook of comebacks — “You should keep a notebook of comebacks: absurd, elegant, offbeat, teasing-but-kind, deadpan. Apart from demigods, nobody’s perfect!” “Since I’ve got no memory left and no shame about anything, I carry it around with me to have a peek now and then, and I improvise.” (ch. 44)
Draw
- Illustrate a chapter — Pick a chapter you loved and illustrate it: image, photo, painting. Any format will do.
- Draw a character — The Viking, Coraline, Big Dog, La Linea, the parents. Or one you invent.
- Turn it into a comic — One scene, one page. The rows work particularly well.
- Draw the map — The Soumerland, the Nord Ultima, the Presqu’île du Sel, Croco Island. Over to you to place them.
- Design a tattoo — The hammock, the hummingbirds, a rune, an axe.
Compose
- Compose the music for a chapter — Pick a chapter you loved and set it to music. Any style, any instrument.
- Join the album — 47 chapters, 47 tracks. Every chapter welcomes several versions.
- Create an atmosphere — The wind of the Nord Ultima, the sea off the Presqu’île du Sel, the silence of the bunker, the hammock in the sun.
- Read a chapter aloud — Record it. The audiobook will be made with one voice or several.
- Rearrange it your way — Do a Jacob Collier: take inspiration from whatever inspires you, and rearrange it your way.
Film or act
- Pick your episode — The novel is already cut up: 47 chapters, 47 episodes. Each one stands on its own, with its setting, its characters and its punchline.
- Film a scene — Pick a scene you loved and film it. Phone, camera, whatever.
- Play “The Viking says…” — Pick a line and act it out, an accent, 2 minutes. The Viking is particularly good for impressions.
- Improvise out loud — Write lines from the book on scraps of paper, put them in a jar, shake, pull one out and act it. It’s better with several of you.
- Make a short film — Pick a chapter, a scene, a row. The whole book is already written in dialogue.
- Put it on stage — Puppets, a reading for 2 voices, a stage adaptation. The “Sunday Is Showtime!” set is played by 3.
Translate
- Translate into your language — A quote, a scene, a chapter. Pick your favourite — just one, not the whole book.
- Translate into Viking — If you’re a native Viking, the author is counting on you. The Viking says it’ll never work: don’t listen to him.
- Translate the invented words — Drak-car, Rune Reader, tchoufa, the Scorched Lands sickness… How would you say them where you live?
Teach
- Invent a word — In the style of the invented words: a word, its definition, how it’s used.
- The map of your life — Name the places of your daily life like kingdoms. “The Kingdom of Undone Homework.”
- The family saga — Tell your family’s story like an epic. One epic nickname per person. Being neutral is forbidden.
- The flip side — Pick a scene and rewrite it the other way round.
- The alternative ending — What if the story ended differently?
- The secret sentence — The enigmatic line that announces the next chapter.
- Say no — Write a refusal, without justifying yourself. The most useful of them all, and the theme of the book.
Pitch something else
- A collaborative project — Got an idea that needs several people? Pitch it: the people you’re looking for are looking for you too.
- An adaptation — Theatre, puppets, podcast, comic, story card game, interactive e-book.
- A curiosity object — The Viking loves tinkering, what about you? A musical lamp, a little box, a game.
- Something else again — Something nobody has thought of, not even the author.