How to Write a Stream-of-Consciousness About Encountering Conflict

One way to cultivate your emotional and poetic mind, and to improve your writing skills in general, is to write stream-of-consciousness. This is unstructured, unedited writing that reflects your observations or feelings about a certain person, event, or item. Stream-of-consciousness is a good way to write poetry or journals, and can end with a piece of writing that can be as much graphic as verbal.

Choose a Conflict

This could be a person, an event, a dream, an emotion, or an activity. Remember that conflicts can be internal and emotional, as well as external and physical.

Choose a Character

This characters thoughts will form the basis of the stream-of-consciousness you are about to write. Think about there relationship to the conflict. How do they encounter it? Do they experience it first hand or do they witness it happening?

Write! Once you’re ready, just write. You don’t have to stick to any particular format.

  • Write backwards, upside down, or in a shape. You could do a spiral starting from the center of the page, or a starburst of phrases, or any other shape that seems to work.
  • Forget grammar. You don’t need to capitalize, punctuate, or even spell correctly. If necessary, make up a word to suit your needs.
  • Ignore sentence structure. You could do an entire page of adjectives, verbs, or nouns related to your topic. Or you could do short phrases, or whatever else comes to mind.
  • Use different colors of pen or pencil. You could change colors every letter, or every word, or in a way that makes the overall work look pleasing. This can be done at anytime.
  • Keep writing until you run out of words.