With social media fragmenting, I’m bringing back my old “You Tell Me” Wednesday discussions to try to get good old fashioned blog conversations going. If you’re reading in a feed reader or via email, please click through to the post to leave a public comment and join the discussion!
When you need to come up with ideas for your writing, how do you brainstorm?
I’m a huge believer in writing novels on a laptop, but when it comes to brainstorming, I almost exclusively write longhand. I have separate journals for all my projects, and when an idea springs to life, that’s where it goes.
What about you?
Need help with your book? I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and coaching!
For my best advice, check out my online classes, my guide to writing a novel, and my guide to publishing a book.
And if you like this post: subscribe to my newsletter!
Art: In Gedanken versunken by Paul Kutscha
For brainstorming and idea-jotting, I use a lot of TXT files. Something about the fast and unformatted nature of Notepad helps me just spin out lists of whatever I’m thinking without worrying about it being “real.”
I brainstorm by hand also, but I use my artist brain more than my writer brain when I do it. I usually use a blank page in a cheap sketch book (sketch books are like journals around here–way more than I can use and yet I still buy more…) and bubble map. The (presumed) main character goes in the middle and gets a handsome oval drawn around their name, assuming that they have one, and some traits and problems I’m thinking about for them. Then I add in friends and their roles, antagonists (including natural disasters or political upheaval, for example). I draw lines between bubbles and write on the lines or inside the bubbles, figuring out how everything and everyone connects and interconnects. This process often leads me to come up with ideas on the fly that would have never occurred to me if I was just thinking about it or writing a traditional outline. One of the nice things about bubble mapping is that I can draw an X through an element that isn’t working, and then later re-circle it if I decide it actually does belong. It also gives me visual clues about overlap. For example, in real life there’s no issue with having ten nerdie friends all of who are emotionally close and volunteer at the library. But in a book–max of two, and those two better have different roles to play as friends and in the plot.
I have a Google Doc for every one of my projects titled “Brainstorm.” They are glorious screeds of stream-of-consciousness word vomit that serve as depositories for things I think of faster than I’m able to flesh out coherently. The mobile and cloud capabilities of it are great for ideas that pop into my head at inopportune times as well. Finally cracked my climax but I’m in line at the grocery store? Just whip out the phone and tap a note or two into “Brainstorm,” and I’m set for the next time I’m able to sit down and write.
I try to let my subconsciousness do the work…I’ll tell myself “I need to think about Problem A” or Project B or whatever, and then I’ll just go do something else. Preferably something that feeds my creativity, like going on a walk in a beautiful place or listening to a new band. Usually a solution will come to me, and I’ll jot it down in a planning notebook. If nothing good comes to me after several days, then I’ll do a good old fashioned freewrite or bullet journal list, but usually leaving it alone for several days provides me with the answer I need.
I don’t. I also leave it to my subconscious. Once in a while jot down an issue in my (sporadic) journal.
Early in the process of this novel (too many years ago), I tried to write a plot outline and it turned into a kind of mental map of characters, psyche, etc. This showed me that, yes, I had an actual thing to work on. But mainly I think it showed me that I can’t work in an analytical way.
My brainstormed ideas end up in Word files associated with the project: short story files and novels. I recently got an idea for a crime short story while reading an article about an old movie and immediately opened a new file and began typing notes. However, most of my brainstorms come while away from my computer, so I’m often hand-scribbling notes around the house or elsewhere. Some of my best brainstorms come while driving. For that, I dictate ideas into a digital recorder I keep in my car (hopefully not running into anyone at the same time).
I use scraps of paper to jot down the half-formed ideas that pass as brainstorming for me. I think this is a holdover from high school, when I used 3×5 notecards to organize my thoughts for term papers.