Award Goodness

So my friend Rena, aka the Liz with the Dragons, has nominated me for an award. Awards are fun, and I always enjoy talking about myself, so here we go!

The rules:

• paste the award badge to your blog, 
• give us 11 random facts about yourself, 
• answer the 11 questions, 
• and choose your nominees

 Since I am not sure I can think of random facts about myself everyone wants to know, we're skipping right to the questions, m'kay? M'kay.

a.        What naive misconception did you have about writing books when you started

That your "process" was a static thing. Once you found your magical process at the end of a rainbow, that was it. Just, lather rinse repeat for every single book, forever and ever.

This is so not the case. I always try new things, partially because I am always trying to find a better way to do something, and also because the same thing doesn't work for each book. Some ideas I spend a lot of time working on the character, while the next book I might not have to work hard at all. 

This isn't to say that I don't spend equal time working on character, plot, and setting, just that some things come easier than others, but what things are easy and what is hard changes with each book.  
 

b.      What is your favorite part of writing? 

That warm, bubbly feeling in the pit of your stomach when you're writing and the rest of the world disappears. Your fingertips are flying across the keyboard and the words come easy.

I also really love brainstorming new ideas.

 

c.       What is the one thing you would change about publishing and why?

Wow, what a can of worms! Most of the business practices of publishing are there because they need to be, I think (please lay down your pitchforks). But there's a lot of things that could be done far more efficiently, and I think the new computer tracking systems make it hard to build a career. 

 

d.      Do you have an inspiration list? Can you give us a sample? 

I use music and pictures to inspire me, especially during the brainstorming stage of a project.

Pinterest is excellent for the picture aspect. Here are my boards. All of them are for a book idea. Some of those ideas are really far developed (Deja Vu and Sanctuary for example), but other ideas have been really slippery, so I actually used Pinterest in attempts to brainstorm (What the Water Gave Me for example). 

As for the music aspect, that's why Job invented iTunes. I make playlists for each book idea, and I have a separate playlist called The Idea Mine that's nothing but songs I find inspiring. A few of those songs are:

"A Question of Heaven" by Iced Earth

"Snuff" by Slipknot

"What the Water Gave Me" by Florence and the Machine (if you couldn't already tell from Pinterest) ;)

"Talons" by Bloc Party

and "Daisy" by Brand New

Tangent: there is an excellent Whedonverse music video to Daisy...

 

e.       If you were a super villain, what would be your fatal flaw? 

Hubris, for that is everyone's fatal flaw.

Other than that, it would be over thinking everything. I would try to run a Xanatos Gambit, over think all the possibilities, and never get anything done. I would be the less effective supervillain ever.

f.       If you were a super hero, what would be your super power? 

I would be the superhero that pulls all the other superheros together. When the chips are down and all hope seems lost, I would be the plucky sidekick that gives a rousing speech about friendship or courage or nachos that kicks the Moody Superhero off his/her butt and saves the day.

If I was short inspiration that day, I would just crib Aragorn's speech. He wouldn't mind, I'm sure.

 

g.      If you could go on a trip to a tropical island but you didn’t get to pack anything before you left, would you go?

Yes.

If you asked the same question about the Arctic Tundra the answer would be no. I figure, a tropical island, I could just buy whatever I needed there. Arctic Tundra, not so much.

Now for the nominees:

Joe Selby
Liz Davis
Charity Bradford (who also has a book coming out soon, that you should read because it's AMAZING)

...and anyone else that wants to answer these questions. Let us know in the comments section if you're game, so we can visit and see!

Nominees, because Rena asks awesome questions, I am going to ask that you answer the same ones. :D

Question: Should You Rewrite Every Trunk Novel?

My friend Joe and I were talking about rewriting old trunk novels. He's in the middle of redoing several books he's already finished, and me...well, you know me. I've done several rewrites with various results.

It got me thinking. There's trunk novels I've written that I still love, despite how broken they are. Every book really does teach you something, and if I didn't love something about it, I wouldn't have written it in the first place. I look back on them fondly, but realize that no amount of revision would save those books. If I ever wanted to unearth the premises and characters, I would have to start from scratch.

But should you?

Is it really necessary to rewrite every good idea you've ever had? A certain amount of reusing old ideas is going to happen no matter what, so parts of those books will live on. But maybe at the end of the day, it's necessary to let go of an idea, a setting, a group of characters, no matter how awesome they are, and move on.

I don't think I'm going to redo every book I've ever written. Sometimes you just have to put them in a trunk and call them done. It's sort of freeing, when you let it go like that.

What do you think? Would you go back and redo every good idea you have, or just let them be training wheels?

Plotting

So for the last few weeks I have been working on my next novel. I definitely need a break after that extensive rewrite, so it was time to work on a new project.

The idea came easily. The characters too. It's just this darned plot that I seem to be having troubles with. At first I was shocked, and then I thought something was wrong with me.

And then I realized it's just part of writing. We tend to forget how hard certain parts of the process are after we've moved on. Or we approach a new project with a "this time it will be magical" frame of mind. I know I do. I get so excited about my idea and the characters that when I stall out, it baffles me. 

"What a second? Wait...this is starting to feel like...yes, yes that's it...WORK."

But it is. As fun as writing can be, there's still a process. Even if you're a panster you still have to come up with the idea. You have to think about the characters, and then figure out how to start the book. Even if you sail through this, you're bound to get to a part in the middle where things start to feel like work. 

But that's as normal as feeling like your writing is blessed by the Book Fairies (they do so exist, and you can't tell me otherwise). If everyone who could make coherent sentences could write a book, there would be tons of them.

Funny slightly off topic observation: there are a lot of people out there who don't know how to write well.

I am not talking about perfect grammar and complex sentences. I am talking about writing a short paragraph that puts their ideas together in a coherent fashion that reads better than something a third grader could write. 

I noticed this when I started getting emails from people (not my writer friends, so no one out there feel guilty). These people from my everyday life know how to speak proper English. They are relatively intelligent, educated people. Yet when I received an email from them, it sounded like something a third grader might write.


Some of the mistakes are just my pet peeves. Over use of text-speak (lots of LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!! for example). Not capitalizing the first word in a sentence. Cramming the sentences together without rhyme or reason. 


But most of it was the way those sentences read. I don't know how else to describe it, other than it looked like something you'd write in third grade. At first I thought these people were just being lazy, but then it dawned on me: they didn't write a lot in their daily life. These are people who didn't have to write something longer than a grocery list in years, and now suddenly there's this magical email thing. 


And just because you can talk well, doesn't mean you're going to automatically be able to write well. 


All of this is to remind us that writing is a skill. It truly is. It's a skill we hone every time we write blog posts about Book Fairies, every time we think about our character's conflict, every time we, you know, write. 


P.S. I have valiantly checked, and rechecked, this post for typos. I always do, but since I was talking about writing skill it seemed extra important to make sure I didn't do something silly. Yet, it is early and I am so very tired. So I apologize for any typos in this post, and shall submit myself to the Grammar Police if there are any typos that escaped the purge. 

Pet Peeve: Words Have Weight

"Word have weight." 

                                 ---Holly Lisle

Today I am going to talk about a pet peeve of mine. Since most of my readers are also writers, I am going to be preaching to the choir on this one, but I figure some of you might not have thought about things this way. If you have, well then join me in the comments section and we can complain about it. :D

Today I read a funny article on Cracked.com about subjects people love to talk about, but most people don't want to hear about. Number one on the list was your book/script/screenplay. I rather enjoyed the article, especially since Daniel O'Brian made the caveat that most writers like to talk to other writers about their ideas. And most of the time, if you have a book or something to show for your efforts, "normal" "non-writer" people usually like to hear about your book because you have something to show for it.

I am going to add to that statement and say in my experience, even IF you have a book to show for your efforts, most people don't want to listen to you breathlessly talking about your space adventure cowboy romance between a sentient tree and a hamster. Short, interesting pitch sentences, yes. When my co-workers ask about what I am writing, I use that as an opportunity to practice my pitching skills. 

"It's a retelling of Snow White on a tundra, about an exorcist who promises her mother on her deathbed that she'll stop a demon summoning before the winter solstice, but she winds up discovering her mother's secret life in the cult." (that's the basic plot of my book, The Heart's Remains, in case I haven't mentioned it before).

See, that was short and sweet. I can gauge how interesting the story is (to some people) by their reaction. I can also choose to include different details to see what people seem to respond best to. When they ask for more information, I expound, but I usually don't go on at length about my book. 

I think a lot of people like the idea that you're a writer more than actually hearing about your book in detail. We're interested because it's our book, but most people really couldn't care.

I used to ramble on and on and on. It wasn't pretty. I would deluge the hapless sap who asked me about my book with details. "It's about this girl who's mother is sick from an unknown illness, and right before she dies she tells Sera, the main character, about a demon summoning that a secret cult is doing, and Sera promises to stop them, but then she finds out it's hard to find proof of the cult, and she gets sick herself, and she has a twin sister, and her friend gets possessed, and...."

To most people it's just a bunch of details. It doesn't make sense to them. 

But that's not my pet peeve. I have made my peace that 99% of the population is not rabidly excited about my book ideas.

In the comments section a lot of people disagreed with the author's statement that you need to have tangible results, like half a book, in order for most people to be interested in your book/film. Lots of people said that ideas were just as good, if not better, because you can see where the book is going.

I've also seen this basic sentiment prevalent on forums everywhere and in real life. How many people have you met that say they had a book idea? And it's going to be the best thing since Twilight/The Da Vinci Code/The Bible. Yet they have nothing to show for the idea.

I am not saying these people are lazy posers and need to write that idea down. Not everyone is a writer, after all. It's a lot of work. It's just really annoying to me when people act like having an idea is the same exact thing as actually writing a book.

I know I should be more understanding. They don't know, because they haven't written the book yet. They don't actually know how hard it is to get from the beginning to the end, and then to edit the sucker within an inch of it's life, and then...

The other thing these people don't seem to understand is words have weight.  Having an idea is great. It's the first step. But anyone who's ever had an idea and then wrote that out into a book knows that no idea remains completely intact from when you first had it. The words you're writing have weight. Even if you have an idea come to you and everything is laid out perfectly, and you write the book and barely a thing changes, the book still feels different than your idea. There's layers to it. Nuances and subtleties that you didn't conceive of intially.

That's okay. Normal. What's supposed to happen. But that's why I get annoyed when people try to compare having an idea to writing a book. It's not as easy as simply jotting the idea on paper and selling it for millions of dollars.  

If it was, everyone would have a book out there.

So there. That's my rant. I'll stop foaming at the mouth.

So what do you guys think? Am I nuts? Or does that burn your biscuits too?

Ideas Like Weeds

Are you struggling with coming up with ideas to write about?

Good, me either. 

But, if you are, I have just the thing for you. All you have to do is work on another book. It's true! It seems like some sort of sick paradox, but the longer you work on one book project, the more ideas you will get for other books. 

My muse has the attention span of a five year old hopped up on sugar and a day of non-stop TV. I seriously have been getting a new idea for a character, a scenario, or vague plot just about every single day. I am closing in on the end of the rewrite, and I think my muse is getting desperate. The rewrite is coming along nicely, but I keep getting ideas for other stuff.

Of course, I am staying the course. I will finish this rewrite if it kills me (it just might, too. You never know). I just think it's funny how when you're working diligently on another project, you get all sorts of ideas for something else. 

Maybe it's just me though. Do you guys get ideas for other books while working on something else? One or two, or have you had stretches where you've had several new ones, one right after the other?

Maybe it's just me. I would blame caffeine, but I haven't had more than a few sips of tea since I got pregnant. Sugar, I could blame the sugar. Yes, it has to be the sugar.

Plontsing

What's that? Yes, I did make up a new word for my writing process thank you very much. Actually, Joe Selby first mentioned it, but I changed the spelling a bit. 

It's a hybrid of plotting and pansting. I know, it sounds like I am being overly nit picky. After all, any amount of plotting should place me in the plotting camp right?

Not exactly. Most of the time when you plot the book out you have detailed character bios, extensive worldbuilding, and ten or more plot events. You know the minor subplots and how the character gets not just from Point A to Point Z, but from B, C, D, and E. 

You have a plan, in other words.

On the other side of the camp are your pansters. They might have a vague idea about characters, and what the plot might possibly be about, and where it could be set, but they might not really have a clue either. They make it up as they go along.

I am sitting somewhere in the middle. I have a little background information, more so than most pansters have, but I have no idea how my characters are going to get from one point to another. As I stated in a previous post, I mostly write until I don't know what happens, and then I brainstorm what could happen based on what I just wrote.

It's interesting to write this way, but it's a lot messier than I am used to.  Overall I think it's working very well, and I will probably use this method in the future. The only bad thing about it is when you get a great idea for the plot, but it completely rearranges what you've already written.

In which case you can normally just pretend that's how the book was already written and fix it in revision. This time however changed two of the character's roles and jobs, so I went back and wrote some opening scenes to get a feel for the characters. 

I could blame that on not plotting things out ahead of time, but it wouldn't be true. I've had the book perfectly plotted but when I got to the end, the antagonist did something that completely changed everything that came before. That was an instance I did pretend that's how I always meant for it to happen and just moved forward. 

So how are your books coming along? Well? Train wrecks have looked better? Are you all ready for the holidays?

A Kōan for Your Book

Quote: “A monk asked Master Haryo, 'What is the way?' Haryo said, 'An open-eyed man falling into the well”
~Zen kōan quote


Yesterday I talked about have a list of ideas that interest you.

The other part of my list are questions. I am not going to call them themes exactly, although some of them could be, but questions that interest me.

An example of some:

*Why do people fall in and out of love? Why is it when you fall in love, you think, this is the one? And the next guy that comes along, he too, feels like “the one” Why is there just one? Does that make the one guy really special? Could he be really special even he wasn’t “the one”?

*What would happen if you could switch places with someone? Why would you? How would that help? Not just their job or standing, but their emotional experiences?

*Life is Beautiful: Why is it to really live sometimes you have to die? Why is it ironic, why do you have to give up your hair for a hair comb?

*Why is it sometimes the things we want hurt us the most? Is it the act of wanting it? Or the thing itself? Is it us? Our choices? Something we can’t control? Why do we intentionally make bad decisions, eat too much, drink too much, smoke, and hurt the ones we love. Why do we do that to ourselves? Why do we think it will fix? What do we think it will help?

*What is up with people hurting other people? How can someone be born without a conscious? Does that mean someone else can be born without empathy, without the ability to love? What then? Is that just a safe answer, so we don’t have to deal with an unpleasant truth that some people just like hurting other people, for no reason. Not because of their troubled childhood, their genes, their brain chemistry, but just because they like it?



As you can see, none of these are themes, per se. They are just questions, musings of mine I like to talk to people about over a cup of tea late at night in a diner. I especially enjoy deep discussions, and I usually find myself asking a question of similar nature while I am writing a book. It’s almost as if in the act of writing the book itself, I am looking for one possible answer to the question.

For example, one of the questions “Why do people fall in and out of love?” I have examined in several different books with different outcomes. Sometimes the lovers fight and never make up, sometimes they find someone new, sometimes they reconcile.

These questions are almost like a kōan for a book. A kōan is part of Zen Buddhism, and is frequently a story or dialogue the monk mediates on in order to reach enlightenment.

An example of a famous kōan is:
Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?
— Hakuin Ekaku

"...in the beginning a monk first thinks a kōan is an inert object upon which to focus attention; after a long period of consecutive repetition, one realizes that the kōan is also a dynamic activity, the very activity of seeking an answer to the kōan. The kōan is both the object being sought and the relentless seeking itself. In a kōan, the self sees the self not directly but under the guise of the kōan...When one realizes ("makes real") this identity, then two hands have become one. The practitioner becomes the kōan that he or she is trying to understand. That is the sound of one hand." — G. Victor Sogen Hori, Translating the Zen Phrase Book



Here is a modern day kōan from The Tao of Programming:

A student was playing a handheld video game during a class.

The teacher called on the student and asked him what he was doing.

The student replied that he was trying to master the game.

The teacher said, "There exists a state in which you will not attempt to master the game, and the game will not attempt to master you."

The student asked, "What is this state?"

The teacher said, "Give me your video game, and I will show you."

The student gave him the game, and the teacher threw it to the ground, breaking it into pieces. The student was enlightened.

The purpose isn’t to find the one right answer to the question, but to expand your thinking. Finding an answer to the kōan required the monk to let go of conceptual thinking and logical way of looking at the world so, like creativity in art, the appropriate insight and response arises naturally and spontaneously in the mind.



I think of these questions as a kōan for my book. I am not looking to pigeonhole the book, but to find greater insight into the characters and the plot. For me, this question is the heart of the book. Every book I have ever finished had a burning question attached to it. I had to answer the question for myself, and the book wasn’t over until I found one possible answer. Every book I haven’t finished have no question attached. I am not going to say this question is the secret to finishing a book, but it helps.

Most of the time this question is bubbling under the surface. None of my characters ask or wonder it directly, it’s just something that I feel, an instinct.

In short, this question is the reason why I am bothering to write this story with these characters: I have to find out the answer to the question.

I could write three books with the same sort of question in mind, but the characters and plots are always different, so the question itself feels different, even if it’s very similar to a previous questions I asked. It’s the subtle difference between “Are you happy?” and “Are you excited?” There is a slight difference, but that difference could change everything.

And it often does.

You could decide that thinking about questions and themes for your book would mess up some of your process, and that’s fine. No two writing processes are the same, so what works for one doesn’t always work for the other.

But you’ve got to wonder at some point why you’re bothering. Why are you writing, not only in general, but this book with this character and this plot? Why not another idea?

Sometimes the answer is as simple as “because I love these characters” or “this is the only idea I have at the moment”. But even under those deceptively simple answers lies another layer. Why do you love those characters so much? What about them you find so compelling you are willing to spend months or years working with them?

Why is this the only idea you’ve seized upon? You have probably had other, half baked ideas that didn’t interest you at the time. What about THIS idea is so compelling?

I believe our motivation for why we do the things we do, and love the things we love is in our subconscious minds. Most of us aren’t Zen monks, so the self-awareness required to know why you like what you like is beyond us. That’s okay. Some things can stay subconscious.



But I also believe some our interests can be discerned, and when that awareness is applied to our writing, can yield many rewards. After I noticed what a difference having a question made in my writing, I made sure every book I started after that had one, and the razorlike precision I achieved was breathtaking. I haven’t started books yet because I don’t know exactly what the question is.

Finding that question is like putting a name on the passion that fuels the book for me.

So what you do think? Have you ever thought about writing as a way to seek answers? Do you know what themes interest you and why? Do you have any other insight to add?

Write What You Love

Editing has made my creativity run into overdrive.

Apparently editing doesn’t count as writing as far as my brain is concerned, so I am currently suffering the symptoms I experience when I haven’t written something in a while: unable to fall asleep, and tossing and turning when I do, I feel out of sorts and listless, everything seems neither really exciting or really boring—just a gray in between.

As a creative outlet I am tinkering around with ideas (in between editing. I logged thirty more pages today, and thirty yesterday, so I am not slacking off). I have three book ideas that feel very similar on the surface, so yesterday I opened a new MS Word document, wrote out a working title for each book, put it into bold and underlined them, and then listed some basic elements for each book as a way to differentiate between them.

Something wonderful happened. I started to be able to clearly see each book as it’s separate entity, and not the murky brown color they all seemed to be. Part of the problem is one of the ideas was split up into two separate books, so it still felt like characters didn’t quite fit their new home.

Listing each book out clearly allowed me to see each book idea in it’s entirety, and I could compare each one to the other. After that, I went through my “My Themes” document to further mine for ideas.

Let me explain “My Themes”. I think every writer needs a document, whether it’s paper or electronic, where they keep track of all the stuff that excites them. I am not talking about book ideas—that’s another file entirely. I am talking about a list of stuff that makes your muse go into hyperdrive (I fired my last muse, and am now working with his brother, Ira. It seems to be working well so far).



Here is a small sample of my list:

survival in a dystopia
survival after an apocalypse
dreams
Morpheus
Orpheus going back to get his love
death is not the end
bouncers
serial killers
Seattle
1940’s gangsters
Cyberpunk
Mental illness
Hostage situations
Forgotten cities, and ancient lore.
Profilers
Autumn in New York, when the leaves are on fire.
Rocky coast lines
Ghost tours
Twins
Complicated relationships between people
Childhood accidents
Apprenticeships
New kid learning the ropes
Characters forced to be together
Making difficult, no-win moral choices
Heaven and hell battling, angels versus demons
Deals with the devil
Being thrown into a new situation
Constructed people—golems, homunculi, etc
A likable villain
sacrifice
The one person that interests a misanthrope
The bad guys are really the good guys

My list is about twice this long, but you get the point. Notice how I have all kinds of stuff on there? Some are concepts like constructed people, some are conflicts like new kid learning the ropes, and some are settings like rocky coast lines.


Because really, doesn’t this picture give you a thousand story ideas?

But all of this stuff fascinates me. You can even analyze the list and then figure out why I like the TV shows and movies that I do. Let’s see, my favorite TV shows are: Firefly (space western), Criminal Minds (thriller about profilers), Bones (forensic crime solving), House (medical mystery about a misanthropic doctor), and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (crime solving with emotional situations for the cops/victims).

Some of my favorite movies are: Equilibrium (science fiction dystopia), The Prestige (rivalry between former friends who are magicians), The Day After Tomorrow (disaster movie), Legion (heaven versus hell).

Do we see a pattern here? These shows/movies interest me because there’s one or more (usually several) elements in them that I find fascinating.

You’re probably thinking, “No duh, Elizabeth. Of course you like those shows and movies because they have elements you find fascinating.” But it’s really helpful to know exactly what about something interests you.

Because then you can repeat it.

They say write what you know, but I think we should change that to write what you love. If you are not in love with your story, you’re just not going to have the strength to get through all the work it’s going to take to make the story salable. It’s not enough to start with one good idea. You need several good ideas within one book. You might start off with one good idea, and write out the first draft without planning more. That’s fine; whatever your writing process is.

But eventually you’re going to have to analyze the plot elements, and I feel it would behoove you to make sure your plot has several things going for it. When I say “idea” I am not just talking about plot points and characters, but everything. You could set the book in somewhere you find beautiful, have a character in a situation you love, with a cool villain idea, and a new twist on the conflict. It could be something as simple as what the character does for a living. You could make a new book based of off this list, or you could just add the elements you find appropriate for each book.



For example, let’s say I have a new book idea. Let’s say you only have the character idea, like I frequently do. No plot in sight, but the main character shows up as a real person. Let’s say the character is an anti-hero who is a misanthrope. So we have:

Misanthrope who (does something)(not medical related, so no one says it’s just a House ripoff).

To start with. We could leave it at that, and start writing if you are a pantser, or we could just develop the character more if you’re a planner. The obvious direction to go would be Why is this guy such a misanthrope?

Because I hate the “anti-hero with a heart of gold” trope, we’re going to just say that he’s always been kind of a jerk, and bucks society’s rules because he thinks they are pointless. To further avoid the “anti-hero with a heart of gold” trope, let’s say he made a mistake that got someone killed he was supposed to protect (instead of saying mommy didn’t love him enough, and that’s why he’s a jerk. People in real life are more complicated, so let’s make sure our characters are more complicated too, okay?).

You could write a perfectly good book all this jerk, but let’s not stop there. Let’s add more awesome stuff to this already fun idea.

I already have the concept of the one person that the misanthrope doesn’t hate, so let’s add that:

The one person that interests a misanthrope

So now we have character number two. This could be a woman, and they fall in love. This could be a younger girl and he has to raise her (for some reason). It could be a guy, whatever. It all depends on the type of story you want to tell.

Since he’s an anti-hero and a misanthrope, he’s already going to be complicated. So let’s add:

Complicated relationships between people.

Since I don’t see the jerk going out of his way to get to know someone, let’s also add:

Characters forced to be together

Since he’s already a jerk, we could play with:

The bad guys are really the good guys
A likable villain

We could add setting about here:

Rocky coast lines
survival in a dystopia

I picked dystopia because it fits the misanthrope vibe, but you could also go for contrast, and say it’s set on a lush tropical landscape to further show how miserable the guy is.

So to recap we have:

Misanthrope who (does something)(not medical related, so no one says it’s just a House ripoff).
The one person that interests a misanthrope
Complicated relationships between people
Characters forced to be together
The bad guys are really the good guys
A likable villain
Rocky coast lines
survival in a dystopia

And the cherry on the top, a theme of:

sacrifice

Now this books has several ideas going for it that excites me. Some of them might not make it into the story, they might have to be teased out, but it gives you some ideas to brainstorm with at least.

Some of you might be wondering if doing this might not make your books all sound familiar.

I don’t think so. That list is long, and many times I have more developed ideas arrive, without needing to build a book from scratch off of it. And that point I might add one or two ideas to it, but not too much more.

Also, see how vague all of that is? “Characters forced to be together”. There are so many ways character can be forced together. If we were to boil most books down to this bare bones, they would start to look similar.

So the next time you need something extra to a book idea, why not look through your interests list?

Any thoughts on the matter? What are some ideas that you just love thinking and writing about?

A Lesson Was Learned By All

Song Playing: Take a Bow by Madonna

It appears that editing sends my creativity into overdrive, because I just had three new ideas for stories. Two of these ideas would need a lot of work to become a story, but they are there. The third idea is something closer to what the heart of a book would be in my mind.

It would also appear that most of my ideas come in two distinct forms. On one side of the camp there are the dream ideas. These ideas come from some portion of a dream I had, and are normally just a scene or two. Sometimes I am lucky enough to get some core conflict or characters out of the dream, but the image remains.

The pros of these types of ideas are these images are very intense and can also brew some awesome conflict. For example, my current WIP, my mermaid book, started from a dream. I dreamt about a girl standing on the shoreline of the ocean, silently crying as she watched a burning ship sail out to sea at sunset. I knew that this girl’s father had just drowned in a boating accident—a boat accident she survived—and her father wanted to have a Viking funeral, hence the burning ship.

That’s all there was to the idea. Girl at father’s funeral. But that image is still as fresh to me as the night I had the dream, and the death of her father has formed part of the core conflict in the book.

The con to these types of ideas is I have to work very hard to feel the characters. Since I first saw it as though I was watching a movie, the main characters remain as familiar and yet distant as movie characters do. I have to spend extra time developing the character until I feel like they are a living, breathing person.



The second camp of ideas I receive are usually speculations about “What if…”, and normally crop up while watching a movie or reading a book. Typically, I am frustrated with said movie or book. I feel like they are ignoring obvious internal conflicts, and I wish the story would address it more. Or the movie/book ends with events left unresolved, and I think about the aftermath of the movie/story events. My mind goes wandering, usually while the movie is still playing, “What would make someone get to that point? What if there was this other person, and they did such and such?”

The pros of these types of ideas are that I have the heart of the book, and can feel the character almost immediately. The internal conflict, and sometimes external conflict is right there in my question. For example, last night I was watching a mediocre movie (name withheld to protect the guilty) involving a love triangle. This Nice Guy was totally head over heels for this Girl, but she was already in love with her boyfriend, even though he’s a total Jerk, and broke her heart. The Nice Guy was there for the Girl, helped her mend her heart, but the minute the Jerk comes back into the picture she jumps back into his arms, and leaves Nice Guy in the dust.

Very frustrating to watch, because Nice Guy was obviously a better person for Girl (I know, my estrogen is showing :) ). They actually had a friendship, something she didn’t have with Jerk. So I sat there seething, wondering what would happen if Nice Guy had a Female Friend, and how she would feel about Nice Guy pining for a woman who barely gives him a second glance.

And then I thought, what if the Girl was very popular, the center of her clique’s universe, and everyone wanted to be her or date her? But (now named)Popular Girl was secretly miserable? (at this point, the idea congealed with a conversation I had with one of my massage clients. She’s a school teacher, and we had a discussion about how sometimes the kids turn out differently than people would think. So the cheerleader valedictorian with a scholarship to Yale goes down the path of drugs and petty criminal-druggie picks himself up and becomes successful) So from that line of thinking, I was thinking about the relationship dynamic between Popular Girl and Female Friend, with Nice Guy in between them.

I can’t stand love triangles as plot by themselves, and I would have to spice this thought up to make it not so very high school, but there’s something there, between Female Friend and Popular Girl.

The con to these types of ideas is it can be very hard to capture that essence of conflict within a plot. Especially with this idea I just had. I definitely don’t want to just do a boring love triangle. Those get angsty quick. It can be hard to figure out the exact events that would best show this sort of conflict, and the possibilities can be paralyzing. There’s a lot of vague wandering around conflict and ideas, and thinking “I could…no, no, that’s not quite it.” Like going shoe shopping, and looking for the ultimate pair of shoes: comfy, cute, and not too expansive (I am not sure such a pair actually exists).

I have other ideas that don’t fall into either of these camps, but they are far less prevalent.

You might be wondering at this point why I care, or sound so pleased with myself. This is a fair thought.

The neat thing is now that I have identified this about my ideas, I already know what to look out for. I already know I am going to have to work on the characters of all the ideas I dreamed/thought up a scene for. Most writers can tell you that scenes, no matter how cool, do not a novel make. There’s a lot of other stuff that goes with it too. Like, a plot and stuff.

I already know that all the ideas I had from wondering some form of What if?...will need extra love in the conflict department.

Overall, this makes my life easier, and will prevent future frustration. It might behoove you to keep track of how and where you get your ideas, not just the ideas themselves, and see if you have a pattern.

Or do you already see a pattern? Is there a certain way you get most of your ideas? What are the pros and cons of that way?

Bar Scene Blogfest

Tara is hosting a Bar Scene Blogfest, and I had the perfect scene in mind. This is from one of my WIP. It's going to be the book I write after the mermaid book I am currently working on.

Here is Tara's blog:
Bar Scene Blogfest

This is the first page in my WIP, titled "A Dangerous Mind". I also plan to use another scene from this book for my Bad Girl Blogfest, because my MC just makes it so easy for me. ;)


A Dangerous Mind

“Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” Confucius

There is an urban legend that says your body completely replaces itself every seven years. If this is true, that means the skin I have now has never known my mother’s touch or my father’s piggyback rides. There’s no way I can restore the touch of my parents, so I hug Alex as much as I can. He was the only blood relation I have left.

My foster parents aren’t really the hugging sort, but I hug them as often as I can, just in case. It frightens me to think that my patchwork family might die someday, and I’ll grow out of them, like I grew out of my favorite pair of combat boots in high school. I had to peddle ten pounds of weed to be able to afford those boots, and when I grew out of them a year later, I was pissed.

I had returned to my hometown of Seattle a few days ago, like clockwork, for the fall and spring semester of college. Every summer I visited my foster parents, and every fall I returned to the city, to Jim and Caroline, to Alex. Despite my circadian rhythms, I still felt like I was perpetually one pace ahead or behind the rest of the world. Dancing to my own drummer didn’t typically bother me, but there were times I wondered what my life would be like today if my parents weren’t murdered by a serial killer while my brother and I hid in my bedroom upstairs.

I wondered how different my life would be now if I had stopped Alex from going downstairs to investigate the noise; I already knew what was making that awful sound. If I had just tied Alex to the bed or something, things might not have turned out the way they did. But he was six and I was eight; Alex never listened to me.

I stared at the moon, and crushed the unlit cigarette I almost broke down and smoked under my boot.

It started to drizzle. I would have taken it as a direct sign of God pissing on me, but this was Seattle. It was always drizzling.

I shook my head at my own futility. Wondering ‘what if’ never made me feel better. Only fantasies of capturing the man who ruined my life and making him pay eased the pain. If I could find him, and make him suffer like I suffered, maybe my life would cycle back to even again.

I turned around and walked back into Joe’s Old Bar, my current place of employment. I was one of the best bartenders in the entire joint, but you’d never know it by the way the owner, a creep named Sam, treated me. Like I was one of his slave girls. If I didn’t have to work while I was in college, I would have walked out of the joint on a Friday night with a full house.

I grinned to myself. That would show him.

Sadly, my landlord didn’t accept I.O.U.s or cookies in lieu of money for rent, and I wasn’t about to take him up on his offer for “something else”. Gross.

I returned to my noble post at the bar, and started to stack the glasses underneath the bar. Frank, the daytime bartender, never put them back correctly, so the glasses were one hard shove away from getting knocked over, a catastrophe I would surely be blamed for.

“Heeeeey, Jade, you’re back,” A regular named Bill slurred. “Good to see you again, hot stuff.”

I nodded in Bill’s general direction and continued to work. Drunks were so needy.
“How’s about you and me go out on a date?”

I leaned my elbow onto the top of the bar. “How’s about you pay your tab and get lost?” I asked.

Bill muttered disparaging things about me under his breath.

I ignored him, and turned to another regular of mine, Mr. Chen. He was an older Asian man who always ordered a Tom Collins, and spoke broken English. He was in the process of opening his own night club, and I had no qualms with telling him what exactly sort of set up he needed for the bar. It was a match made in bartender heaven.

I’ve tended my fair share of bars, and none of them were designed by a bartender. Some bars were way too long, or the drain in the floor wasn’t angled properly so when you washed the floor some of the dirty water ran back over the clean tile or any other hundred of little details that over time add up into a bar that was a pain in the neck to tend. I knew some bartenders who wouldn’t tend a poorly designed bar, but I couldn’t afford to be picky.

Mr. Chen took a sip of his Tom Collins. “You make the best drinks,” he said in Mandarin. “That’s why I always come here.”

I grinned at him. “I know.” I am sure the fact that I was fluent in Mandarin Chinese didn’t hurt either. I can also speak passable Cantonese. My foster parents are both first generation American citizens, children of Chinese immigrants who still preferred to speak Chinese over English. “How’s the nightclub coming? Did your financing come through?”

“Hey, hot stuff, I need another one,” Bill said, burping. Bill was the sort of guy who worked out every day to make up for his ugly face. He thought he was God’s gift to woman. I thought he was a plague in holey blue jeans.

I looked up and checked the clock. Midnight. I was officially done for the night. “Don’t call me hot stuff,” I said, glaring at Bill. “We’re closed.”
Bill leered at me, and I clenched my jaw. “Come on baby, why you gotta do me like that? Come home with me, I could—“

I walked around the bar, and grabbed Bill’s forearm and twisted it hard. Bill squealed like a pig and tried to break my grip, but I used his body weight against him, and sharpened the angle I held his arm.

“I said no,” I said, resisting the urge to punch him in the face. Even though it was afterhours, I was still not allowed to beat up the customers. Unless it was in self defense. Maybe I could make it self defense…

“Fine, fine,” Bill said, trying to stand up, “I’ll leave you alone.”

I loosened my grip on him, and stepped back. “I wouldn’t date you if you were the last man alive. Your face makes me want to vomit.” I pointed at the shirt I wore. It was blue and had a picture of a cartoon bunny on it. The caption below the bunny read: Hey, you make me throw up a little. “I wear this shirt because of losers like you. Now get lost.”

Bill scowled at me, and took a swing, like I knew he would. I couldn’t insult him and his pride let me get away with it.

Mr. Chen cried out, but I ducked Bill’s swing, and tripped him.

Bill caught his balance on a table, and whirled around, swinging for me again.
I sidestepped him quickly, grabbed Bill’s wrist, and used it to bring him around. Bill jerked away, trying to break my hold. He was physically stronger than me, but I was trained. I knew how to use his momentum against him. If you had a good hold on someone’s wrist you could move them around as you wished. I stepped forward, and flipped Bill onto his back with a loud thud.

Bill groaned and rolled over.

“Are you done?” I asked, nudging him with my foot.

Bill tried to stand but it took him a few tries. He glared at me, but stalked out of the bar.

I sighed. I was itching for a fight, but that could hardly be called a fight. I wasn’t even sweating.

“You are trained in Martial Arts,” Mr. Chen said.

“Yes,” I replied, picking up the chair Bill overturned and set it down. “Wushu. My father is a master, and ran a dojo.”

Mr. Chen regarded me for a minute. I wondered what he was seeing when he looked at me. The whitest girl on the face of the planet? My brown hair? My jade green eyes, which were the source of my nickname? I looked like every normal white girl in America. Hardly anyone knew I had Chinese foster parents. Mr. Chen had commented on how well I spoke Mandarin when I first talked to him, but he didn’t pry. “Would you like to work at my nightclub?”

I blinked. I wasn’t expecting a job offer. I was expecting to be told a nice girl like me shouldn’t know how to beat people up.

“I would pay you well. You’ve been most helpful with the plans. I wanted to ask you, but it’s in a rough area of the International District, in the middle of gang territory. But I see you can handle yourself. You could help protect my club, without people realizing that you can also be a bouncer if needed.”

I looked around Joe’s. Continue to work at a crappy dive or work for Mr. Chen, who wanted me to work at a nightclub, be a silent bouncer, in the International District, and pay me more money? Sold!

“When can I start?”

Brainstorming and You

Song Playing: Spark by Tori Amos

I signed up for three blogfests recently, because I am a glutton for punishment. So here they are before I get on with today’s post.

Charity Bradford is having a Baking Scene Blogfest: http://charitywrites.blogspot.com/2010/03/50-followers-baking-blogfest.html

The Write Runner, also known as Iapetus999, also known as Andrew Rosenberg is having a Bad Girl Scene blogfest, which I totally have covered:
http://blog.dawnsrise.com/2010/04/blogfest-voting-results.html

And finally, Tara is having a Bar Scene Blogfest:
http://t-fouts.blogspot.com/2010/03/announcing-bar-scene-blogfest.html

Also, the lovely Mia is having a Deleted Scene Blogfest, that I will sign up for if I can think of something! So go on, check them out. It’s fun to write a scene with a specific goal in mind. I like to use these scenes to stretch myself as a writer, so it doesn’t just have to be a distraction from your normal schedule.

***

Brainstorming. Every writer does it. Whether it’s just thinking about how the idea you’ve had can play itself out, or a more formal jotting ideas down on paper, you’ve had to brainstorm your idea every time you write a book.

Given the frequency a writer will brainstorm, I was surprised I didn’t find more information about various brainstorming methods on the Internet and in books. So I decided to post about it myself.

I have already touched on the idea of brainstorming in one of my earlier posts, “Hypnotize Yourself While Writing”, but I didn’t really expand past mentioning you need to brainstorm.

Now, you might be thinking you don’t like to brainstorm, you hated those tree diagrams and free association just isn’t for you, but like I said, my theory is EVERY writer brainstorms, it’s just a matter of how.



Let’s back up. What do I mean by brainstorming exactly? I mean when you have an idea for a book, and you think about how that idea could work itself out. Probably the idea comes to you in a piece. My ideas almost ALWAYS come as a situation between two characters.

Case in point: two nights ago I had a dream that a rich, high society girl was traveling by a large ship across freezing waters with her high society family. She snubs a soldier on the boat, but later she falls overboard, and starts to drown. Her parents are standing on the boat, crying out for her, but not doing anything to help. They assume she’s already lost because the waters are freezing, and by the time they can get a lifeboat out to her she’ll already have drowned.

The soldier guy she snubbed earlier dives into the ocean, and drags her back to the lifeboat the other soldiers have lowered into the water. The girl gets medical attention, but now has a huge dilemma. She just had literal proof her parents wouldn’t risk their lives to save her. A complete stranger—one that she had been mean to, no less—was the one to risk his life. Not her family. She had always suspected she was just an asset to her parents, but here was the ugly truth (note: I realize that not diving into the freezing ocean doesn’t necessarily mean someone doesn’t love you. But that’s how it was in my dream. ;) ).

That’s the idea. In it’s entirety. A typical idea for me, where there are two characters that are connected through a complicated, not easy to define way, and they both have to deal with internal issues.

Everything I do to develop this idea I consider brainstorming (or will do since I am just writing this idea down for later, since I have several others books already in the queue).

Let’s say you do need to do some brainstorming. If not now, in the future. How do you go about it? The neat thing is almost anything can click with you and make you see your idea in another light. Actually, I try to allow that synergy to happen as often as possible, so when I have an idea, I write down everything I know about it and then let the idea stew for a while (the above example’s idea page is longer than what I explained to you. Sometimes just the act of writing the idea down will spark more ideas, or uncover more information. Like, when I typed that up I KNEW her older sister was a rival, and her parent’s greatly favored her older sister over her).



Some people prefer to not write the idea down and let it stew, but I do my best stewing with I have something jotted down, even if it’s just a sentence. If you are passively brainstorming, you’re acting like a normal writer and observing the world around you, thinking “What if this happened?”, reading books, watching movies, watching birds, listening to people talk, thinking about the idea while driving, talking to people etc. And sometimes you see a picture or watch a movie that clicks and opens up more potential for an idea you’ve already had. Those kismet moments are what I live for as a writer (among others).

Sometimes you decide you want to do some more active brainstorming, for a variety of reasons. Here are some, according to the most common for me.

1) You are in love with an idea, it burns deep inside you, and you absolutely must work on it. Right now.

2) You already have most of the basics of the idea down. Maybe you have the characters named, you know the theme and setting. All you need now is a plot. (Because in my case, I almost NEVER had ideas that come with plots. Situations that could spin out into a plot? Yes. But not a whole lot of ideas relating to plots).

3) You are bored, feeling creative, and your mind is wandering. Out of curiosity, you what to see what comes out.

So you’ve decide to brainstorm. What next?



Brainstorming is as personal as creating characters, but here are some of the methods I have run across in my time as a writer:

1) The Free Form
This one is also called Stream of Conscious, or something along that line. Basically you sit down, and write everything that comes to mind while vaguely thinking about your plot. For my girl falling off boat idea, Free Form could look like this: boat, ocean, Titanic, life rafts, SCUBA diving…

I don’t like to do this so early on in the brainstorming process, but some people swear by it. I almost never come up with something useful when I have so little already planned.

2) The Web o’ Ideas
We all know this one. This is where you draw a circle, write the character’s name in the middle, and draw another circle. You write something in that circle, like BOAT. Maybe you have another idea related to BOAT, so you draw a circle off of BOAT and write LIFE RAFT. Or you have an idea for the character and write PARENTS USE HER. You get the picture. There’s all sorts of data why this is useful—because you’re engaging both sides of your brain, because you’re drawing, because you’re harnessing order and chaos.

I don’t really use this method a whole lot either. I don’t do well with anything resembling free form. I don’t know why. I just keep recycling the same ideas over and over. So I get frustrated, crumple it into a ball, throw it across the room, and do something more linear.

3) The List
This form of brainstorming is where you either write long hand, or type in a new document some short bullets of your idea. It’s a cousin to the Web o’ Ideas in that most of the time the bullet builds on the one that came before it. It’s different from Free Form because you normally group similar ideas together, but very similar since you are just sort of throwing ideas out there as they come. So in the continuing example, my list could look like this:

*Somehow the soldier has to function in her world, instead of going the expected route and making the parents destitute, and having to rely on him. He is granted a huge amount of land and title for saving her life?

*Her sister is the main antagonist? She’s prettier and engaged to a prince or something?

*Or war could break out where soldiers are more needed, the soldier guy gets titled, and then moves up the ranks. Leadership, where you have people under you. Grant land from a traitor and give it to the soldier?

*No one showed the soldier how to be noble. He doesn’t know how to deal with finances because he’s been a soldier his entire life. The estate has a huge upkeep, high, falling to ruin, deeply in debt, the girl helps him out of it? Mined his own land, and kept his land. Social etiquette part?

*The girl listened to all the chatter of the high society, talk about the latest fashions, runs across the soldier, so he’s a different person and has different things to talk about.

I use this one a ton, so that is a real life example from where I wrote my idea down. See how the ideas jump around a bit, but mostly stay on topic? I also have several permutations of a situation—in this case how the soldier will come into play later—and I basically think out loud.



4) The Hundred Questions
This is also called several different things, and I have also blogged about this method a little bit, in my post “From Idea to Story” when I talked about brainstorming. You sit down with a piece of paper or new word processing document, write out your basic idea, and start asking yourself all sorts of questions. Like, what if X happened? What would happen from that? How would that work out? Where would that happen? Who would do it? You could follow this train of thought as far as you want, with as many detours as you want. You could decide you didn’t like this line of thought, and go back to the start, and ask yourself the same questions.
Example:
A girl falls overboard from a huge boat, in the middle of freaking nowhere, and the water is ice cold.
What if she was really pushed overboard? What if her parents paid to have her pushed? What if she fell due to her own stupidity? What if someone saves her but now they are stuck with each other because of the customs of the land? What if she realized her parents didn’t love her because they assumed she was dead? What if she decided to sabotage her parents because of this hurt? What if she joined the mafia? What if she embezzled all her parents’ money and turned to a life of crime…

And so on. I have NO idea where the mafia thing came from, but see how I started to follow that train of thought? Initially I would say that there is no mafia where they live, so she can’t join it, but maybe I could have a criminal element? Maybe they are merchants and her father belongs to the mob in their world, and she sells him out? Maybe I keep the “stealing all her parents’ money” part and drop the mafia angle.

Maybe not, but it’s something I could keep in mind. Many times I have come up with a random thought I didn’t think fit the story at all, only to think of a way include it much to the betterment of the story later.

I really really really…REALLY like this method. I always do this as some point in time to my plots. It helps me make sure I have really found the best, most original way for the story to unfold. Usually I have one part of the idea, and then I ask myself what if over and over, and just write whatever springs to mind. Half of what I come up with is awful, but that’s not the point. The point is to think your idea through as much as you can before you actually write it. Sometimes you can spot an idea that’s going to fizzle during this stage, or a glaring problem that you’re going to need to address.

And plus, it’s loads of fun! I think writers should play “What if” at parties.

5) With a Twist!
Something you can do at any stage in any method of brainstorming is twist your idea. Take whatever you just wrote, and twist it. You can already see how I twisted an idea with the previous example. Girl falls over board, guy saves her. I decided I didn’t want to just write a damsel in distress story, so I twisted it, and started thinking of ways that she could also “save” him. And not in that sappy, “He’s a jerk, and she melts his cold heart and saves her with LOVE” *cue sappy music* sort of saving him.



Also, most people would simply have them fall in love, and then have her wealthy parents loose all their money, and it turns out that her parents rely on the soldier for food and shelter. It would turn into Romeo and Juliet Take a Chilly Cruise in a heartbeat. So I decided to head that off at the pass, and left the nature of their relationship up in the air, and twisted the idea so that the soldier would have to learn how to function in the upper class’s world. Somehow. The details are still sketchy.

Or you could use a synergy of any or all of the above. I knew a writer who used the web, but also Free Formed ideas in a sidebar on the same paper. Different forms of brainstorming might be more useful at different stages of the book for you as well. Like I said earlier, I don’t like to use the Web or Free Form early on, but once I have most of the details worked out I will sometimes do that to see what other ideas shake down from my subconscious.

To start with, I usually use a combination of the List and the Hundred Questions. You can actually see the questions buried in the bullets, where I was already asking myself why? How? What? Who? And When?

Something else to consider: put yourself into the story. No, I am not talking about making a Mary or Gary Stu. But somewhere around the stage when I am twisting and wringing the idea for all it’s worth, I start asking myself, What do I like about this idea?



That questions can save your book if you know the answer. If you get to the middle of the book and run out of steam, you can look back at the brainstorming stage and read over what made you so excited in the first place, and rekindle the book.

Finding out what you like about the idea can also keep you on track with your plot. We know that by making one decision about the plot, we also affect every other future decision we make on the plot in a chaos-butterfly effect way. Let’s look at my example. By deciding the soldier was going to have to deal with the high society, I changed a lot of the other options I had for the plot. It would probably take place in high society more now, than if I had went the “family goes bankrupt” route. Every decision takes you down a different path, and sometimes it’s hard to know which path you want to go down.

If you know why you are so excited about the idea, you can make sure your plot stays within that idea. I don’t know if you have ever had this happen, but sometimes I would either write an idea out or plot it out, and suddenly I was no longer interested in it. The book morphed at some point into a story I didn’t care about telling.

Once I started identify what caused the fires to be stoked, I never had that problem again. AND it helps while you revise the book.

This reason doesn’t have to be meaningful, or insightful, or even make sense. I like the girl falling over the boat idea so much because I love wondering how she’s going to deal with finding out her parents don’t love her. I also love the “pride comes before a fall” concept, so the girl finding out there’s more to life than fancy parties intrigues me. It’s that simple. When my plot starts to veer off course, I bring it back to: what situations would force her to come to terms with her family? How can I milk that for all it’s worth?



Some ideas I liked just because I had a great feel for the main characters. Others because I had a good sense of the world. This reason can be anything you like. Once you realize what draws you to the idea, you can also proceed to put more of what you find fascinating into the story. Why stop with just one thing?

Here is something that has really changed the way I write, and create ideas. I have noticed a huge difference in my stories after I started doing this.

Keep a file on your computer, call it whatever you think is appropriate. Mine is called “My theme” and subtitled “The Shiny”. Write in this file ideas and concepts that fascinate you. For example, I think dreams are really cool, and I want to write a story about someone controlling their dreams. Some other things I find cool to think about:

*Why is it that the things we want hurt us the most? Is it the act of wanting it? Or the thing itself? Is it us? Our choices? Something we can’t control?

*Why is it to really live sometimes you have to die? Why is it ironic, why do you have to give up your hair for a hair comb? Why?

*Forgiveness: are there some things someone can do to you that are so terrible, or just hurt you so bad that you could never really forgive them? What if this was a loved one? A family member?

Finding your themes is easy. What topics do you find yourself debating until the wee hours in the morning? What subjects are guaranteed to keep your interest? A quirky sidekick? (maybe you could write a story about a quirky sidekick, and what it’s like to play second fiddle) Angels and demons? Do you, like me, love those movies that came out in the 90’s that dealt with heaven and hell fighting each other?



I also have a list of subjects that intrigue in the same file. Here is a small sample:

survival in a dystopia
survival after an apocalypse
ghosts
zombies
angels and demons fighting, exorcism
Morpheus
Orpheus going back to the underworld
death is not the end
bouncers
serial killers
1940’s gangster
gang wars
Cyberpunk
Mental illness

I am not suggesting you write the same story over and over, but to have a place you can regularly go to for ideas that you love. In the girl falls off a boat idea, I could easily see myself asking the Forgiveness question. Could she forgive her parents? Could they make things better? Worse? How would she get over it (without whining through the entire book)?

Once you story identifying how you brainstorm best, and what excites you about a story, you can reliably create interesting ideas. I am not saying you don’t still need your muse (I would never suggest such a thing. I love my muse. He’s the greatest, bestest musing muse in the history of muses…there. I think I placated his ego enough) but when you have all the rest of this stuff in place it makes it a lot easier to start cross pollinating and getting eureka moments.

What is the best way you have found to brainstorm? What topics rabidly interest you?

(P.S. I could say I used all pictures of glasses to symbolize how brainstorming fills your creativity up, but that would be a lie. I just found those pictures aesthetically pleasing. Thank you, FreeDigitalPictures.net for the pictures)