Story Brainstorm - Sink that Writers Block Boat...

 

Your mind's eye saw the start of your tale.

You motored along... click-clacking away with wild abandon...

Then, your fingers stopped. You stared at the screen. Your mind went blank. The cursor blinked on, and off, and on, and off, and OH, FOR THE LOVE OF PETE!, and off...

You knew it. The chickens finally came home to roost. You have nothing. You're an imposter. A writer wannabe. Your plot creation brain you thought you had hung a sign on your synapse door, reading, Gone Fishing.

 

Crikey. Just when stuff was getting good, too. Janey was almost up the hill. She could see the lighthouse in the distance. The black silhouette shape menacing her,  pursuing her, was gaining speed...

Annnnnnd, yep, there it was. Nothing.

• This is NOT the time to berate yourself. This is NOT the time to berate Janey. She's doing her best with what you've given her, which is zilch. She should jump off the page and hit you with something hard and sharp.
  
• This is not the time to swear; although, I won't hold it against you if you do (says me, the drunken cursing sailor).
• This IS THE TIME to brainstorm. NOT to quit. NOT to bash your tale or your characters or your creativity, or look derisively at your pet who's made a bed in that pile of printer paper, blaming that poor wee fur ball for your mis-tale-deeds.

As I've said before, you can't make it out of a dark forested tale if you don't know your way.

Dos:

• Shut down that laptop.
• Pull out a sheet of paper and your favorite pen.
• And start brainstorming... scribbling down every insane thought that comes your way, vis-à-vis Janey and that lighthouse, and her menacing pursuer.

Instructions:

• Do this top-of-mind exercise for at least 30 minutes.
• List Action - Cause - Effect outcomes for each idea.

Example: 

• Idea #1: Janey turns around - picks up a fieldstone - throws it at her pursuer > and misses. Ugh.
• Idea #2: Janey hides under a bush - waits for the pursuer to run by > they run by, she's in the clear! Oops, the pursuer smells her Chanel No. 5 she sprayed on herself this morning in the hopes she'd bump into Rex at the hardware store > pursuer finds, her, takes that fieldstone, and bashes it over her head. Ugh.
• Idea #3: Janey stops dead in her tracks, waits for the pursuer to catch up. She sees it's Rex from the hardware store. They run into the lighthouse, hand in hand, and make passionate goo-goo eyes at one another. > Aww.... that's the one!

(Psst: Rex is a lousy kisser, and he doesn't know a Philips from a Robinson. Methinks, this tale isn't going to end well for Janey. ;-) )

What I Need You To Do:

• Brainstorm with this Action - Cause - Effect exercise into AT LEAST 50% of your book.
• Yes, no plot point is carved in stone. You can alter at any time. But it will force your brain to CARVE A PATH to safely get your writer self out of that dark forest tale.

The Juicy Benefit: Your fingers will not be able to keep up with those brand-new visuals inside your head. You will be a story-telling master of your new plot world!

Now, the only thing that'll make you curse is the regret you have at not taking that high school typing class more seriously (Okay, that may be just me. I'm the only typing organism I know who mastered the fingering and as soon as I passed the course, returned to my two-finger pounding... sigh...)

HOMEWORK: If this is you today, STOP STARING AT THE SCREEN, shut down the laptop, and start brainstorming. Consider this the exercise you need to find that compass or GPS to get you and your characters through this exciting adventure. 

• ASSUME you'll discard 80% of those brainstormed ideas, keeping 20. 
• Write each subsequent plot point down on real or virtual cue cards.
• Start flipping those cards in the order in which the tale unfolds in the book.
• Keep doing this until you run out of cards, then repeat the brainstorm process, until you type The End.

Don't make your writer life harder than it already is. KNOW WHERE you're going. 

This is a general carved-out path for you to follow that WILL STILL ALLOW for on-the-spot creativity, but will NOT get you lost in that plot forest or drowning in that leaky Writers Block boat.

Being a writer doesn't assume that by laying fingers on keys the Story Gods will bleed a wondrous tale onto the page for you, simple-dimple. Maybe that's your uber-romantic notion of this career, but that's Hollywood versus reality.

Your New Mantra: YOU NEED TO KNOW WHERE TO GO. Say it with me, now,  three times... la-dee-da! Get up from your chair and do the mantra dance! I'll wait.

Now, with those newly minted plot cards in hand, go and storm your world. 

That leaky Writers Block boat has gone out to sea. Oops, there it goes, stern first, into the drink. Glub, glub, bubble bursts... so sad. (DIE! DIE, I say!)

Plot, Character Passion - How Long Can the Love Story Last?

 

Plot/Character Passion... How Long Can the Love Story Last?

It had better be months, if not years, my fellow scribes, for a book-length work takes a long time to create. The story and its characters... can you sustain the passion you have for both for however long it takes?

 

Odds of Long Term Literary Relationship Success: most new writers I've run across have no conscious idea of how immersed/dedicated you need to be with both in order to finish a book. 

 

To new writers, their story and the people in it, well, they fall in love at first sight, like you would with some handsome guy you barely know. And the two of you rush off to Vegas to get hitched. And after the honeymoon phase wears off, you guys can't return fast enough to Vegas to get a quickie divorce, aka, the new writer dropping that unfinished manuscript like it's a hot, infected potato, and shoves it into the back of their desk drawer, never to see the light again.

 

Grrreat...just peachy........

Are we still having fun?

 

Moral of this Pathetic Story: don't jump at the next shiny idea that hits your periphery. Think long and hard about it. Can it, and you, sustain the passion for the time it takes to flesh that pal out into a long work? Can you two endure the months of frustrating research before one word hits the page? Can you live through the bad drafts and the rewrites and the problematic scenes and sentences that take forever to get right, and even then, go to your editor smelling like poo?

 

Did I mention writing a book is work?

 

Hint: pick a story idea that has been with you for many years. All of my book-length pieces have been traumatic events or societal mysteries that have tumbled around in my head for decades, so without one word written, those happenings and the people they affected have always been there, in my subconscious, waiting for the right time to be chosen as books.

 

Note: that's not to say new ideas don't have lasting power. It's just ideas that you've already lived with for quite some time have become quiet loves, haven't they? Not some flash in the pan momentary passion.

 

The Plot: study it. Ensure it has lasting tension, story power, for 300 pages.

The Characters: have you fully rounded them out? Have you lived with them long enough so you guys CAN endure the mundane months/years ahead? In good writing times and in bad? And yes, my peeps, this book will be a marriage, for better, for worse, in more poverty than wealth. How dedicated are you to this relationship?

 

My Advice: keep a running notebook of all those shiny, new ideas, but think long and hard about the ones you "think" could make a book. If the passion dies, so will the piece. And a new writer holds enough doubt in their head. They don't need to pile on.

 

Spoiler Alert: In the movie, Love Story, Ally McGraw croaks, so Ryan O'Neal doesn't have time to get sick of her bratty ways... ;-)

The Story Idea Hoarder...

 

The Idea Hoarder - An Addiction to the Next New Shiny Thing...

Most of you, I imagine, have seen the TV show, Hoarders, where people collect everything and anything, and never organize or throw away any of those things, their hoard becoming an uncontrollable monster that impedes their life progress.

 

Slot in story ideas for a house hoard... are you seeing a connection here, my wittle furry writers???

 

Many wordsmiths have an addiction to the next Shiny New Idea.

Often, those writers have sky-scraper sized mounds of notebooks and half scribbled attempts on those collected ideas, but none are completely fleshed out nor finished because, yet again, another new and shiny idea presents itself. I imagine it's the equivalent of shoe or book shopping to some, and like any hoard, the pile becomes uncontrollable, and eventually paralyzing.

 

If a person comes into adulthood with this affliction, I'll be honest here… it's tough to un-ring that bell. 

 

I've tried with quite a few writers, and it becomes a hand-holding endeavor to get the writer from to A to Z on a single idea. It's not because they aren't dead smart. They are. It's a matter of having them apply two skills, muscles they don't often flex - focus and discipline.

 

Idea Hoarders are like squirrels on Speed.

I'd seriously rather herd cats.

Sorry for the reality check here...

 

And those two skills are put to the test when Idea Hoarders are left to their own devices. It's the same as letting an addicted shopper in a mall or an alcoholic in a bar, unsupervised. Idea Hoarders will find that next new shiny idea and wander away from the hard work of fleshing out the previous one.

 

It has a lot to do with the need to escape. 

 

Fun is, well, way more fun than the work needed to write an idea through to completion. That takes a semi-truck-filled load of patience and perseverance to endure the days when the words fight to hit the page, and those are aspects of the writers process never very appealing to the Idea Hoarder.

 

If you feel this maybe you, and in order to exist you need to be working on more than one project at a time, then you need to become very adept at Session Juggling. That's where you schedule writing sessions to work on each project at hand, and you do NOT stray from that schedule, and you do NOT work on more than one project in a given writing session.

 

The scheduling format can take whatever shape you want. Maybe on weeks 1 and 3 of a month, you work on Project A, and Project B is dealt with on weeks 2 and 4. Maybe within a writing week, you designate certain days to certain projects. Or maybe you add up the total amount of weekly hours devoted to writing, and you divvy them up per the many projects on hand.

 

THE KEY: NO project is abandoned. Each has its time in the writing sun, as it were. Each has its own working session(s), so it can be worked through and completed right to typing/writing, The End. It will take you longer to get there because you are working on multiples, but get there you WILL. No more idea hoarding.

 

An Idea Hoarder has to decide to recalibrate their mindset. It can't be just about hoarding ideas and not fleshing those out to a product that a reader can enjoy/seek knowledge. Ideas don't help anybody if they aren't thoroughly constructed and delivered as a completed product. Everybody can have an idea. It's what an artist DOES with that idea that counts.

 

HOMEWORK: If you think you're an Idea Hoarder, tonight, get serious with those shiny new tidbits of thought, and craft a weekly or monthly schedule where each new story has its allotted writing session.

I recommend no more than three ideas scheduled at any one time. Personally, I'm not a fan of multiple idea juggling, but with Idea Hoarders, compromise is the next best thing. Just ensure you schedule only what you can realistically and physically handle, so writer burnout doesn't take hold.

 

And just the like TV show, let's order in the dump trucks and hire the organizers to divide and conquer your schizophrenic approach to writing, and let's get a few cherished projects done... instead of them toppling over on you and burying you alive!

 

Okay, that last visual is a shiny new idea right there.

It's mine.

Don't hoard it! :-P