Brainstorming to Your Novel’s Success

Brainstorming to Your Novel’s Success

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Write Your Brainstorming Ideas as They Come to You

Brainstorming is one of my most useful writing tools. It helps me find my stories within the jumble of ideas. Disjointed ideas fly through my brain at random times, like when I’m in the shower or just about to fall asleep. When I brainstorm I ask important questions like:  How should my story start? How should this scene end? What are my characters personalities? What would my antagonist say when the protagonist is down? How should I kill that character? Should there be a sex scene?

To brainstorm, remove yourself from distractions. Close the door to your study and let nothing interrupt your thoughts. Relax. Take several deep breaths to clear your mind of interruptions to your creativity.

Find Your Story Through Brainstorming

What is your goal?

“Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.”  ― Andrew Jackson

What are you trying to achieve?  The entire plot or what a character would say in a certain situation?  From developing a plot line to creating character quotations, these are good starting points to brainstorm. What requirements (or limits) should your thoughts stay within?

“Poirot,” I said. “I have been thinking.” “An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.” ― Agatha Christie, Peril at End House

Who will read your work? Will these ideas go into your novel or blog post? You know your audience. They will keep you within the boundaries of your characters and prevent you from diverting from their goals. Have traits of your protagonist in mind beforehand. This will keep you focused as your develop your story. How will one character mesh with your other characters? Brainstorm these questions.

It may be a good idea to start with a clean sheet of paper, perhaps a note book or office tablet for ample room.  Write your brainstorming topic on the top of the page. Also place today’s date on the corner to help you come back to review your ideas at a later date.  Again, whatever amount of paper you may think you need, make sure there’s more room.

Let Your Brain Loose

“The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.” ― Agatha

Christie

Ask the specific question(s), let your mind wonder to the question and random images will come to mind.  Jot everything down – everything no matter how bizarre it seems at the moment. Do not be judgmental on what comes to your mind. Jot it down. Brainstorming is about letting go and letting your creative thoughts come forth.

Write your ideas as they come to you.  Keep those pesky voices of the past like elementary school teachers who told you how wrong your grammar and spelling inaccuracies. Those things are not important while you brainstorm. Any and every idea that comes to your mind is worth jotting down. Remember, these new creative thoughts and words may not make sense while you brainstorm.  Any written thoughts may produce results you’re looking for, but offer more ideas for your characters, scenes and/or plot.

You may brainstorm if you want, or until your brain hurts.  If you wish, you could time yourself for each creativity session.  Since you were away from your other responsibilities, you may need to return to them.

Evaluate What You Brought Forth.

“When the mind is thinking, it is talking to itself.” ― Plato

When you believe you have exhausted all your creative thoughts on the subject, stand up, take a few breaths and stretch.  If you cannot put down any other ideas on the paper, this topic is finished. Again, with the title of your topic and date on top, you can come back again to re-start your brainstorming process on that topic.  Think again on the subject and pour over your creative list.  If you haven’t found what you are looking for, brainstorm again now, or later.

Now you have created ideas to get you writing. You can turn your, messy, chaotic creation into your next blockbuster novel.

 

A book in itself is unlikely to make or break you, but it is a powerful extension of your business or blog. More…

Tell everyone about your stories. More…

Need more help brainstorming your story? More…

Don’t forget to edit your character’s story. Are you using the right words to describe them? More …

Start Writing Now – This book is for the dreamers who say one day they will write their stories and become a writer. Then they forget their dreams of writing. But they can write now – write those stories now. I mean right now.

How Not To Write A One Star Novel – Do you want to create a five star novel? Learn from other writers’ mistakes and prevent yourself from receiving any one star reviews for you hard work. Here is your free e-book.

R. M. Scott Author Site

Motion, then while editing I didn’t remember what I meant and had to sound out words so the software will type the right words.

My Way to Keep My Writing in Motion

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Keep Writing – Keep In Motion

Down at the train yard it takes five people to push an empty boxcar into motion. But once the car is in motion, it only takes one person to keep it moving. Writing seems to be that way when you’re motivated.

Creative writing takes a lot of effort to start, but what is the secret for staying in motion?

As I have mentioned before I draft my stories using a pencil and a spiral notebook. This way to put down my ideas quick while before the text dissipates. Later, I will put that draft into the computer. First, I lock the door to prevent interruptions, make sure I have refreshment handy (water, pop, tea, snacks), banish my demanding cat to the basement, and sit down at the computer.

But what happens when my clumsy typing skills take me out of creative mode?

I prevent that by using Dragon Naturally Speaking (DNS) speech recognition software and speak into a microphone to transfer my creative thoughts to text. This took time getting used to. However, the efforts paid off as I increased my writing output. Using DNS I can deliver my stories three times faster than I can type them. I am not a trained typist so I use the hunt and peck method and often end up with a bunch of gibberish underlined with red lines. When I go back to correct the misspelled words, I forget which word I intended to use. Worse, my spelling is not stellar. I spell phonetically, but the correction mode guesses my intention and may give the wrong word. It takes several tries to get the right spelling. When that happens, I will stop my story creation mode to look words up in the dictionary, or even worse, come up with a synonym.

Is Dragon Naturally Speaking or any Speech Recognition Software Easy to Use?

The negative part of using DNS is the time required to ‘train’ the software to understand me without the software misunderstanding my voice. But as the instructions state, it ‘gets smarter as it learns the words and phrases you use the most, spelling even difficult words and proper names correctly.’ In the beginning, I had to go back and repeat words to get the program to react and type. If I wasn’t paying attention, the software typed a group of words that were not what I said. Then while editing I didn’t remember what I meant and had to sound out words so the software will type the right words. If I have words or names are not in the software’s dictionary, there is an area where you can train the software to recognize strange words or names. After that initial phase, the software got to know my voice and has made my story creation easier.

In the long run, despite the hassles I had in the beginning, DNS allows me to stay in creative motion. Keep writing. Don’t stop.

More on My Way to Keep My Writing in Motion

How to Keep Writing Your Book

Just Keep Writing!

Motivation Tips that Actually Work: 6 Sure-Fire Ways to Get Writing and Keep Writing

Writing My Novel: Keep on Writing

 

A book in itself is unlikely to make or break you, but it is a powerful extension of your business or blog. More…

Tell everyone about your stories. More…

Need more help brainstorming your story? More…

Don’t forget to edit your character’s story. Are you using the right words to describe them? More …

Start Writing Now – This book is for the dreamers who say one day they will write their stories and become a writer. Then they forget their dreams of writing. But they can write now – write those stories now. I mean right now.

How Not To Write A One Star Novel – Do you want to create a five star novel? Learn from other writers’ mistakes and prevent yourself from receiving any one star reviews for you hard work. Here is your free e-book.

R. M. Scott Author Site

Those emotional scars will dictate their traits.

How would you dress your characters?

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What Character Traits Do They Wear 

What do your characters look like? Physical features may explain your characters personality and traits. If you plan to have your character as a roughhouse, put a scar on his face. That scar will have a story to tell. That scar is a back story for you to use throughout your novel.

What about your female characters? Is she shy? That’s because she may have a physical anomaly she’s ashamed of. What horror stories can she tell the torments from her days in public school? She may interact in a negative way to your other beautiful female characters. Her back story shows her emotional scars. Those emotional scars will dictate how she acts.

What about what your characters wear?

I am reminded of a Bugs Bunny/Elmer Fudd cartoon when a nearby train drops a crate of various hats. The crate opens and hats fly towards our characters. And as each hat plants on the heads of those characters, they took on the personality of the design of that hat. Military hats, they act as if they were in the Army. If ladies’ hats falls on their heads, they transform their personalities and act like a lady. This is the same with what your characters wear. That outward expression shows your characters’ personality based on the style of clothing they wear or physical anomalies they may have.

There Are Two Ways To Determine Character Traits – Personality and Physical Appearance More…

Dressing your characters to fit their personality and describing the clothing will show a clearer picture of your characters. If your character has a flamboyant personality, the more outrageous the clothing the character wears.

For the normal, ordinary, run-of-the-mill characters, you need little clothing description. Your readers will envision everyday clothing on your everyday characters. If that’s what you want, that’s fine. But the more colorful the characters, the more colorful outfits they should wear.

The Fiction Writer: How to Make Your Character Cry

A book in itself is unlikely to make or break you, but it is a powerful extension of your business or blog. More…

Tell everyone about your stories. More…

Need more help brainstorm the character traits in your story? More…

Don’t forget to edit your character’s story. Are you using the right words to describe them? More …

Start Writing Now – This book is for the dreamers who say one day they will write their stories and become a writer. Then they forget their dreams of writing. But they can write now – write those stories now. I mean right now.

How Not To Write A One Star Novel – Do you want to create a five star novel? Learn from other writers’ mistakes and prevent yourself from receiving any one star reviews for you hard work. Here is your free e-book.

R. M. Scott Author Site