How to Have an Effective Novel Brainstorming Session
One questions I get asked a lot is how I get my ideas. I can’t really answer that because most come to me at the most random time. However, those ideas are usually vague story ideas. They’re not fully developed story lines. It takes brainstorming to come up with enough ideas to piece together to make an entire book.
The main story idea is the easy part. The rest of it is what makes me want to pull my hair out.
While one of the aspects I enjoy about being an author is figuring out the storyline. It’s like a puzzle. It can also be incredibly frustrating. I know I’m not the only person who struggles with being able to figure out all the scenes to get from the beginning to the end. So I thought I’d write about how I brainstorm for my novels.
The most important thing you must do when sitting down to have your novel brainstorming session is to be open minded. You may have a story idea in your head but be open to it going down a different path than your originally planned one. You never know where you might end up. Not being open to new ideas kind of defeats the brainstorming idea in the first place.
The second most important thing is to have colored pens and post it notes. I truly believe that fun planning tools help get your creative juices flowing (I’m only a little bit joking).
Personally, I couldn’t live without post-its and colored pens.
The goal of my brainstorming sessions is to solve the problem of needing content for a 70k book when all I have is a 3 sentence idea.
Easy, right?
Getting started is often the hardest part of the brainstorming process. Once I get going the ideas come faster and faster. Now that doesn’t mean they’re good ideas, but that’s fine. Sometimes you need a lot of bad ideas to find that one good one. At least I do. If I could make money from bad ideas…I would be filthy rich.
When I brainstorm, I take one thought at a time and try to exhaust the possibilities before moving to the next.
For example, if I know that Jack is the victim of a gunshot wound and he’s going to be found by Jill, I have a few places to start with my brainstorming.
1. Where is Jill going to find Jack?
2. Where was the gunshot wound?
3. What was Jill’s reaction?
Let’s take #1 Where is Jill going to find Jack.
Since I love my post-it notes, I will pull them out and start writing all the places I can think of and put them in my notebook. I keep them in a notebook because I can peel off the ones I’m using and then keep all the old ideas for later.
I can easily come up with 25 places, but not all will be ones I want to use. Let’s say my 3 favorites are:
1. The garden
2. The Library
3. The car
That gives me 3 completely different scene possibilities. I then brainstorm ideas on each one of those.
1. The garden
A. She finds him by the roses, is that symbolic?
B. She finds him in the fountain thinking at first he drown which sends her down the wrong path at first
C. She doesn’t find him. Her dog finds him as he’s hidden in the bushes.
Get where I’m going? Instead of trying to find the perfect idea that connects to the next I come up with several and then decide what might fit. I am constantly surprised at how often I go with an idea that wasn’t my first choice because it makes for a much more interesting storyline. I just hadn’t thought of it yet.
I also make sure to set a timer so I don’t spend 3 hours brainstorming ideas for one topic. I usually set my timer in 15 minutes increments. It is long enough to get more ideas than I’ll ever need and short enough not to exhaust my brain.
When you brainstorm and you’re not focused on trying to figure out how these ideas might work together you’ll feel a lot freer and your imagination will run wild.
Go grab your post it’s and get started!
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