The Brain Drain

So how do you make a stark white, blank, uninviting page turn from frightening to inviting? The artist side of me says, “Grab a pencil and draw,” and my new inner writing nature would add, “Type something.” To me, the two are a match made in heaven!

I think one of the hardest parts about writing is deciding where to begin. Like creating book ends, I like to start with where I want to end and then back-pedal to how I want the story to start. With both ends in sight, I create my story framework.

Storyline alternatives: I outline ideas on how I can connect the beginning to the end. I capture all alternatives — especially the ridiculous ones. Those kept my creative juices going and force me to keep my mind open to all ideas.
Character profiles: Like signing up for a dating service, I write down everything I can think of about each main character…physical characteristics, likes / dislikes, fears/joys, funny/annoying habits, favorite phrases, nicknames, etc. I decide which characters are friends, for how long, and what kind of relationship they have. I even find pictures of an actor, model, or anyone else I can find that meets my description and create a cast sheet. It helps the characters become real to me as I write their story.
Personality timelines: I want my characters to grow and since I have many characters to manage, I develop a personality timeline for each character describing what they are like at key story milestones. If I expect characters to evolve over time, I need to weave specific actions into the story that support their target behaviors.
Illustrations: As I’m laying out the story, I start my list of illustrations I would like to create. Since I am targeting a digital fantasy/romance book, I need to watch how many pictures I include in each book (to keep download size as small as possible). For my Blue Fire series, ‘marking’ is integral to the story, so I decided to focus on designing and drawing body tattoos and some of the special weapons. All of my drawings have hidden meaning, which I’ll discuss in a later blog post. I started a replica weapon collection to help motivate me to design the ones I want to include in my books.

With the above framework in place, I uncork my mind and let the ideas flow from my head to my keyboard uncensored to see where it leads me. One thought morphs right into the next…sometimes switching mid-sentence. I need to see accomplishments to keep myself motivated, so I don’t work in storyline order either. I bounce around to whatever scene I have a burning need to write about.

When my brain drain slows to a steady drip, I move into the next stage…refining content and creating my illustrations. This is when I let the PostIt notes and sketches fly…