Thursday, January 01, 2015

Ideas and Brainstorming

That first rush of an idea is always fun, but sometimes the joy fades when you aren't sure what to do next. Here are some articles that deal with finding ideas and developing those ideas into workable stories.


A sampling of articles on ideas and brainstorming



See all articles on finding and developing ideas

See all articles on brainstorming and inspiration

7 comments:

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    1. If you're writing for fun and have no intention of publishing this story, you can do whatever you want. If you want to publish it one day, then you'd have to make sure it was changed enough so you're not plagiarizing another author's work.

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    2. If you find these articles helpful then I would suggest buying Janet's latest book "Planning Your Novel: Ideas and Structure". It is so fun to go through her process of turning ideas into stories. Stories that you are dying to write, confident you won't shelve it after a few thousand words

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    3. OMG embarressed me for typing Janet instead of Janice - Hangs head in shame :(

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    4. No worries, my father in law has called me Janet for over 20 years :)

      (and thanks!)

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    5. Question: What should I do with an idea document or my story.
      You see, I have this whole document filled with random ideas for my fantasy story. Typically, these ideas come at random for me, but I write them down, laterto be added to this document.
      Basically, any tips on what should I do? I open up this document, and watch my ideas jump all around from bullet to bullet.

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    6. I recently started using One Note to organize my novels and projects. It's free, and very easy to use, and it's made a huge difference in keeping my thoughts and research organized. I did a summary of it a few weeks ago actually: http://blog.janicehardy.com/2015/05/why-one-note-is-one-derful-for-writers.html

      I keep a master idea file for all my ideas, and whenever I get another detail I add it to the file. When the idea gets big enough, I transfer it to its own file so I can flesh it out more. Usually, when an idea gets big enough for its own file that means I'm close to being ready to write the book.

      Evernote is also a popular software, and some folks use Scriviner to organize ideas as well. But I'd suggest One Note to start and see how you like it.

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