Tag: Novel

Brainstorming: Bad for the Craft

The genesis of ideas. It needs work. If you’ve found yourself infected with the virus of inspiration, then treat it, don’t diagram it, cube it, whatever. Parlor tricks, the whole lot of them. Take brainstorming, for example. You don’t need it. Brainstorming is an outlet unto itself, a fool’s errand, and a dying pit for the writer who has too many kitschy ideas, not enough product.

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

Can you share some good brainstorming strategies for writers?

—Brianne McClellan, Fredericksburg, Va.

Brainstorming is for—cue Jabba the Hutt bellowing—weak-minded fools. Well, that could be the post right there, but I don’t believe in taking away without giving back. Writing All Wrong strives for environmental and critical sustainability.

Instead of brainstorming (which is a mindless, scattershot exercise in haphazardness, a poor way to tend the swirl of ideas, taking them from a mental state of uninterpretable incoherence to a written, physical state of uninterpretable incoherence), try these on for size:

1. Barnstorming

Buy a vintage aircraft and put on a show. Well, to translate the idiom, get the idea down and preserve its integrity. Like a relic aircraft, your idea takes maintenance. Don’t plop it on the paper. And once it’s there, don’t toy with squiggly lines and vapid maneuvers. Construct a repertoire, give your idea some moves, solid things you’ll be able to do with it when it comes time to write.

2. Brainbuilding

“Storms” do not imply creation, unless you consider a razing tornado creating modern, deconstructionist art out of an impoverished trailer park. Brainstorming “creates” things, but it creates randomness. Sure, jot down the brain dumps, but make sure those things harden at one point. As often as you can, make that idea flexible and coherent. Don’t settle for a word here or a word there—give your thoughts some muscle right out of the gate.

3. Creative Cartography

“But, but, but, that’s mind mapping! And that’s part of brainstorming, ha!” No, you’ve only confirmed yourself a dunce without much mind to map. Can you make a country, a world, of mind mapping? Not one I’d want to live in. Creative cartography lays out the surface of ideas, placing down roads, villages, peoples, capitals, and empty space. Don’t like hierarchy? Good. Go linear, make boundaries, lay something out that you can tie together. Borders change. Empires overwhelm others. Rivers dry up. Change the landscape of your story how you will, but there’s got to be a landscape to change.

4. Sketchbooking

You would think I hate sketches. I hate them when they suck, and when people make them public. It’s as much a stunt as swallowing a Goldfish™. But good sketchbooking is effective. Write a name atop a page. Give the character a soul. Words. Likes. Dislikes. Pencil in a place name. Give it a blurb. A GDP. Why you would vacation there. Where they hide the bodies. Write a premise. Throw in the people involved. The angles of approach. Why this matters.

5. JUST WRITE, DANGGIT.

If you have more “brainstorms” then written pieces, then you are doing this all wrong. Start doing it right. Write.

 Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com) and followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong). He is a founding member of Brainstorm Preparedness Watch.

Chapter Chatter: Creating Choice Chapters

Chapter 1: Necessity

On writing chapters, one must account for breaks in a story’s progression.

Chapter 2: Practicality

Chapters ought to flow in tune with the ebb and flow of the narrative.

Chapter 3: Introduction, as Usual

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

Chapter 4: Question

Does my book need chapters?

—Bob Brown, Cleveland, Ohio.

Chapter 5: Reply

Good to hear from you, Mr. Brown of Cleveland. I wish your team the very best next year. I can only hope “the very best” isn’t 2 wins of 16.

As for your question: Uh, maybe? Some do, some don’t. Depends on what you’re writing, who you’re writing to, what sub-genre (sludge-crimefighter-noir) you’re peddling. Take the Bible — in English, chapters. In Greek, no chapters, no chaser.

Chapter 6: Chapter Chatter

(Ok, stop that)

Every element of writing should be purpose driven, including the chapters. You include them with a purpose, or you omit them for a purpose. There’s no in-between, no cream filling for this Oreo. I’ll list the pros and cons.

Pro-Chapters: “A Chapter Away Keeps the Doctor Away. (Because doctors hate fiction, or something)”

1. Marks logical breaks in action, shift in focus, switching of scene. A no brainer. You didn’t write the story in one sitting, and it’s likely not good enough to be read in one sitting. Break it down.

2. Handy for narratives from multiple viewpoints. See: House, Bleak. If you want less of a challenge for your reader, switch views as you switch chapters.

3. Covers gaps of time in a single bound. Know how much time you can reasonably fit in between chapters? Up to 1,086 years tops. Not too shabby.

4. Suspense…

5. Masks the lack of consistency with vignettes, asides, spare parts cobbled to make a tale. Case in point: if you took the chapters out of Moby Dick, you’d be left with a great, weird, hypermodern book instead of a great weird book.

6. Deliberate obfuscation. Considering the previous note, adding more chapters than are necessary makes for an intentionally disorienting ride. And sometimes you want that reader to vomit from disorientation than to perish in the bile of boredom and its constituents.

Anti-Chapters: “No Shirt. No Shoes. No Chapters. No Problem. (Except you’re a homeless writer)”

1. Speed. Ever take a road trip without stopping for anything? Stops are for slops. Get there faster. Chapters do stutter the experience. If you want the whoosh in your writing, drive that straight shot. No potty breaking.

2. Temporal distortion. Life punctuates with day, night, sunset, sunrise, apocalypse, recrudescence. Cutting out the backbone of chapters gives you freedom to move in and out between time and space. There are no hands on this clock, but time moves. Somewhere.

3. Temporal limitation. If you’re telling a long story in a short amount of time, then chapters aren’t going to be your thing. Move along. They’re not the droids you’re looking for.

4. Shorter stories — they don’t need chapters. If this is a NaNoWriMo work, then chapters are surplus to requirements. They didn’t add to the word count, you know.

5. Challenge where there is no challenge. If you write in plain style, not a frill on the wardrobe, then your tale doesn’t need chapters. It’ll thud along happily without them.

6. Deliberate obfuscation. (Yes, this again.) Where there are no breaks where there should be chapter breaks, there lies confusion. And in some cases, that’s just the ticket.

What guidelines or rules do you have for writing chapters?

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and chaptered to the point of chapping.

NaNoWriMo – Know Failure? No Failure (next year).

November 28th. NaNoWriMo is just about done.

And if you’re done before the novel’s done?

That’s why we’re Writing All Wrong.

I might as well stick a fork in it. I’m done! No, I didn’t finish the novel, so I’m writing to find out how I can improve for next year. (and I read all of your advice so far, it DID help). Thanks! But how do I turn my mistakes in not finishing into success of finishing for next year?

—Barry Whitehall, Surrey, N.D. 

(Note: NaNoWriMo is short for Narcissistic Nonsense Writing Motivation or something like that. Simple premise: write a “novel” of fifty-thousand words within the month of November. The prize? Fifty-thousand dollars. In the competition’s 196-year history, only three have claimed the prize.)

Gotta keep this one tight. Christmas is coming.

While I’d normally suggest a look at what a failing performance you turned in over November, well, I don’t see why I wouldn’t suggest that right about now. But here’s how you give yourself that “exit interview,” that honest assessment, free of poisonous positive thinking.

The memories of the temporal element fade fast. Rarely do we remember how long things seem to take—only in the present does the concept of time seem clear. Every day passing is clouding your perception of how much time you had in the month. Look back at the calendar, your bank account, your medical bills: find evidence of where the wheels came off. Mismanaging time is a fair assessment, but it’s hard to spot, even with hindsight.

What you wrote shouldn’t fade as fast. Read back through it next year. Don’t look back anytime soon. You now have the luxury of reading this fairly. If you know how to read, you can see where you were cruising along, (the vigorous romantic tension between your stilted fantasy characters, describing backstories, more romantic cliché) and where you hit the potholes and mudpits (storytelling, dialogue, anything of substance).

In short, first mull over the memory of managing time. Find those traps that had nothing to do with the writing. And next year, if you can bear the stench of your novelcreature, find what’s right, and find what’s rotten. Makes less rotten, make more right.

And see you at the finish line of NaNoWriMo next year.

We’ll resume the steady stream of evergreen writing tips, tricks, and cheats next week.

Writing All Wrong can be reached via email (WritingAllWrong@me.com), followed on Twitter (@WritingAllWrong), and probed for more NaNoWriMo nectar during the month.