Get Out of Your Head

Ideas are everywhere. If you doubt that, just tell someone you’re a writer and they’re sure to respond with their “great” idea for a novel. (That tendency may be why I rarely tell people what I do for a living, but that’s another blog for another day.)

Coming up with ideas is the easy part. The hard part is figuring out whether a particular idea has merit. Can it support an entire novel or even a short story? Is there a strong enough foundation on which to build?

There are many ways to develop your ideas and test them to see if they can last, but the best one is to get it out of your head. Pull that idea from the ether of your mind into the real world and anchor it on the page so it doesn’t drift.

Now I know It’s tempting to try playing with ideas in our heads to see if we can spin them into complete and realized stories. I do that too. It’s often called daydreaming. I love it. But it’s an ineffective way to build a plot. Our brains can only hold so much at a time before things begin to slip. Stop juggling those ideas and put them up on the page instead. You’ll be amazed at how seeing them in print spawns new ideas.

Personally, I prefer to go old school for this part of the process. I physically put pen to paper (butcher paper if it’s a novel). It’s how my mind works. I can follow ideas where they go, adding arrows to show connections, and circling those ideas I like and crossing out those I don’t. But do what works for you. Maybe mind mapping software is your best bet. Or the bulletin board feature of Scrivener or some other software. Perhaps it’s old school notecards you can shuffle. There’s no one way to do it. The only thing I recommend is to make your ideas tangible. Stop thinking it and write instead.

In my next blog I’ll talk about giving ideas time to grow.