Brainstorming; Part One

All writers must discover their own process for developing the stories, and naturally the process varies from writer to writer. The idea of having a process seems to add credibility to the idea that an author can do it again; otherwise, the writer may flounder hopelessly in a sea of trail and error—thus, the need for the term one-book wonders?

I’m a big fan of the bubble map (vein map) in the early stages of brainstorming, and I’m guessing most writers use the Donald Maass Breakout Novel Questions. Knowing each writer has to find the process that works for him or her, I offer two of my brainstorming tools in hope others will find a tidbit they can tailor to fit their personal style. I’m guessing the idea of following a process may even cause some pantsers to hyperventilate, but here goes.

One step in my brainstorming process is the “The Playmaker Strategies” which I gleaned from “The Elements of Influence” by Alan Kelly. This book was written primarily for managers, business leaders and campaigners, but it has given me some great strategies for my characters to use and move the plot along. The book is out of print, but you can still get an inexpensive used copy from www.amazon.com. Below is a brief summary of a few of the playmaker strategies.

The Pause Strategy
The playmaker (character) remains silent and allows the competition (other character) to talk until they talk themselves into a corner (or reveal too much information).
The author cites the example of an important meeting when Winston Churchill and his political counterpart were both called to a meeting with the current prime minister. During the meeting Churchill remained silent and let the competition (who was more qualified) talk himself out of the job. I’ve used this strategy to have my female character to talk endlessly and thus reveal more information than she intended while the brooding male listens quietly.

The Ping Strategy
The playmaker (character) drops a hint or dribbles out important information to evaluate the response from the opposing team. It’s a low-impact way to check on the competition’s pulse on a given situation. This is often used at poker tables where the players lightly rib their opponents to watch for their reactions. Story characters can use this strategy to test the response of bad news or some secret a character fears will get out.

The Filter Strategy
The player (character) allows some information to get out and holds back other info in order to control which facts might be used to his or her advantage. For example, a soldier is killed during battle, and the army paints him as a hero as it draws on the patriotism of family and friends, not revealing the full truth—his death was the result of friendly fire. A story character might make a serious mistake and knowing he or she is about to get caught, but uses the situation as if it was planned, while at the same time hiding bits of the truth.

The Deflect Strategy
An attempt to divert a rival’s attack, either to avoid or minimize its impact. Also known as dodging, and passing the buck. Example; A famous baseball player on trial was asked about his use of steroids, and his response was; “I cannot answer these questions without jeopardizing my friends, my family, and myself.” Instead of answering the question, he cleverly diverted it.

The Pass Strategy
Typically used by a player as a means of bailing out of a marketplace to preserve resources or focus elsewhere. The book uses the example of IBM selling its PC business to China’s Lenovo group—in order to focus profits elsewhere. Likewise, a story character might withdraw from his previous agenda under the cover of “the good of others” while in reality he has to focus his energy on a more pressing or more important issue.

The Lantern Strategy
The deliberate preemptive disclosure by a player of its own flaw, mistake or some source of potential embarrassment or controversy. Thus, the character volunteers to confess his mistake before someone else can do so. IE—report the bad news on your own terms before someone else can report it on their terms. The book uses the example of the 1952 Richard Nixon Checker’s Speech when he had to fend off accusations that he had accepted illegal campaign contributions. Nixon surprised his detractors by doing the unexpected. Instead of dodging the charges, he confronted them directly, point by point—even to the extent of the gift of their dog Checkers.

Peacock
The unsolicited parading by a player of a novelty to generate attention in a marketplace. Peacocks usually hinge on a novelty or unusual action—to spur market talk. Good peacocks have staying power and are remembered for years. Example; Oprah and the 7-million dollar car giveaway. It shows who has the power. How many times do we see a story where a wealthy character gives so generously, even to the point that it diminishes the sacrifices the main character makes, causing us to dislike the big giver?

The book explores twenty-five of these playmaker strategies, which it breaks down into precise moves and countermoves by which the competitive advantage is won and lost. I go through each strategy and try to come up with a way in which each one might add something to my story. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But it has worked enough to be worth the effort.

Perhaps you have a brainstorming strategy of your own. Care to share? Next month I’ll give an overview of George Polti’s thirty-six dramatic situations.

Street Smarts for the Writer PART TWO

We never go into a room to write alone, we go crowded by our own experiences—Julia Cameron

The essential ingredient for any novelist is driveness.—John Gardner

Over time authors have discovered that routine is a better friend than inspiration.—Ralph Keyes

Technique alone is never enough. You have to have passion. Technique alone is just an embroidered potholder.—Raymond Chandler

A novelist’s discipline and technique are infinitely more important than inspiration.—David Madden

The correct detail is rarely exactly what happened; the most truthful detail is what could have happened, or what should have.—John Irving

Don’t say the old lady screamed—bring her on and let her scream.—Mark Twain

No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money—Samuel Johnson

No one but a blockhead ever wrote except for love…You must do it for love. If you do it for money, no money will ever be enough, and eventually you will start imitating your first successes, straining hot water through the same old teabag. It doesn’t work with tea, and it doesn’t work with writing.—Erica Jong

Words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; …Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all. –Winston Churchill

After I had written the Grapes of Wrath and it had been to a large extent read and sometimes burned, the librarians at Salinas Public Library, who had known my folks, remarked that it was lucky my parents were dead so that they did not have to suffer this shame. I tell you this so you may know what to expect. Now get to work—John Steinbeck

Often I am asked if any writer ever helped or advised me. None did. However, I was not asking for help either, and I do not believe one should. If one wishes to write, he or she had better be writing, and there is no real way in which one writer can help another. Each must find his own way. –Louis L’Amour

Books don’t get easier to write. It’s not a formula.—Terry McMillan

…for the most, writing is now just a horrible grim burden. I wouldn’t do it if I were not morally engaged to do it.— Katherine Anne Porter

My schedule is flexible, but I am rather particular about my instruments; lines Bristol cards and well-sharpened, not too hard, pencils capped with erasers.— Vladimir Nabokov

I write my first version in longhand. Then I do a complete revision, all in long hand. Then I type a third draft on yellow paper, a very special certain kind of yellow paper.—Truman Capote

An author must develop a deliberate process used to help facilitate the writing experience, otherwise there is no way to retrace those steps and repeat them.—Stanley D. Williams (The Moral Premise)

KennyNoble@hotmail.com

Street Smarts for the Writer: (PART ONE)

One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book, give it, give it all, give it now.—Annie Dillard

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. –Robert Frost

If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that’s read by persons who move their lips when they’re reading to themselves.—Don Marquis

Always assume your reader is at least as smart as you.—Sue Grafton

I have found that a story leaves a deeper impression when it is impossible to tell which side the author is on.—Leo Tolstoy

The shorter and the plainer the better.—Beatrix Potter

You have to throw yourself away when you write.—Maxwell Perkins

There isn’t any secret. You sit down and you start and that’s it.—Elmore Leonard.

Write in a café can work to improve your concentration. The café atmosphere keeps the sensory part of your mind busy so the deeper quieter part of you that creates and concentrates is free to do so—like occupying a baby with tricks while slipping a spoon of apple sauce in its mouth. Mozart had his wife read stories to him while he was composing for the same reason.—Natalie Goldberg

I never begin a work without being terrified I won’t finish it.—Danielle Steel

When I wrote the last line, I remember that I cried; “well, I’ll never beat that,” and threw the inky pen at the opposite wall.— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (on The White Company)

Caress the detail, the divine detail. –Vladimir Nabokov

When you endeavor to be funny in every line you place an intolerable burden not only on yourself but on the reader. You have to allow the reader to breathe.—S.J. Perelman

You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.—Saul Bellow

The best thing you can do about critics is never say a word. In the end you have the last say, and they know it.—Tennessee Williams

Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep yourself going—William Zinsser

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.—Jack London

It would be crazy to begin revising immediately after finishing the first draft, and counter to the way the mind likes to create. You’re exhausted. You deserve a vacation. Go away from the project for at least a week.—Kenneth Atchity

I am convinced as a member of the reading public that bad [author] photographs are bad business. I have been put off reading books, which otherwise looked rather attractive, by the puss of the author printed on the back of the dust cover.—Raymond Chandler

I see the notion of talent as quite irrelevant. I see instead perseverance, application, industry, assiduity, will, will, will, desire, desire, desire. –Gordon Lish

The methods, even the ideas, of successful writers contradict each other in a most heartening way, and the only element I find common to all successful writers is persistence—an overwhelming determination to succeed.—Sophy Burnham

Do not pay any attention to the rules other people make…They make them for their won protection, ….—William Saroyan

You must once and for all give up being worried about successes and failures. Don’t let that concern you. It’s your duty to go on working steadily day by day, quite steadily, to be prepared for mistakes, which are inevitable, and for failures.—Anton Chekhov

Maybe you have some favorite advice that has been meaningful to you. Please--share it with us.

Having "Enough"...and Wanting More

Recently, I said, “Enough.” It wasn’t easy. But I did it.

I’d been working my bloomin’ tail off at the day job to get a book out for my employer, I was crosseyed with fatigue, and yet I still took two projects home that Friday evening, something I never do...simply because I didn’t want to look like someone who didn’t care if her colleagues’ work went out on time
I’m here to tell you...this is a bad idea.

As I writer, I experience a different kind of “off” time from my fellow editors.They’re readers, with no real aspirations to write. When they go home from the office, they don’t go “home” to another “office.
But I do. And therefore, there come places at which I’ve finally had to say, “Enough.”

Those manuscripts I took home? They sat all weekend in the same place I put them on Friday afternoon. I felt guilty about it, but not enough to do anything more than say, “Nope. Burned out here. No can do.”

That week, I was working on Chapter Two of a new story. (I’m still working on Chapter Two of that new story!) I like this story. I could, eventually, love this story...if I made it a priority and wrote more per day. But when one comes home tuckered from one’s day job, it’s not a matter of priorities. It’s a matter of sheer lack of physical and emotional energy.

Which got me thinking about when it’s time to say “enough” to someone else’s mission...and embrace one’s own.

You see, there is another gig around the world of writing, one that doesn’t exhaust me—in fact, it fires me up creatively: speaking to writers about writing. I do it online, I’ve done it “live”at conferences, and I want to do more of it. Some people tremble at the thought of speaking, teaching, or presenting. Not me. I’d love, love, love, to do more of it. But when I have a week or two, or a weekend, like this, I wonder how I’ll ever make that transition.

So I’ve decided to do something really radical, for me at least: ask for help.

If you are a person, or know a person, who’s looking for an experienced (ohhh, boy, am I) veteran to come into a workshop, conference, or writing program and put the rookies through some basic training...
...please pass my name along.

I give you permission. Carte blanche. With only one condition.
Do not pass me along to people who only want someone to do this for free. (!)

(Please understand, I do know that the occasional free gig is fine. But as a habit? Not so much. The Bible says the laborer deserves his/her fair wage. Besides, one look at me should tell you...I like to eat. ‘nuff said.)

Bottom line is, it’s long past time, in this writer’s life, to connect with people who’ll appreciate what I’ve come to understand about the writing trade over the past (you don’t want to know how many) years, and who may be willing to offer good old-fashioned honest Coin of the Realm for it.

So I’m hanging out the shingle. I’m placing the fleece. I’m praying for the best. And, with a few blessings, sooner rather than later, I hope to say “Enough!” to the rest.

Thoughts?
Janny
(Janet W. Butler)