« Story Ideas – Book Review, Part 1 | BLOG HOME | The Writing Life – A Video For All Who Write »
Story Ideas – Book Review, Part 2
By Deb Gallardo
Book Review
Story Sparkers: A Creativity Guide for Children’s Writers
Chapter Two
For more than 30 jam-packed pages, Marcia Thornton Jones and Debbie Dadey explain your brain and offer exercise after exercise to help you find those methods that work for you to generate story sparks. From the blinking cursor or blank sheet of paper that portend writer’s block, to dealing with that self-righteous, know-it-all, über-critical little editor that sits on your shoulder and rejects everything you create, you are led by the hand through every story-generating technique they could think of.
But don’t be lulled into just reading the how-to’s, the why’s and the wherefore’s. Have a pen and paper nearby. Trust me. You’ll be glad you did.
First they tackled the facts about right brain vs. left brain, showing which half creates, which half edits, and how to keep them both happy while maintaining your sanity as a writer. The strategies that follow encourage BOTH sides of the brain.
- Brainstorming
- No censoring allowed
- Record all ideas
- Piggy-backing and spin-offs encouraged
- Don’t delete any ideas
- Webbing – AKA ballooning, clustering and mind mapping
- Put a central idea in the middle
- Free-associate
- Jot down ideas around the center
- Connect related ideas in clusters
- Freewriting
- Write without risk – anything goes
- Write without thinking about technique, style or content
- Just write, even if it’s pages of junk
- The more you write, the more opportunities to find glowing sparks buried in the ashes of writing less than stellar prose
- Listing
- Similar to webbing, only written as a numbered list as ideas occur
- Repeating ideas is okay
- Use colored highlighters to organize related ideas
- Create a chart of the now categorized (clustered) items
- Questioning
- Kids are great at asking questions, so be sure to listen when you’re around them
- Write fast
- Try to think like a kid
- Some examples: Why are stop signs red, why are most roofs black, how many snowflakes make up a snowball, do worms sleep?
- Researching
- Take a trip to the children’s section of your library to browse
- For example, finding a whole shelf of books on Tall Tales about men led Debbie to her idea for a book about Annie Oakley to give women heroes a fair shake
- Digging for facts in one area can uncover just the sort of quirky detail that sparks your imagination
- The Five Senses
- Senses bring back strong memories that can trigger ideas that have laid dormant
- Examples: what does Christmas smell like, what did it sound like when the teacher said, “Put your heads down,” what does a dog’s ear feel like, what does a snow storm look like when you’re out in it, what taste was in your mouth when you lost your first tooth?
- Overheard Conversations
- Hang out at the mall
- Go to a restaurant to listen
- Read aloud a passage from a children’s book you’re unfamiliar with and design a story around it
- Talk to kids about what they like and what they hate about school, what they would change
- Dialogues
- Create a conversation between an object and a character
- Examples: for a story about the postal service, write conversations between a mailbox and neighborhood dogs, a package, a letter carrier who slams the door
- Letters (Real and Fictional)
- Since “speaker’s block” isn’t usually an issue, a logical conclusion is to speak on paper those words that come so readily to our lips, writing to an imagined audience of one or more
- This captures spontaneous ideas, takes the pressure off and allows your natural voice to develop — plus you never have to send these letters. They simply serve to get you writing
- Real letters can also contain nuggets of truth, slices of life or forgotten stories which can be mined later
- The Big Idea
- What things about life (or some smaller topic) do you believe are true? Write them down, then relate them to children
- What-iffing
- These questions can be as wild and woolly as you like
- Keep asking questions, which may lead you to more what-ifs, until you start getting usable ideas
- Thinking Small
- Make a 1-inch cardboard frame
- Use the frame to view your surroundings in small, easy-to-handle pieces
- Pictures
- Pictures can provide you with inspiration
- Look at old photos, magazine pictures, online nature jpeg files
- Don’t neglect background details that can be lost if you’re not focusing on them
- In photos of people, try to get to the truth captured in the picture
- Pet Peeves
- Without conflict there is no story, so make a list of your pet peeves
- Now think back to those things that bothered you in your youth
- Can you combine conflict from both lists?
- Reading
- Writers must read voraciously across many genres, so let your reading inspire you
- Take elements from various books, combine them, play what-if and throw in your own unique twist
- Forced Relationships
- The old “point to a word without looking” trick can provide inspiration when two or more unrelated words are “forced” into relationship
- The more incongruous the juxtaposition, the more interesting your story may be
- Time Lines
- Make a timeline of your life, good and bad, and analyze for milestones that resonate with strong emotions
- Now create a timeline for a character with memorable milestones
- Possessions
- Make a list of the things you’ve collected, items you consider precious
- Consider what “precious” possessions a child might have and how they reveal character and resonate with emotion
- Doodling
- DaVinci considered doodling to be a way to stimulate the imagination
- He studied all kinds of patterns that inspired ideas
- In My Shoes
- A writer’s workshop exercise of thinking about a character’s shoes should be slow and methodical
- Next visualize the entire outfit, including fingernails (clean or dirty)
- Musical Muse
- Listen to music — focusing on it
- Try several styles until one evokes an emotion or inspires an idea
Each strategy has 10 Try-It-Yourself exercises that will allow you to give all these methods sufficient practice to determine your favorites.
Related Posts
- Story Ideas – Book Review, Part 1
- Creative Writing Ideas – - Getting Started
- Story Ideas – Boost Your Brain with Story Ideas
- Creative Writing – - A Picture Could Be Worth 100,000 Words
- Story Ideas – 1,000-word Picture
3 Comments »
March 7th, 2008 at 5:11 am
Terrific! What a great list of ideas.
March 11th, 2008 at 9:49 pm
Misque Writer,
Thanks for your comment! Glad you enjoyed the post. Come back often. You’re always welcome.
Deb
June 14th, 2008 at 12:08 am
[...] maintaining your sanity as a writer. The strategies that follow encourage BOTH sides of the brain. Read Story Ideas – Book Review, Part 2 (Opens in new [...]