Jan 19, 2008

writing tips about brainstorming


After reading the first couple chapters of Think Better by Tim Hurson, I brainstormed 60 article ideas – sixty – and really 11, which I will write and send to magazines soon. Sixty writing ideas is huge, because finding new ideas can be the bane of a writer’s existence. It's the bane of mine, anyway.

Here's two of Hurson’s ideas about brainstorming: write or say all the ideas that pop into your heard no matter how crazy and, more importantly, keep going after you’re positive you have no more ideas. That’s the secret to fresh new plot twists, themes, characterizations, book ideas, and general writing ideas.

Writing quotation: “What if? What if? My mind raced, and my emotions kept pace at the sidelines, the way it always happens when a story idea arrives, like a small explosion of thought and feeling. What if? What if an incident like that in the park had been crucial to a relationship between father and daughter? What would make it crucial? Well, what if the father, say, was divorced from the child’s mother and the incident happened during one of his visiting days? And what if…” Robert Cormier's writing advice could make you a better writer.

Writing tip: Even if you don’t have the same passion and intensity as Cormier, you can sit down and brainstorm. In Tim Hurson’s Think Better, he urges readers to drop the judgmental censor and generate ideas that aren’t conventional. “It’s in the digging for more that your thinking becomes truly creative and novel,” he says.

Dig for more, fellow writers. It’s hard work to go deeper – and it’s infinitely more rewarding.

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