FICTION WRITER'S BRAINSTORMERS JAMES
V.
SMITH J R .
SSI
WRITER'S DIGEST BOOKS
CINCINNATI, OHIO www.writersdigest.com
Fiction Writer's Brainstormer. Copyright ® 2000 by James V. Smith Jr. Manufactured in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published by Writer's Digest Books, an imprint of F + W Publications, Inc., 4700 East Galbraith Road, Cincinnati, Ohio 45236. (800) 289-0963. First edition. Visit our Web site at www.writersdigest.com for information on more resources for writers. To receive a free weekly e-mail newsletter delivering tips and updates about writing and about Writer's Digest products, send an e-mail with "Subscribe Newsletter" in the body of the message to
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Smith, James V. Fiction writer's brainstormer / by James V. Smith Jr. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 13: 978-0-89879-943-9 (alk. paper) ISBN 10: 0-89879-943-0 (alk. paper) 1. Fiction—Authorship. I. Title. PN3365.S63 2000 808.3-dc21
Designed by Sandy Kent Cover designed by Sandy Weinstein, Tin Box Studio Inc Cover illustration by John Pack ® SIS Production coordinated by Mark Griffin
00-043725 CIP
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DEDICATION
For Sue What I do, I do for you.
Acknowledgments Dave Borcherding, thanks for your extraordinary patience and thoughtful editing. Every writer should have such an editor with the good instincts and the professional touch. Lori Perkins and Peter Rubie, thanks for landing this contract. What a provocative, pleasurable assignment it has been.
About the Author James V. Smith Jr., is published both in fiction and nonfiction, including seven novels. His novels include three published action-adventure novels and a psychological thriller from Dell. Beastmaker, Beaststalker and Almost Human chronicle the horrifying results of genetic experimentation gone wrong. The Lurker is a psychothriller. His fifth novel, from Penguin USA, is Cradle of Fire, a techno-thriller set in the Persian Gulf. His latest novels are called Force Recon, a military action-adventure series for Berkley. In nonfiction, Smith collaborated with Harry S. Dent Jr. on The Great Boom Ahead, a futuristic economic forecast in hardcover from Hyperion in 1993, and a 1995 release from St. Martin's Press, Job Shock, a forecast for America's work revolution. Smith also wrote Word-of-Mouth Marketing with Jerry R. Wilson (Wiley, 1991). His You Can Write A Novel, a "how-to with attitude" from Writer's Digest Books, was published in 1998. Smith is a former news and feature writer for the Dallas Morning News and the Indianapolis News. He has published articles in Writers Digest, American Legion magazine, and Family Circle. As a freelance technical writer, he has published numerous articles in trade magazines. A Montana native, Smith is retired as an Army lieutenant colonel and is the managing editor of a weekly community newspaper, the Shelby Promoter. He lives in Montana with his wife, Susan, daughter, Kathryn, and two golden retrievers, Gus and Kelly.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part I 10 BRAINSTORMER STRATEGIES CHAPTER 1
How to Get Your Mind Right for Brainstorming...3 10 strategies for accessing your right-brain resources BRAINSTORMER STRATEGY 1 —
THEBEGIN...4 BRAINSTORMER STRATEGY 2—
Reject the Conventional Wisdom... 5 BRAINSTORMER STRATEGY 3 —
Act a Little Crazy...7 BRAINSTORMER STRATEGY 4—
Imagine Impossible Standards... 14 BRAINSTORMER STRATEGY 5 —
Never Settle... 18 BRAINSTORMER STRATEGY 6—
Simplify... 24 BRAINSTORMER STRATEGY 7—
Tap Into Genius... 26 BRAINSTORMER STRATEGY 8—
UROPIIII...32 BRAINSTORMER STRATEGY 9—
Reverse Polarity... 39 BRAINSTORMER STRATEGY 10—
Make Words Instead of Excuses... 45
Part II THE FICTION WRITER'S BRAINSTORMER IN ACTION CHAPTER 2
Brainstorming the Critical Elements of Your Story...51 Twenty-something problems and fifty-plus solutions in launching a piece of fiction CHAPTER 3
Brainstorming the Story's Nuts and Bolts...81 Thirty-plus problems and one-hundred-plus solutions in getting off on the right foot CHAPTER 4
Brainstorming Characters... 115 Ten-plus problems and forty-plus solutions in handling fictional players CHAPTER 5
Brainstorming Creative Scenes... 134 Twenty-plus problems and eighty-plus solutions in creating and evaluating scenes CHAPTER 6
Brainstorming Word Choice... 158 Ten-plus problems and fifty-plus solutions in working with a style that becomes you CHAPTER 7
Brainstorming Style and Writing Mechanics... 181 Ten-plus problems and forty-plus solutions in working with a style that becomes you
CHAPTER 8
A Brainstormer's Guide to Revision and Editing...260 Nine problems and one very huge solution in polishing your story
Part III ADVANCED WRITING—THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE WRITERS CHAPTER 9
The First Habit of Highly Effective Writers...214 Using continuous speech recognition software to dictate fiction CHAPTER 10
The Second Habit of Highly Effective Writers...218 Knowing when to package material for a series of "smaller" books CHAPTER 11
The Third Habit of Highly Effective Writers...226 Knowing when you have the right stuff for a big book CHAPTER 12
The Fourth Habit of Highly Effective Writers...234 Ignoring writer's block CHAPTER 13
The Fifth Habit of Highly Effective Writers...236 Texturizing with transitions and tie-backs
CHAPTER 14
The Sixth Habit of Highly Effective Writers...243 Inventing advanced images CHAPTER 15
The Seventh Habit of Highly Effective Writers...250 Writing stunning dialogue CHAPTER 16
Bonus! The Eighth Habit of Highly Effective Writers...264 Sketching action into the white space APPENDICES
Appendix 1: Puzzler Solutions...274 Appendix 2: Blank Forms...279
"If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate: The 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies." —WILLIAM FAULKNER
THE FICTION WRITER'S BRAINSTORMER
Brainstormer Warm-Up -• Feeling creative? Let's see what you've got. Solve this puzzler, a remark by a famous American. It'll warm up your brain before you dig into the first chapter. Genius is . . . spirl/cation n 9t9/o/spiration Did you solve it? Good. Was it because . . . uryy4me?
Or miee e uuuu? If you didn't get it, look at the quote at the top of page 3. Then check out the Solutions on page 274. Now that you know what you're in for, let's brainstorm, shall we?
2
"Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." —THOMAS EDISON
*KfI CHAPTER 1
N*
How to Get Your Mind Right for Brainstorming Ten strategies for accessing your right-brain resources
"More brain, O Lord, more brain!" —GEORGE MEREDITH
Before you get going on brainstorming strategies, I have a question: What's a brainstormer, anyhow? hanks for asking. Start with the word brainstorming: a process in which two or more heads spin out creativity with more zap than any one mind. Leading to brainstormer: a book of tools to help you access the littleused areas of your mind. Think of this brainstormer as a box of flints. Strike one of its tools against the steel of your gray matter to create sparks of genius. I wrote the book for fiction writers, amateurs and pros, including screenwriters and playwrights. But writers of every stripe can also benefit from it—ad writers, authors, PR staffers, editors, reporters, columnists, writing coaches, speechmakers, teachers—anybody who writes as a hobby or career. If you want to solve a writing problem, this book can help you put the "creative" in creative writing. Researchers tell us we use only 15 percent of our right brain. With some of us, it's closer to 1 percent. Either way, tap into the genius you never use. Find a
THE FICTION WRITER'S BRAINSTORMER
brainstormer tool to help shake down a little of that dazzle from the sky and use it in your work. Now, let's get going, shall we?
Brainstormer Strategy 1—THEBEGIN "All this will not befinishedin the first one hundred days... nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin." —JOHN F. KENNEDY
To identify this strategy, you'll have to solve this simple puzzler: THEBEGIN If it gives you trouble, stay tuned. It'll come to you. In fact, you'll find the correct response right before your eyes. Meanwhile, solve the maze in Figure 1 on page 5. Time yourself. Ready, set, GO\ Even if you solve the puzzle instantly, check out the solution beginning on page 274.
So what does a maze puzzle have § • » to do with writing? Plenty. Figure 1 teaches many lessons. Let's look at a few. One, try to see the maze as a story plot with all of its twists, turns and dead ends. Using Strategy 1, a writer knows the end before she writes the tale. Now she can see the path from start to end (or from end to start, if you like). She can also texture a story by leading a reader into dead ends—without losing her own way. Two, if a writer knows the end of his story before writing it, he can judge scenes before he creates them. He'll know whether the action moves his tale toward the climax or peters out before reaching the climax. He might choose not to write a scene and fill in gaps with narration. This saves him hours of time and energy. Think of how much time he'd waste if he wrote the novel first and then saw he had to cut fifty pages of action that he should have seen as surplus from the start. 4
HOW TO 6ET YOUR MIND RIGHT FOR BRAINSTORMING
Start Here FIGURE 1. Puzzler for Strategy 1—Begin at the End
Three, foreshadowing is so much easier when you know where the story's going. You know foreshadowing, right? That's when you plant a detail early in the story, and that detail comes into play much later. THEBEGIN helps a writer foresee, so he can foreshadow. And it leads us right to Strategy 2.
Brainstormer Strategy 2 — Reject the Conventional Wisdom :t "Only the gamefish swims upstream." —JOHN MOORE
Here's another puzzler for you to solve. Don't think about this exercise too long. Just fill in the blanks. Give the answers writing teachers always teach.
THE FICTION WRITER'S BRAINSTORMER
Five Conventional Rules for Conventional Writers 1. stereotypes. 2. Write about things you 3. SASE. 4. multiple submissions. 5.
cliches.
Did you fill in words like avoid, know, enclose, do not send and don't use! Of course you did. Those rules show up in every writer's manual since Moses set down his own Ten Commandments for Scribes. The trouble with conventional wisdom is that it is soooooooooo conventional. And so automatic. We accept it at its face value. We don't give it a single critical thought. We don't dare go against the grain or swim against the current.
A Wait a sec. If it says so in
