Intro

There are lots of different brainstorming methods out there, and different ones work better for different people. Like all parts of the writing process, there is no right or wrong way to do it—that’s especially true with something that’s as behind-the-scenes as brainstorming.

The way I do it is pretty simple: I dump all of the ideas I have for a project into a notebook or Notion page, and then I start trying to turn them into a coherent story. It might sound like magic when I say it like that, but don’t worry; in today’s post, I’m going to tell you exactly how I do it.

So let’s dive into it.

Getting the Ideas Out

Every brainstorm I’ve ever done has started with me just getting all of my ideas down and out of my head. These could be anything from characters, to scenes, to important relationships, to worldbuilding things—anything that I thought of before I sat down to start officially brainstorming.

Obviously, not everything I write down at this stage is actually going to make it into the final story, but that’s part of the point. By writing it down or typing it out, I can really look at my ideas and see them in a different light. I’ve found that, sometimes, an idea seems really good and solid in my head but, after I write it out, I start to see problems that I didn’t notice before. This doesn’t necessarily mean it was a bad idea, but it does mean that I’m going to have to think about it more and try to address whatever the issue is. Sometimes, I can find a way to fix it and keep it in, and sometimes I find that it’s not going to work and toss it. Either way, it’s a step in the right direction; I’m starting to think about the story in more functional terms, not just in mind-movie terms. (Though mind-movies are fun.)

The amount of stuff I get down at this point can vary a lot depending on how many ideas I’ve had for the project. Most of the time, it’s only a few short paragraphs, but I’ve had it happen before where it took me days to get everything out of my head and onto the page. While it can be helpful to have a lot of ideas for a project right from the get go, it isn’t a necessity, so I don’t worry too much if my initial idea dump is really short. That’s where the next step comes in…

Fleshing Out and Building on My Ideas

Now is when I really start trying to turn all these random ideas into something more cohesive. I look at what I have in the initial idea dump and figure out what I still have to come up with if I want to turn this into a functional story. Usually, my first ideas are pretty sparse—mostly just stuff about the protagonist, with maybe a few vague ideas for the deuteragonist and the plot if I’m lucky—so I still have a long way to go.

To be clear, I’m still not worrying so much about turning it into an actual functioning story at this point, but I am starting to lay the foundation for doing it. This is usually when I start coming up with the general plot and the antagonist, but I don’t really worry about making sure I’ve got all the necessary plot points or know how everything’s going to play out yet. I just want the basic ideas there so that I can build on them more in the next phase.

What I am focusing on is fleshing out what ideas I already have and figuring out more of the individual elements—things like other important characters, the world, and the general conflict, all of which are things that I usually specifically have to sit down and think up. This is also generally where I figure out what the protagonist and antagonist’s motivations to do what they’re doing are, just so that’s established before I start focusing more on fleshing out the plot.

This is when the brainstorming phase can start to get tricky, because I’m specifically trying to get ideas to come. (The ideas flow like water when I’m not trying to have them, but immediately dry up the second I start looking for them. I’m sure many fellow creatives out there can relate.) The biggest thing that helps me not just freeze up and stare at an empty page during this phase is reminding myself not to overthink it. Especially so early in the process, all that matters is getting something down. It doesn’t have to make sense or be good, it just has to exist so that I can continue with the process. I can always change it later; nothing in the brainstorming phase is set in stone. So there’s no point in fussing over it.

I usually keep going with this phase until I feel like I have enough material to build a story out of. The things I need can vary from project to project, of course, but I usually know I’ve reached this point when I have the whole main cast fleshed out (they’ve got all their basic information and some backstory stuff figured out), when I know the basics of the world, and when I generally know what I want the plot to be and have some ideas of how I want that plot to play out. Once I have those things, I can usually feel pretty confident going into the next step:

Walking Through the Plot

Now is when I shift my full focus to the plot and turning all of this stuff I’ve come up with into an actual functioning story.

A lot of the time, I start out by considering any plot points that I came up with during the last stage and trying to figure out how to connect the dots between them, Like, say that I know that the hero is going to start out as a regular person, but at some point in the story, they’re going to become an awesome warrior person fit to defeat the antagonist. Obviously, something’s going to have to drastically change in their life to bring them from point A to point B. This phase is when I worry about filling in gaps like that, to make the story…well, a story, and not just a bunch of vaguely related ideas.

Once I’ve filled in the biggest gaps (I don’t necessarily have to have everything figured out, but anything like the example I gave above should be figured out by now), I start walking myself through the plot. I write out all the major events in chronological order, along with any ideas I have for the scenes where they happen. (Just to make sure I don’t forget them.) I don’t worry too much about the amount of detail I put into the events as I write them down—if I have ideas for the event in question, I throw them in but, if I don’t have any ideas, I don’t try to force them—but I do make sure that I know how the event effects the larger story and how it connects to the events before and after it. That’s pretty much the whole point of this stage.

Once I get through the whole plot from start to end, I’m finished. When I reach this point, it means I’m ready to start an actual outline, using everything I just came up with as a guide. (Though, sometimes, if I was thorough enough in this stage, I can actually use my plot walkthrough as an outline. But that’s pretty rare, so I don’t count on it.) Obviously, there’s still some roughness to it that will get polished up in the outlining and drafting phases, but I’ve given myself a solid foundation.

I’m not going to get into how I outline here, but I’ve got a whole other post that’s focused just on that, so feel free to check that out if you’re interested.

Outro

Brainstorming a project can be intimidating, but I try to make it easier for myself by using a more step-by-step method. By doing it this way, I can really break it down and focus on figuring everything out one issue at a time, which has probably saved my sanity a few times.

That’s all for today’s post. Thanks for reading!