A Brainstorming Exercise

Years ago, back when I was but a wee geek who wasn't even social enough to find people to play Dungeons and Dragons with, I used to pour through old issues of Dragon Magazine, looking for validation to my largely pathetic existence. One day, I came across an article for TSR's classic spy game "Top Secret", which detailed how to make life easy for yourself when it came to writing spy adventures for the game.

Now, I will sheepishly admit a) I don't recall the author of this article or b) many of the specifics of the article itself. What I do remember is what I got out of it which, for today's purposes, is what's important. And what I took from this article is something I've been able to apply to most of the writing I've ever done.

It all comes down to brainstorming. "Duh", you might say, and you'd be right to do so. I mean...brainstorming? Everyone knows that, right? But when it comes to brainstorming, it often lacks a process, and that's what this is all about.

Let's say -- just for the fun of it -- that you did indeed want to write a fantasy story. You may or may not have a basic idea in your head; at this point it doesn't matter. The thing you need to do is unload some ideas. So, at this point, you come up with a list -- it can be 10 things, it can be 20, whatever -- of things that you like to see or would like to see in fantasy fiction. These can be scenes, characters, images, plot elements, or even bits of dialog. The list can be all your own ideas, things you've seen in movies or read in books, or a combination therein. You want to be fairly specific, but also still keep your ideas general enough that you can play with them later on. Write everything in your list down.

Here's a list I just came up with, as an example:

1) A dragon that lives under a city.

2) Vampire soldiers.

3) Evil dwarves with strange technology.

4) A magical prison inside a mundane object (mirror, ring, etc.)

5) A cross-country voyage across a desert of red sand.

6) A magical book.

7) A dark cult that sacrifices maidens.

8) A city of ghosts.

9) A sword fight atop an ancient and crumbling bridge.

10) A portal to a distant realm.

Ok, so most of this is fairly basis stuff that we've seen (in one form or another) through a smattering of novels, films, etc. Obviously, you want to take out the really specific details (like character names and whatnot) and make these your own.

The trick now is to cut this list in half. How you do that is largely up to you: you can roll a die, write each idea down on a notecard and deal half of the cards out on the table, or just quickly look back at the list and snatch those that strike you the most. Truth be told, the *less* time you spend on this part, the better. You'll put everything together and make it somewhat cohesive in a bit: right now all that's important is to narrow your list of great ideas down.

I'll take the "quick second glance" approach. Just a scan of the list gives me this new, shorter list:

1) A dragon that lives under a city.

3) Evil dwarves with strange technology.

4) A prison inside a mundane object (mirror, ring, etc.)

6) A magical book.

10) A portal to a distant realm.

Normally I'd be more drawn to #2 and #8, but both of those ideas (plus number #5, now that I think on it) are concepts featured fairly prominently in the novel I'm already working on. I also thought it would be a good idea to try and write about some things I usually flat-out try to avoid, which includes many of the so-called "staples" of fantasy...dragons, dwarves, etc.

So now I have a list of things I want to appear in my story. All we have to make them all fit together in some semblance of a sensible plot.

Generally speaking, a story needs a setting, characters, and some sort of conflict. Looking at the list above, we have several options for each. For the setting, we have a city, a magical prison, and a distant realm. For characters, we have a dragon and some evil dwarves. For a conflict, some are already implied in the items we've already looked at (the prison, the strange technology and the portal, all of which can a source of conflict between characters), and we also have the magic book, the only item from the list that has yet gone unused. So, in the end, we have...

Setting: A city which contains both a magical prison (disguised as a mundane object) and a portal to a distant realm. (Note that we can always combine things...the prison can also be a portal, just as the distant realm can be the city.)

Characters: Evil dwarves, and a dragon. (Note that when I first made the list, I didn't specify that it was an *evil* dragon...this wasn't an intentional omission, but one that I think will work out for me in the end.)

Conflict: The conflict of the story, I think, will involve the magical book, just to be all-inclusive.

Already we have the barest bones of a story in front of us, for what was, ultimately, only a moderate amount of work. Next we get to figure out how to pull all of those into a plot, but that's something to think about another time. For now we've done what we set out to do, and brainstormed our ways into a potential piece of fantasy writing.

Obviously you could do this for any sort of writing (the list concept works best with genre writing, I think, especially for beginners), and the "process" is free-flowing enough that there's really no wrong way to do it. (You may not, for example, derive Setting, Characters and Conflict from your list, which is really no big deal: you'll just have to fill in the blanks when you write.)

Sometimes this exercise will lead to a decent piece of writing; other times, the exercise is interesting in and of itself just to get the proverbial juices flowing.