Brainstorming Your Brain
May 12th, 2009
Brainstorming your brain
We’ve talked a bit about brainstorming, offered some thoughts, shared some ideas, pointed the way to that mysterious place where ideas hover, float, fidget, meander, wend, wiggle, gather, flitter, and live. And wait to be discovered. And pieced together in a gathering of words that will, with work, will, and a bit of luck become story. A story. Your story.
To winnow out those free-floating, often elusive bits of flotsam that are ideas is easier—and harder—than you think. But like any hard-won skill, it takes practice, as does anything worth doing.
Because the ultimate goal of brainstorming (in this application) is to formulate an idea that will grow and develop and hopefully resolve itself in the form of a story with a beginning, middle, and an end, it is helpful to at least attempt to tame the flurry of ideas that, once awakened, can bounce around your brain like a ping-pong ball in a wind tunnel. Which means outlining. Which we will cover in detail.
But first, more about the process of waking up those ideas. Ask them questions.
How?
What?
When?
Where?
Who?
Why?
As simple as that, you ask? Yes! How did the what happen when and where and to whom and WHY? Answer those questions and you have the beginning, possibly the middle, and even the end to story.
Cool, huh?
Give it a try.
Next week we’ll introduce you to some tools to further agitate those ideas and give them substance–and someplace to go.