Brainstorming in “Real Time”

By
Debby Giusti

Last week, I asked my critique partners, Harlequin Super Romance author Anna Adams (photo-middle) and Grammar Diva Darlene Buchholz (photo-left), to join me in a brainstorming exercise. We frequently use the technique to fine tune our stories, but I wanted to determine what we could come up if we started from scratch. As we bounced ideas back and forth, I typed the comments on my Alpha Smart—or at least as many as I could keep up with—and thought you might enjoy seeing how the bare bones of a story took shape.

Brainstorming works on the premise that two heads are better than one. Articulating ideas without a censor overrides the negative voices within and allows creativity free rein. Earlier this year, I posted a blog entitled, “Brainstorming Your New Bestseller.” If you’d like more information about the process, check out the Seekerville archives for January 21, 2009 (http://seekerville.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html). The post included guidelines for getting started and other how-to details about the technique.

Now back to our “real time” brainstorming. Here’s how the session played out:

I came up with a couple of hooks to get us started and threw out small town secrets and returning hero to the group. A helicopter and small plane had crashed a few days earlier so I added a plane crash into the mix as well. From there the discussion took off.

Anna: Maybe the hero survived the crash. Should he be the pilot?

Darlene: Maybe not the pilot but just onboard.

Debby: He’s in the small plane, flying with his friends perhaps.

Anna: Or was he with his family, and they died in the crash? He and his wife were giving the children a last vacation before the parents separate.

Darlene: Because he’d met his soul mate.

Debby: She lives in the small town.

Anna: But they know they can’t be together.

Debby recaps: The hero’s family died. He returns to the small town to reconnect with the woman he loves.

Darlene: He’s moved back to the small town because that’s home.

Anna: The town is Heartwood, GA. After the crash, everyone offers him condolences, and he feels like a fraud.

Debby: What about the other woman?

Anna: The soul mate is avoiding him.

Darlene: She feels like a fraud as well.

Debby: They had a relationship, which ended years ago before he left town. He married and has brought his family back to Heartwood, but why?

Darlene: To de-clutter their lives and return to small town life and basic family values.

Debby: Were they living in the fast lane?

Darlene: The good life.

Anna: But they were disconnected.

Darlene: And too busy.

Debby: That’s why the marriage was floundering. They returned to Heartwood to save their marriage and their family. Now the hero has nothing except his business. Which is what?

Darlene: He’s an investment broker and worked from home.

Debby: The economy turned bad. He lost a considerable amount of money so they had to return to the simple life for financial reasons. The vacation had been paid for before they lost their wealth.

Darlene: They have two children. Ages 4 and 6.

Debby: What if the children were at home with a sitter? He and the wife were the only ones onboard. She died in the crash. Now the hero husband has to care for two little ones.

Darlene: He should be the pilot.

Anna: There’s more inner conflict if he is the pilot.

Debby: Folks in town are compassionate. The plane crashed and burned. He tried to save his wife and was burned doing so. People call him courageous.

Anna: The other woman, the heroine, is the doctor who handles his burns.

Debby: That’s the homecoming angle. He’s been in a burn center in Atlanta, and he’s coming home to face his children. Where have the kids been?

Darlene: With the grandmother. The wife’s mother has cared for the children. They adore and trust grandma.

Anna: Her daughter told her things weren’t good so grandma wonders if the husband killed her daughter.

Debby: Let’s see what we have. Internal conflict: The hero blames himself for his wife’s death. (Moderator directs the group to key elements needed in the story.)

Anna: He’s been living a lie…still is living a lie. Everyone feels so bad for him.

Darlene: He doesn’t deserve their trust and compassion because he’s not who he seems. He’s wearing a mask. Although he was trying to make the marriage work, his heart wasn’t in it. He was trying for the sake of the children.

Anna: Now the burns are on his face so he really does have a mask.

Debby: The children are afraid of him because of the burns.

Darlene: If his injuries were severe, would his mother-in-law still be against him?

Debby: He did maintenance on the plane, but with money being tight, he failed to fix something he didn’t think would be a problem.

Anna: So when the mother-in-law accuses him, he feels guilty.

Darlene: He wonders if his oversight caused the crash.

Debby: What if someone sabotaged the plane and caused it to crash? The mother-in-law thinks the hero did it. That’s the external conflict: He has to prove he didn’t kill his wife and find out who sabotaged the plane and why.

Darlene: Others may have wanted him to die because they had invested with his company and lost their fortunes. They wanted to kill the hero, not his wife.

Debby: Time check: We’ve worked for 25 min.
(Moderator keeps track of the time and introduces new elements or characters that need to be considered.)

Debby: Let’s move to the heroine. She’s a physical therapist, and he needs therapy for his burns. They both grew up in Heartwood. He left, married and then moved back. His mother-in-law--the children’s grandma--came back too.

Anna: Why did the heroine stay in town?

Darlene: Both the hero and heroine had moved on from their past relationship. She’s not a risk taker. Hearth and home are important. She wanted to stay in Heartwood because she likes small town values. He was the one who needed the glitz. She was the small town girl.

Anna: She knows who she is.

Darlene: She’s anchored in what really is important and is happy in Heartwood.

Anna: She’s made friends with the mother-in-law who needed some type of physical therapy, although the heroine didn’t want to get involved with the hero’s family.

Debby: The more the mother-in-law talked about the family--the happy family--the harder it was for the heroine. Hearing about the hero’s happy family made her realize what she didn’t have.

Anna: The mother-in-law continues to need help with the children.

Debby: The children like the heroine.

Anna: She’s an outdoor person. Lots of fun. Perky.

Debby: The hero’s been receiving rehab in Atlanta for three months.

Darlene: He doesn’t know the heroine is so closely involved with his family. She’s falling in love with his children.

Anna: She instinctively knows how to take care of the children.

Darlene: He’ll be frustrated at times because she’ll know what to do and he won’t.

Anna: The mother-in-law tells the heroine something was wrong with the marriage. One of the children overhears the conversation and asks the hero about it.

Darlene: “Didn’t you love, mommy?” the child might ask.

Debby recaps: The heroine is falling in love with his children and also loves him. What’s the conflict?
(Moderator directs the discussion back to the conflict.)

Anna: The heroine knows the hero's not ready to love again.

Darlene: She knows he won’t stay. He left her and left Heartwood before. He’ll do it again.

Debby: What if the mother-in-law builds up the marriage to the heroine and tells her it was perfect.

Anna: Building up the marriage brings comfort to the mother-in-law.

Debby: The mother-in-law and daughter had an argument prior to the flight.

Darlene: The heroine feels she could never take the place of the wife, especially after everything the mother-in-law has told her about the happy family.

Debby: What’s the external conflict?
(External and internal conflict are key elements needed for character development.)

Darlene: The FAA and the local sheriff would investigate and find something is at fault with the downed plane and so the hero is accused of killing his wife.

Debby: The external conflict is the heroine can’t trust a man who’s killed his wife. Could there have been something in his youth that’s questionable and underscores his possible guilt?

Darlene: What if he’s just taken insurance out on both he and his wife. That looks bad. He’s been preoccupied with his work. Right before the crash, he realizes they need insurance, which plays into the motive for murder.

Debby: The conflict should be more than what people in town think.

Darlene: Right now, it’s just two people not allowing their emotions to get through.

Anna: What if she’s the sheriff, and she’s investigating the crash.

Darlene and Debby: YES!!!
(Anna has come up with strong external conflict for the heroine. As the sheriff, she has to investigate the crash. The hero is the likely suspect.)

Darlene: She was the kid who came from the wrong side of the tracks and felt her station was below the hero’s. What if she had been abandoned?
(Darlene refocuses the discussion on the heroine’s internal conflict.)

Anna: The heroine’s mother abandoned her so she feels drawn to the mother-in-law. She also knows what the hero’s children are experiencing and knows they need a mother.

Debby: Time check: 54 minutes.

Debby: Six minutes are left. Can we go deeper? What would Donald Maass tell us?

Darlene: Let’s think about the villain. Maass says villains need to have likeable qualities.

Anna: The villain has to be someone they both care about. It’s got to be mother-in-law. She knew that hubby and her daughter weren’t getting along, and she decided to get rid of the hero.
(Anna has provided a good villain, hopefully one the readers won’t suspect until she is revealed in the climax. Red herrings will be established to deflect attention away from the mother-in-law.)

Darlene: The mother-in-law lost her fortune in the hero’s investment company. She was afraid he was gong to leave her daughter.
(Darlene goes more deeply into the mother-in-law's motivation.)

Anna: If she kills him, the mother-in-law gets to stay with the kids. She didn't think the wife was going to be on the plane.

Debby: Hero and his wife were going to meet at the vacation spot. The wife was going to drive.

Anna: So when the husband is alive, the mother-in-law is even more upset.

Darlene: The mother-in-law has been a good person, a good mother and grandmother, but she’s let her bitterness and anger get the best of her.

Debby: She’d worked so hard to establish a nest egg that’s gone now.

Anna: More important is her daughter’s happiness.

Debby: What if the mother-in-law’s husband had left her, and she had nothing. She’d been abandoned and didn’t want that for her daughter.

Darlene: The mother-in-law had been talked into investing with the hero’s firm.

Anna: She was afraid of money and didn’t know how to handle it because she had so little.

Debby: She was being the loving mother in her mind, trying to protect her daughter from divorce and destitution.

Debby: Time check: 60 minutes. End of session.

In one hour, we went from small town secrets and returning hero to the beginning of a story. The hero was a financial broker who lost his own fortune as well as the fortunes of those who invested with him, including his mother-in-law.

The hero moves his family back to his hometown of Heartwood, GA, in hopes of saving his marriage. He and his wife take a vacation they arranged and paid for prior to their financial ruin. The wife planned to drive and meet her husband at the resort but at the last minute decided to fly with him.

The plane had been sabotaged and crashed. The hero tries to save his wife from the burning wreckage and is burned doing so. He spends three months in rehab in Atlanta while the mother-in-law cares for his children.

The story opens as he returns to Heartwood. Because he took out a huge insurance policy on his wife shortly before the crash, he is suspected of murder. His children have trouble accepting him back into their lives because of his burns. They gravitate instead to the heroine who has helped care for them over the last three months. The children have grown to love her, and the hero soon realizes he still cares about her as well.

The heroine came from the wrong side of the tracks and never felt equal to the hero. Her mother abandoned her, as did the hero, so she has a natural fear of being abandoned again. When the man she once loved--and realizes she still has feelings for--is suspected of murder, the heroine, who is also the town’s sheriff, needs to uncover the truth. The hero’s children have stolen her heart, and the old feelings she had for the hero soon resurface.

The mother-in-law has lost the nest egg she worked so hard to build after her husband left her. She struggled to raise her daughter and doesn’t want her child to suffer the way she did. Knowing the son-in-law will leave her daughter with nothing, the mother-in-law sabotages the airplane so her daughter will receive the hero’s insurance. She never suspects her daughter will be onboard.

Yes, the story needs more work, but we came up with a strong beginning packed with conflict. Further brainstorming can enhance the plot even more. If you have a suggestion, leave a comment, and we can continue to work online.

Hopefully the “real time” example shows how effective brainstorming can be. The process increases creativity. Inhibitions are put aside, allowing fresh ideas to emerge.

If you’d like to improve a story you’re working on, gather a few friends and see where brainstorming takes you. Remember to keep comments positive as you plow forward. There’s never a wrong response, and one idea always feeds another.

Happy writing!

Wishing you abundant blessings,
Debby Giusti
http://www.debbygiusti.com/
http://www.ladiesofsuspense.com/
http://www.loveinspiredauthors.com/

PS: I’m giving away a copy of my May release, PROTECTING HER CHILD. Leave your email address along with a comment to be entered into the drawing.




PROTECTING HER CHILD
By
Debby Giusti
Steeple Hill Love Inspired Suspense
May 2009

“WHAT HAPPENED TO MY BABY?”

Wealthy heiress Eve Townsend is close to death. But before she dies, she has to know: what happened to the daughter she gave up for adoption twenty-four years before? Did she inherit her mother’s life-threatening disease? Medical researcher Pete Worth is ready to find answers by tracking her down. And when he finally locates Meredith Lassiter, he finds her widowed, pregnant and on the run. The loan sharks who killed her husband want her dead…and Pete is the only one standing in their way.

Cindi Myers: The Working Writer

Though I have written or contracted to write over 40 novels I began my career writing nonfiction. I started as a newspaper reporter, then moved into writing magazine articles full time. Writing nonfiction allowed me to earn money writing – enough that I was able to quite my day job managing a medical clinic. But even more important in the long run, writing nonfiction taught me many things that have helped me have a successful fiction career, things like:

Marketing Myself: Browse any newsstand or check a copy of the latest Writer’s Market and you’ll find plenty of places that are hungry for nonfiction writers. Add to that the growing number of websites that need content. But none of those places will come looking for you. You have to approach them, usually with an idea for an article. Those years of hustling for freelance work taught me how to write a good query letter and how to focus on my strengths. I gained self-confidence in my abilities along the way. (Let me add that I’m really a shy person. The idea of cold calling someone and asking for an interview made me queasy. But I did it anyway. You can do it, too.) When it came time for me to query editors and agents about my books, or to promote my published books by sending out press releases or setting up booksignings, this early training in self-promotion came in handy.

How to be a prolific writer: Magazine articles individually do not pay a lot of money. To make a living, a nonfiction writer must write a lot of articles. When I was freelancing full time, I had a goal of getting five new queries or articles or short stories out the door every week. I set this goal when I was laid off from my manager’s job. I gave myself six months (the length of time I could collect unemployment) to meet or exceed the income I’d made working for the medical clinic. By writing a lot and constantly sending things out, I was able to earn more from my writing that first year than I’d earned as a manager. Now I produce four and five books a year for several category romance lines. Work habits I learned as a struggling freelancer are paying off now.

How to handle rejection: No writer sells everything she writes. At least none of the writers I know. The down side to producing so many queries and articles was that a lot of them did get rejected. A typical week might look something like this: five queries submitted, four rejections of queries sent earlier and two sales – and maybe a couple of checks from earlier sales. I didn’t have time to stew over the rejections. I learned to draft a new query to a new market and move on. Though I don’t have as many projects going on at once now, I’ve learned that if one project doesn’t sell, something else will. Past experience gives me the confidence to keep trying new things.

How to be flexible: While it helps to specialize in a couple of areas of nonfiction (my specialities were medical business and Texas history and travel) the best way to make a living as a freelancer is to be able to write about a wide variety of subjects. When an editor approached me to write an article that was outside of my area of expertise, I never said no. I saw the new assignment as an opportunity to learn something new. While some authors earn very nice livings writing as few as a book a year, one category romance a year is not enough to pay the bills. I’m also a person who enjoys variety. Writing for different lines not only enables me to increase my income, but I think it helps keep my work from growing stale. And when an editor asks me to write something new, such as a continuity of a novella project, I’m happy to have the opportunity to stretch as a writer.

Quality counts: Though I was writing a lot of nonfiction, any particular editor only had one query or article of mine on his desk at a time. I had to produce my best work in order to make a good impression and get the assignment or score a sale. Currently, in addition to writing novels, I edit Nink, the newsletter of Novelists, Inc. The members of Novelists, Inc, as the name implies, are all published novelists. Occasionally one of these writers will send an article for the newsletter, and it’s clear they merely dashed it off. I have to put on my editor hat and reject the work. Some fiction writers think that, because you’re not having to make things up out of whole cloth, nonfiction must be inherently easier than fiction. They are wrong. Wordsmithing is every bit as important for nonfiction as fiction.

I would encourage all aspiring novelists to try their hand at nonfiction as well. The gratification of seeing your name in print and earning money for your writing is immeasurable. In my case, freelancing allowed me to stay home and write while still paying the bills. And I’m convinced my years of freelancing made me both a better writer and a better businessperson.

-----

Cindi Myers became one of the most popular people in eighth grade when she and her best friend wrote a torrid historical romance and circulated it among their peers. Fame was short-lived, however; the English teacher confiscated the manuscript and advised her to concentrate on learning to properly diagram a sentence. From this humbling beginning, she has gone on to write nonfiction for national and regional publications ranging from Ladies' Home Journal to Popular Mechanics, but she never got rid of the fiction bug. Her first novel was published in 1999. Her books have been Waldenbooks bestsellers and have been praised for their emotion, humor and sensuality. She writes stories about relationships that matter, whether the subject is female friendship, families, or the love between a man and a woman. A Man to Rely On is her 35th published novel.

Subscribe to Cindi's Weekly Market Newsletter (it is an announce only group-no chatter) by sending a blank email to CynthiaSterling-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

For Love and Money Day 2 Anyone who comments all six days will be entered into a drawing for a $25.00 Amazon Gift Card


If you are here in Seekerville today, you have a chance to win a copy of Cindi's SuperRomance release, A Man To Rely On, which I grabbed when I picked my own copy. Just post a note to Cindi for your chance!!

Rogenna Brewer on Character and Conflict

Character and Conflict: The 5 Stages of Resolution

Saying a story is plot driven is just another way of saying the characters are weak or underdeveloped. All stories are character driven, or should be. Without character there is no plot. Think of plot as the conflict that drives your character’s actions and in doing so the story. Plot exists only to challenge your character. Begin your story at the point of change, briefly demonstrating the status quo before the conflict begins.

I either wrote that paragraph in a stroke of genus sometime over the past decade as a published author or borrowed bits and pieces of it along the way. I've heard it all before...

Begin your story at the point of change. But what does that mean?

Beginnings are relatively easy. It’s why so many stories are started and never finished. But how do you keep the middle from sagging and resolve the ending?

With the 5 Stages of Resolution you don't have to reinvent the process. In fact you'll give your characters instant empathy by using this method. I'm talking about the grieving process as it applies to change.

Change involves loss and letting go. Grief as an emotion is easy to imagine. Someone close to us dies and we grieve the loss. Someone not so close dies--a school shooting, a tsunami--and we still feel a pang. That's empathy.

We all feel it. And you can use it to drive your story. The point is you character should be a different person at the end of the book than he or she was at the beginning. So how do you get there? In her book On Death And Dying, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross defines the 5 stages of grief as denial, anger, bargaining, guilt and acceptance.

DENIAL * ANGER * BARGAINING * GUILT * ACCEPTANCE

By moving the romance (external conflict) through all 5 stages you'll reach a resolution that feels natural, not forced. Adding threads for each character (internal conflict--ie motivation) will give your story that extra depth. I like to start my hero or heroine somewhere in the middle. For example the hero in The Marine's Baby is motivated by guilt and back tracks a bit by striking a bargain with the heroine.

I'd like to open it up to questions now because I'm not talking about cookie cutter stories. This method can be as unique as you are. Skip a step, take two forward and one back. But trust me this works for me and it may just work for you.

Rogenna

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When an aptitude test labeled her suited for librarian or clergy, Rogenna joined the Navy. It was off to bootcamp, followed by her first duty station, NAS Midway Island. She started in the CO's office and gravitated toward the Chaplain's where duties included operating the base library.

Rogenna met and married her sailor while serving her country. "The best part was that brief period of time when I outranked him." After receiving an Honorable Discharge she continued to serve as a Navy Wife and admits to being jealous of her husband's travels. "There's a reason for the slogan; Navy Wife, the toughest job in the Navy. It's like being a single parent--at least part of the time. Jeff's been to seventeen countries and was there for the filming of two major motion pictures aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise CVN65 (TOP GUN and HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER). We have three boys, one for each deployment."

With their Navy days behind them, the family currently resides in Colorado where Rogenna grew up. Before settling in to writing, she was a bookseller and a reviewer for several years. "The one constant has been the need to surround myself with people and books. I always wanted to be a writer/adventurer, but that aptitude test had great insight into my personality. And now I go wherever I want, whenever I want, through my writing."

Guest Blogger, Super Romance Author, Rogenna Brewer

Before the Call-Disable Your Call Blocking!

I will always remember June 1, 1998 as my First Sale. But I didn't get "The Call" in the traditional sense. It all started with an email late on a Friday afternoon.

The Senior Editor for Harlequin Super Romance was trying to get a hold of me, but couldn't get through because of call blocking.

Who knew?

This was in the early day of phone features. The email instructed me to call in on Monday because the Senior Editor was going to be out of town for two weeks. So if I didn't get a hold of her then I wasn't going to get a hold of her for awhile.

It was the longest weekend of my life.

I tried not to get my hopes up. By that point in my career I'd received calls from both an agent and a publisher which amounted to nothing. But it was hard not to hope.

Monday arrived. I called. And got a busy signal--all day long. As the day slipped away I knew I wasn't going to last two weeks. In a last ditch effort I called the editorial assistant who had emailed me. She patched me through to the Senior Editor.

And we were cut off.

I called the assistant again. This time the Senior Editor took the call in the assistant's office and our game of phone tag ended with the sale of my first book SEAL It With A Kiss.

That phone call came 10 months after my first and only contest win. That contest win garnered me an 8 minute appointment with the editor who eventually bought my book--10 years and 5 books later I can hardly believe how much time has passed.

The Marine's Baby is in stores today and in a way it's never gotten any easier than that first missed phone call.

But wishing I knew then what I know now is kind of like wishing for a 20 year old body to go with this 40 year old brain. With experience comes wisdom. And someday I'm going to be wiser. But for now here's my wish list...

...I wish I had focused on my writing goals more, instead of on the broader goal of getting published.

...I wish I had entered more contests and submitted more manuscripts--full manuscripts.

And here's the biggie

... I wish I had made it less about the rules and more about the writing.

Write something today!

Rogenna

Go ahead and Enlist! Vistit Rogenna at http://www.rogennabrewer.com/

Today Rogenna is giving away a copy of The Marine's Baby to one lucky commenter. Please leave a method of contact.

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When an aptitude test labeled her suited for librarian or clergy, Rogenna joined the Navy. It was off to bootcamp, followed by her first duty station, NAS Midway Island. She started in the CO's office and gravitated toward the Chaplain's where duties included operating the base library.

Rogenna met and married her sailor while serving her country. "The best part was that brief period of time when I outranked him." After receiving an Honorable Discharge she continued to serve as a Navy Wife and admits to being jealous of her husband's travels. "There's a reason for the slogan; Navy Wife, the toughest job in the Navy. It's like being a single parent--at least part of the time. Jeff's been to seventeen countries and was there for the filming of two major motion pictures aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise CVN65 (TOP GUN and HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER). We have three boys, one for each deployment."

With their Navy days behind them, the family currently resides in Colorado where Rogenna grew up. Before settling in to writing, she was a bookseller and a reviewer for several years. "The one constant has been the need to surround myself with people and books. I always wanted to be a writer/adventurer, but that aptitude test had great insight into my personality. And now I go wherever I want, whenever I want, through my writing."