6 Great Brainstorming Techniques to Fuel Your Creative Writing

It’s not always easy to put pen to paper, is it? Here are 6 great brainstorming techniques for authors to fuel your creative writing.

When you have a new idea for a story, it’s thrilling. You want to put pen to paper and just run with it. But it’s not that easy, is it? Sometimes writer’s block stymies your flow. In other cases, you need to step back and structure your approach; otherwise, you could create a jumbled mess. And brainstorming is the best place to start with getting your ideas out to make sense of them.

6 Great Brainstorming Techniques for Authors:

From Mind to Matter

Brainstorming your story is so helpful. While it is so spontaneous at first, it does bring structure by allowing you to build a foundation of the vital points for your story. First, you can get your best ideas out early in the process, saving you from forgetting them down the line and allowing you to prune and adjust some that aren’t so hot as you go.

As you get those ideas out, you’ll likely notice patterns and themes repeating, and you can nail down your story’s central premise. Characters, setting, and everything else generally falls into place shortly thereafter. Then, with all those big concepts starting to get sorted, you’ll feel an abundance of relief.

Brainstorming takes a lot of the pressure off your mind, as you’ve got that creativity stored somewhere else, and you’ve made tangible progress towards writing your story (which is always cause to celebrate yourself a little!)

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So How Do You Do It?

As I said above, I have my own technique, but there are several ways to approach your brainstorming. Ultimately, they all facilitate the same goal: Allowing you to surprise and inspire yourself and clear your mind so you can focus on what’s essential in your writing.

Freewriting

My go-to style, with this approach, you let your thoughts flow from mind to pen (or keys) to page. Doesn’t matter what it is; let any tangential idea spring forth, then sort through them later. It’s a great way to remove self-judgment the more you practice, as you remind yourself there’s no bad idea while doing it.

You commit to writing any word that comes up, whether sensical or not. But before you dive in, though, set yourself a limit: Amount of time, number of words or pages, that sort of idea. While much of what you write may not work for your current project, there will definitely be the odd nugget or phrase you can tweak and spin into your story.

Cluster Map

Also known to some as an idea web or brainstorming cloud, this one more literally ties your thoughts together. You get your main ideas down on your paper, then connect similar themes and concepts together, allowing you to sort it all out easier.

It’s still pretty chaotic, like freewriting, but it lends itself to making more order in the end, depending on what works for you. Start with a central idea and let it all flow out from there, and I’m sure you’ll find some gems that work for your story.

Storyboarding

This is a fun one if you respond better to visuals. You, more or less, create a sort of comic book for your ideas. You can draw out a scene or series of scenes with basic shapes and figures and describe it all.

It’s an excellent method for brainstorming specific ideas and concepts for your stories, like set-piece moments. Sometimes you need to see it, whatever “it” is, and then more inspiration will follow.

The Big Six Questions

Another great approach is to pick a topic and ask those classic questions: Who? What? Where? When? Why? and How? As you start to answer them, you’ll see how thoroughly you’ve thought it through or where the holes exist. As you see these imbalances, you can research and flesh out your ideas better or abandon them altogether. Whatever works best for your story.

Word Bank

Here’s a technique that’s the opposite of some of the more free-form ideas I’ve presented so far. To generate a word bank, you want to write down as many words as you can associate with a topic.

You’ll do this for as many as you need relating to your story. It helps you build a storehouse of words to use for this or other stories while helping you avoid repeating the same ones over and over again.

Make a List

The classic method, jotting your ideas down freely in bulleted lists, is sometimes the way to go. Don’t worry about stringing together whole sentences and thoughts.

This method is somewhat similar to freewriting but presented differently, so all that matters is what you write from point to point, whatever thoughts come to you. Eventually, you’ll get some united themes and a great idea.

My brainstorming list is by no means exhaustive. There are numerous methods you can use to generate and structure your thoughts. Some are better left for more technical writing, but if they speak to you, who am I to stop you?

So long as you’re getting your ideas out before trying to write them, then you’re on the right track. And also, keep another thing in mind: While I mentioned a lot about how brainstorming will lead to breakthroughs, it can also illustrate what you don’t need in your stories.

Weaning out the weaker concepts is just as important to the success of your writing as it is to generating brilliance. So, be honest, if brutal, with yourself about some ideas. But also give yourself the benefit of the doubt and explore some of the more surprising and possibly abstract concepts you came up with.

If you have a tried and true method of spinning out your thoughts, don’t hesitate to share it with me. I’m on most social media platforms, and you’re welcome to email me at jsims@jairesims.com.