Brainstorming: Idea and Genre

My stories always begin with a kernel of an idea. Something I’m intrigued by or curious about. When I’m in that early brainstorming phase, I tend to carry a notebook around with me everywhere.

I try to come up with an original premise, which isn’t always possible. Even so, I strive to make my idea as uniquely “me” as I can. I think through potential characters, scene ideas, and settings. I jot down all the ideas I like and some I don’t like. I sometimes start a manila folder as well so I can keep track of loose papers or images. Once I have a rough idea of the characters and a storyline, I move onto creating the world and the characters.

Drawing the Map and Building the World

I call myself a storyworld first author (and even wrote a worldbuilding book by the title Storyworld First), but I have never started building a world until I had a rough story idea. It’s difficult for me to create characters when I don’t know where they live and what their world is like. We are, to a certain degree, influenced by our environment. So, I need to understand that world—at least how my character relates to it. I also have to decide whether I’m writing a contemporary story or a speculative one. Fantasy or science fiction require a different level of worldbuilding that a contemporary story.

Since I usually write fantasy, I’m going to need to think about the scope of the story—how much world am I going to need? If my character’s journey is going to take place in their hometown, and they’re not leaving on some epic quest, I don’t need to know nearly as much about the storyworld as I might if they were moving away to join the militia and the war against an enemy country. In the case of that latter example, I need to discover information about the government and nearby countries, things I wouldn’t need if the story remained in one town.

Once I know my scope, I usually sketch a map and add the names of cities and landmarks that will be used in the story. If it’s a contemporary story that takes place in a school or a building of some kind, I will draw a floorplan of that place so I can better describe where my character moves about.

At this point I often realize that I need to brainstorm more about my world. It might be that I haven’t decided how to name places, so I spend some time working on that. I might draw something on the map that I hadn’t planned to include, like a lake or a forest, and suddenly, I find myself thinking about those landmarks, which gives me ideas for my story. Now I’m opening my notebook and jotting down those new ideas.

My process is cyclical. I don’t simply do things in order. I’m constantly juggling all the parts, working on one for a while, then picking up another until I finally discover the majority of the information I know I’ll need to be able to start writing.

How do I know what I need? Practice. I brainstormed way too much storyworld information for my first few books and have since learned to work on only what I need. I can always take a break and do more brainstorming if I need to, but I’d rather not waste time worldbuilding unnecessary things.

Characters

I sometimes use character charts, but usually I just give each character some space in a spiral notebook so I can brainstorm about each person. I want to know who they all are. I want their name, where they grew up—all the places they’ve lived. I want to know about their childhood and their home life. Who were their parents? Did they have siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins? I want to know about their friends. I want to know about their soul. What are they passionate about? What inspires them to get out of bed each morning and do what they do? What do they hope for? What do they believe about life and the world? What do they regret? What do they fear? What do they love? Hate? What do they wish was different in the world? I also want to brainstorm some quirks and interests that will make them come alive, but it’s the way their mind works and what is in their heart that makes a person who they are.

So, I spend some time coming up with character’s names, backstories, hopes and dreams, worries and fears, all to discover who these people are. Most importantly, however, learning these things about my main character helps me know how they will handle the story problem I want them to face. If I don’t know who they are, I find it very difficult to write about them.

Planning the Plot

Now that I know my world and my characters, I think through the plot. I don’t plan out the entire story scene by scene, but I’ve found that a loose outline keeps me from getting lost as I write. First, I need to pin down: Who is my main character? And what is that character’s story goal? I also like to have a loose idea of how the story will end. Something as simple as “He will be awarded a place in the army” is enough. It could be more detailed, however, like: “She will reach the top of the mountain, discover what creature lives there, and do whatever it takes to stop it from continually destroying the villages in the valley.”

From that early brainstorming process, I usually have several scenes in mind. At this point, I list the scenes in a logical order and see how many holes I have. I make sure to fill in the main elements of a three-act structure: inciting incident, second thoughts, climax of act one, obstacles, midpoint twist, a disaster, a crisis or All is Lost moment, the climax of act two, then all the excitement of act three, and a denouement. I plan in advance for each of those areas.

Once I get the loose plot outline filled in, I take it a step farther and fill in any holes. I do this by thinking through what will happen to the characters from one scene to the next. This usually inspires more in-between scenes. If I run out of room on my plot chart, I often start writing my ideas onto index cards. Eventually I will write all my scenes on cards and storyboard them out. On new stories, however, I don’t always storyboard this in depth up front. I like to write my scenes seat-of-the-pants style, and when I do that the story sometimes changes. So, with this first loose plot outline, I usually leave it open for change. I never know what might happen once my characters start coming to life and taking over and changing the story, which happens often.

Marketing Copy to Guide the Way

Somewhere during the brainstorming and plotting stages I will often pause to write a one-sentence logline and a one-paragraph back cover copy of the story to pass along to my agent. I could always change these should my story take a turn I like better, but I usually need to give my agent some of this kind of material anyway, and for me this is a good time to write it.

Writing a Fast First Draft

Once I know my characters and their world and have my story plotted out, I’m ready to start writing. I try to write the first draft of the story as fast as I can—in a month or less if possible.

Keyword: try.

This doesn’t often happen as swiftly as I wish it would.

Why do I try to write so fast? Well, it used to be that I would start a story and try desperately to perfect my writing as I went . But I learned the hard way that stories don’t always behave when I’m writing them, and too often, by the time I reached the end, I had to cut the opening chapters that I’d spent so long perfecting.

In 2007, I gave National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) a try. The goal with NaNoWriMo is to write a novel draft in the month of November. I succeeded. When I saw how quickly I was capable of writing, I was astounded. I realized that by taking the perfection out of my process and focus on creating, I would save time in the long run.

From that point on, I’ve always written fast first drafts. I write messy. I discover. I give myself permission to stink and work simply to lay down the foundation for the story and see where my characters take me. I’ll be back to fix things and rewrite later, but this way, if halfway through I find out that someone else needs to be the main character, or the plot needs to change, or I want to set the story in a different place, it’s not as much work to change it.

Once I get that draft done, I have something I can truly go back and make beautiful. Then I’m rewriting and editing until I’m done, which can honestly take more time than everything else added together, but editing is my favorite part.

What about you? Is your process similar or different than mine? How so? What stands out to you? Share in the comments.

Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms, and the author of several young adult fantasy novels including the Blood of Kings trilogy. She loves teaching about writing. She blogs at goteenwriters.com and also posts writing videos on her YouTube channel and on Instagram. Jill is a Whovian, a Photoshop addict, and a recovering fashion design assistant. She grew up in Alaska without running water or electricity and now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and two kids. Find Jill online at jillwilliamson.com or on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.