I’ve been to many writing retreats. Most of them have loose schedules. We write. We eat. We write. We sleep. We write. We sometimes go out into the world for a change of pace. But we usually come right back and write.

I prefer retreats where the authors who come really want to get work done. That’s because I don’t get a lot of time to write these days, so I want to make the most of the time away. But some writers use retreats to get to know other writers. And that’s cool too. Writing retreats can be a great place to network and grow lifelong friendships.

The Sunrise Publishing writing retreat was a little different. It was more like a brainstorming retreat. Nobody wrote a word on their stories. Instead, we plotted stories. Susie May Warren has a very powerful and full-proof plotting method that she uses to brainstorm her novels. She teaches about it in her book The Story Equation. And she gave me permission to talk about it on Go Teen Writers. Today, I’m going to talk about how we brainstormed one story a day, focusing on character building and plot structure. Next week, I’m going to talk about scene structure.

I’ve always been a fan of the Save the Cat Beat Sheet plotting model. And I’ve liked it even more since Save the Cat Writes a Novel came out. But watching Susie use her structure to plot a book was amazing. She’s written 100 plus books. She knows her beats and what is necessary to tell a strong story. So, while it was fascinating to watch her work, what was even cooler was that she was plotting stories in my world. The fantasy map I drew on a piece of paper in 2007 that looked a little too much like Africa. Susie May Warren was playing with it, you guys! She was helping us make stories for it! Talk about surreal. It’s like I won the lottery.

Today, I’m going to share a little bit about what those book plotting days looked like so you can get an idea of what such a retreat could possibly someday look like for you.

Susie did not invent the brainstorming retreat. The first person who told me about them was author Robin Lee Hatcher back in 2010. She and several friends would go away for a week, and each person would get a day just for them in which the team would pitch in and brainstorm the plot of their book. Everybody got to go home with a book outline, ready to be written. The very idea made me drool! I wanted to be in a group like that! At the time, I lived in the middle of nowhere, so it really wasn’t an option. Though, to be fair, Robin’s group was from all over the country, and they flew to one person’s house for the week. And today with Zoom and Google Meet, anyone can have a brainstorming retreat.

Fast forward many years later. In the fall of 2021, I had the honor of meeting Debbie Macomber. (Google Debbie, if you’re not sure who she is. She writes romance she’s been around since the 80s. She’s super famous and so kind and sweet and generous.) Debbie said to me and my friends, if she could give us one piece of advice it would be to start brainstorming group. She is in one with several other famous authors who all started writing in the 80s. When I heard her advice, it all came rushing back and I started drooling again! I badly wanted to be a part of such a group. I tried to talk some friends into it, yet we’ve never managed to work it out yet. We’re all very busy doing life. And that’s fair.

And then Susie came along, and not only did I get to go on this amazing retreat where we brainstormed three Blood of Kings spin-off stories, I got to experience an expert at the helm!

Here is how it worked.

My authors were asked to read Susie’s book The Story Equation prior to attending the retreat. They were to spend some time developing their two main characters. They needed to know their dark moment story, their greatest dream, greatest fear, flaws, strengths, lies, etc. They were to fill out the Character Story Equation worksheet. Each morning, this “Character Story Equation” was written on a large sheet of paper. Then the author of the day would tell us about their character, and we’d talk it out. Does the character work? Do they make sense? We needed to know both POV characters before we could plot. We spend each morning just talking about the characters. Then we took a lunch break and came back in the afternoons to plot.

As I mentioned before, Susie has her own plotting method. It’s really quite similar to Save the Cat and the regular Three-Act Structure, but she has her own terms. Plus, hers is geared toward writing romances, since that is what she writes. Each day of the retreat after lunch, we would fill out the scene structure template, plotting the book one scene at a time. Since the books have two points of view, we alternated between them, every other chapter.

In the end, each of my debut authors went home with three huge sheets of paper all folded up: one Character Story Equation for each POV character and one story plot chart. Precious cargo!

There is a reason the early Pixar movies were so amazing. They worked on them as a team. They presented them to others and gathered feedback. Work done with others is almost always stronger because you’re aking use of many creative minds. I highly recommend brainstorming retreats with other writers to help you plot or even to test an already plotted idea. This is a great way to making sure your idea is strong before you begin. You still have to write the book and make it all work. And this also doesn’t mean you won’t still run into problems that you need to fix. But you’ll save yourself so much time, and you’ll feel excited and empowererd about the story you’re now totally ready to write.

Have you ever participated in a brainstorming retreat? What did you think of it? Any wisdom to share? Also, if you have questions about the images above, please ask in the comments, and I’ll do my best to explain. I highly recommend Susie’s book The Story Equation, which you can get on Amazon.com.

And now for some pictures from my retreat!

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.