How to Brainstorm - Four Effective Methods!
How to Brainstorm - Four Effective Methods!
There are hundreds of ways literally to brainstorm. We will cover the most popular ones for creative writing. You'll find many of these idea generation techniques in writing workshops. These include mind-mapping, free-writing, cubing, boundary crunching, listing, perspective adding, vertical thinking, charting, journal questioning, demographic fitting, dictionary/thesaurus reading, and simile associating. We'll show the most popular ones among writers. These methods can be used no matter if you are screenwriting, writing poetry, making short stories, or coming up with ideas for a fictional novel.
Free-writing
Free-writing is one of the best creativity tools out there. Simply write down whatever comes to mind and keep flowing. Even if the thoughts don't make sense, just keep typing and see what words come to you. It may be even off-topic. You may be grammatically incorrect or not know what to say. That's great! Just keep that pen going or just keep typing. This will let your mind know that it is okay to come up with crazy ideas that your inner critic would usually stop. Things like that's just too silly or too childish won't stop you anymore. You are like a train that keeps busting through and allows anything to happen. Everything is great when you free-write! Have fun with it and enjoy your inner child coming out to play. Try it with your eyes shut even. This may encourage more freedom in thought. Feel free to even set a time like 10 minutes to help motivate you or just keep writing till you feel you've had enough.
When you're done with this process, read back over the text. There will be a lot of junk, but within the junk, try to find gemstones of ideas and inspirations. When you find these gems, list them out so you can use them in your creative writing later. Even if you don't find any gems, you vented or quieted your internal noisy chaos or lubricated your writing gears to help you write easier.
Mind Mapping
Mapping is about getting as many associations out as possible with the main topic as the center. You'll explore all the ideas associated with the topic and subtopic. First, take out a piece of paper - preferably a large one. Write the topic in the center and circle it. Now write a word associated with the topic in a blank spot. Now keep finding blank spots and
writing new words or phrases down. Don't worry about if it makes much sense. As long as it has some connection to the topic in the smallest way, even if it's weird, keep it. Who knows what use may come of it.
Now that you have many ideas, get some thin color markers out and circle two ideas that are closely related with the same color. Connect them with a line with the same marker. When you are making this line, go around some words or phrases with the marker so that you don't draw over other words. This is why it is a good idea to use a big piece of paper. If you run out of colors, you can use dotted circles or squiggly circles around the ideas.
Now sit back and take a look. Pay attention to all the ideas, even the ones that are alone and don't have associations. Automatically, new perspectives and ideas should come to you from associations you haven't thought of before. Also, you may notice that you are clearer of which parts you want to focus on and which ideas are not so important. You may even notice the order in which you want to explore your ideas.
Pretend You're a Journalist
Journalists often use this technique to come up with the whole picture.
They start with 6 questions: Who?, What?, When?, Where?, Why?, and How? Write each question word on a sheet of paper, leaving space between them. Then, write out some sentences or phrases in answer, as they fit your particular topic. You might also answer into a tape recorder if you'd rather talk out your ideas.
A second way to brainstorm is to pretend you are interviewing the characters in your story or creative writing. Ask them questions like you would a new friend, like you were a detective interrogating, or a journalist wanting to know the situation. Or ask questions about an object like a detective investigating a scene.
Cubing
Cubing enables you to consider an idea from many perspectives. All you have to do is follow the simple instructions below.
1. Describe it think about the components(each component can be cubed again)
2. Compare it what's better than it, what's worse, what's louder, how is it like/unlike another topic
3. Associate it freely write down what this topic makes you think of
4. Analyze it ask why, all kinds of why, and then ask why is that
5. Apply it where would this work, what would it look like in real life, your life
6. Argue for and against it sometimes the opposite is just the right craziness you need to make it work
Look over what you've written. Do any of the responses suggest anything new about your topic? Do sparks go off in your head as you compare the responses from each of the methods within the cubing?
There are many more methods on brainstorming. But these tools here will definitely help increase your creative thinking skills. So go ahead and try them out!
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