Writers in the Storm

Most novels are written on the premise of "what if." Our What-if muscles help us figure out what needs to come next in the story. Sometimes we're lucky and we just know. More often (at least for me) we often have no clue what needs to happen next.

When I write non-fiction for awhile, my fiction “What-if” muscle gets seriously out of shape. Thankfully, other writers who know more than I do share their tools. 

Here are several ways to get unstuck if your What-if muscle is feeling flabby.

Change creative mediums

• Make a collage for your book. Jennifer Crusie does this.
• Different textures and different mediums can stimulate your brain to be creative. Debbie Macomber and Christie Ridgway knit (so do I!); Linda Lael Miller paints.
• Choose a soundtrack for your book. Spotify, YouTube, Pandora and Amazon Music will all work.
• Julia Cameron composes music.

Something that always helps is to brainstorm with different types of people. I recommend a writer friend, a non-writer friend, a newbie writer and someone who writes in a different genre. One of my favorite gals for brainstorming is Leanne Banks.  Below are some of her top tricks for getting “unstuck.”

Write an autobiography of your characters and ask them provocative questions like:

• What are you most proud of?
• What was your most embarrassing moment?
• What is your biggest fear?
• What did your parents teach you about sex?
• What did they teach you about love?
• What is your biggest shame?
• What is your secret wish?

Brainstorming Techniques

Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird is a classic must-read for writers. Not only does she give you “permission to write crap,” she also gives stellar brainstorming advice such as:

• “Keep a one inch picture frame on your desk to remind yourself that for each moment, you only have to write as much as you can see through a one-inch picture frame.”
• In other words, when a whole project is overwhelming, break it into little pieces or as she says, “don’t try to eat the elephant in one sitting.”

Leanne Banks also offers these tips:

• If you’re stuck, be random. (I love this!)
• Brainstorm what everyone else would do, then do the opposite.
• Reconsider what you did that got you into this corner and determine if a small change can get you out of it.

Leanne's Creative “What-if” Techniques

• Role-storming: How would you handle a problem if you were someone else?
• Iconic figures: How would you approach it if you were an iconic figure from the past?
• Brainwriting: Gather several people and give one person a piece of paper. Each person writes for 10 minutes, then passes the paper. Keep going until everyone has written on the page. Read the entire story out loud.
• The old reliable List of 20 – You must write down twenty possibilities, as fast as you can think of them, no editing allowed. The only engraved rule is that you must write all twenty! It’s the “old reliable” because it works.

Other great brainstorming articles and tools:

• 12 Surefire Brainstorming Techniques from Brian Westover
• The Emotion Thesaurus (and it's fellow books) by Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi
• 8 Brainstorming Strategies for Generating New Writing Ideas (this is awesome)
• Mind Mapping: A Pantser's Path to the Perfect Story

And finally, if you are having trouble with your book, there is one other impediment to consider: YOU.  Cindy Dees said something in a workshop I went to last week that stuck in the minds of everyone there: "The three reasons why most of the writers I mentor are unpublished are personal, emotional or psychological. It has nothing to do with their writing."

Don't let your own fears and angst keep you from your story. You have the talent to write an amazing book. I know it. I hope you know it too.

Are you ready to stagger over to your work in progress and bring forth brainstorming magnificence? What techniques help you when your “what-if” muscle needs a workout?

About Jenny Hansen

By day, Jenny provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. By night she writes humor, memoir, women’s fiction and short stories. After 18+ years as a corporate software trainer, she’s delighted to sit down while she works.

When she’s not at her personal blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, or here at Writers In The Storm.

Kathryn Craft

Turning Whine Into Gold

In high school, I was the type of high achiever that had my teachers taking me under their wings. Turns out, that wasn’t always such a good thing.

My fifth-year Russian teacher, thinking I’d follow in his footsteps, challenged me to write a research paper on a Russian ballerina—in Russian. My biology teacher got permission for a small group of us budding doctors to watch two surgeries at Johns Hopkins Hospital (where my best friend fainted dead away). I loved math, and attacked my homework problems the second I got home each day. I’m sure my math teachers wouldn’t have been surprised at all if I’d become an engineer, although that was at a time when girls weren’t encouraged to think such things.

I benefitted from my teachers’ interest in ways I will never be able to fathom. But one thing they did was particularly damaging to a girl whose self-esteem was already wobbly: they whispered to my parents about my “potential.”

If you believe in the power of words, then know this: “potential” is a cruel mistress. Such talk set up a syndrome in which I was always comparing my performance to a future standard I had no clue how to define—and without fail, I found my performance lacking.

A person who strives to fulfill her potential can be a person who is never done preparing to live her life.

“Potential is a concept that can bind us to personal powerlessness,” wrote Marianne Williamson in her book, A Return to Love. That held true for me at the start of my writing journey. Wondering if I had the “potential for brilliance” made it all the harder to take those first, bumbling baby steps toward story without the handrails of an MFA or PhD to guide my steps.

How could it be, I wondered, that many successful novelists never even graduated from high school? My guess is, they didn’t waste time focusing on their potential. They just wrote.

Instead of potential, Williamson suggests we think of our “capacity for brilliance.” Capacity is available to us right now. Our memories, curiosity, imagination, and desire to learn can open the gates to unused brain space and open our hearts. As a novelist, I already have the capacity to be a Russian translator, a doctor, and an engineer—all in one story.

Instead of thinking, “I have the potential to be a novelist,” try telling yourself, “I already have the capacity of a novelist.”

By celebrating our capacity to write, we no longer need to worry about our potential—we’ll be accumulating the words that will line a path straight toward it. Extend your efforts into the fullness of your capacity. Show up powerfully on the page and apply the brilliance that exists within you, today. As Williamson says, “how will we ever get to tomorrow’s promise without making some sort of move today?”

The story that is growing within you is yours to tell.

We’re waiting.

Have you ever been paralyzed by worrying about your potential? What unlived lives are within your capacity, that you would like to manifest through your characters

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About Kathryn

Kathryn Craft  is the award-winning author of two novels from Sourcebooks, The Art of Falling and The Far End of Happy, and a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, specializing in storytelling structure and writing craft. Her chapter “A Drop of Imitation: Learn from the Masters” was included in the writing guide Author in Progress, from Writers Digest Books. Janice Gable Bashman’s interview with her, “How Structure Supports Meaning,” originally published in the 2017 Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, has been reprinted in The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing, both from Writer’s Digest Books.

Amy Sue Nathan

Twelve years ago, right in the middle of a memoir writing workshop online, I started writing fiction instead. From that day forward, I continued doing two things: writing novels, and signing up for online writing workshops. The comfort of taking a class while wearing my pajamas appeals to me almost as much as the bottomless bowl of popcorn by my side.

This started off innocently enough. I had been a journalist. I had articles and essays published. In these arenas I wrote the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It was that memoir workshop where I realized I wasn’t willing to write anyone’s story but my own. Memoirs contain anecdotes and storylines about other people. Without that, my book would have been thin and flimsy and unpublishable. And that’s what I wanted. To be published. The only way to give heft to the story I wanted to tell was to take myself out of it and make stuff up.  

I didn’t discriminate much when it came to workshops. Anything would do. Anything could help. I found workshops that focused narrowly on things like dialogue and structure, to workshops that offered broad strokes of knowledge on writing and publishing. All I needed was someone who knew more than me, and that was everyone.

An equal opportunity addict, I signed up for workshops by reputable companies and well-known authors, as well as bloggers who simply “seemed” to know what they were talking about. One of the best things I did was not limit myself to my genre. Thriller writers and romance writers were welcoming and flexible when helping me modify some content to fit the women’s fiction genre.  

Tip #1: Look outside your genre box for workshops, or even for writing books. There’s always something to learn from other writers who are masters of their craft. No matter what they write.

With time I found that workshops differed in two major ways. Some provided lessons and posted “homework assignments” and I received feedback from the instructor only, while some are structured so that the workshop participants posted their homework and the class chimed in with feedback of its own. I was always open to having as many writers cooking in my story kitchen as possible. Sometimes the feedback was relevant, sometimes it wasn’t, but even that showed me I was started to grow my writing spine. As I was starting to know myself as a writer, I became more confident in discerning which feedback worked for me or didn’t. And more importantly, why.

Tip #2: Do the homework. Sometimes I’d be in a workshop with ten or twelve writers and only two of us would do the assignments. Can you say extra attention from the instructor?

As I moved forward with my writing, I looked for genre specific workshops, or ones tailored to a struggle I was having with a work-in-progress. I found workshops on countless methods of storytelling and outlining, from three acts to five acts, from timelines to snowflakes. I have taken workshops on how to write flashbacks and others on how not to write flashbacks, on happy endings and tragic ones.

Tip #3: When it comes to any workshops, feedback, or conflicting ideas, take what you need and leave the rest.

You might think I stopped signing up for workshops when I found an agent or had novels published. No way. Accountability and camaraderie inspire me. Meeting new writers intrigues me.  Reading and giving feedback challenges me.  I always say I’m a workshop junkie. I’m always Googling different topics to see where and how I can learn something new or strengthen a skill.

The thing that did happen after my first novel was published, I was given the opportunity to teach workshops. Not only did I begin to help and connect with writers near and far, of all backgrounds and ages and interests,  but –you guessed it—I had access to the workshop materials! For me! Two birds, one workshop.

Tip #4: Being a writer is a never-ending learning process. It can be a solitary endeavor, but it doesn’t have to be lonely.

Do you take workshops? which kind? Any tips/recommendations?

Amy Sue Nathan is the author of Left to Chance, The Good Neighbor, and The Glass Wives all published by St. Martin’s Press. She is also the founder of The Women’s Fiction Writers blog, named a Best Website for Writers four years in a row by Writer’s Digest. Amy’s essays and articles have been widely published in print and online, including The Chicago Tribune, Writer’s Digest, Psychology Today, YourTango and Huffington Post. She is a frequent speaker and workshop presenter, a member of Tall Poppy Writers, and has been a freelance book coach and editor since 2009.

Amy lives near Philadelphia, is the mom of two grown children, and the servant to one geriatric dog. When she’s not taking workshops (and even when she is) she’s working on her fourth novel.  

You can connect with Amy on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram where she’s @AmySueNathan (clever, right?),  her website, AmySueNathan.com, and her blog, WomensFictionWriters.com.