How To Brainstorm A Novel – My name is Joe Turbessy. I use Culliver Krantz as the author name for my middle grade book series called FrightVision. In addition to the series, I offer ‘FrightStorming’ sessions in schools where I interactively brainstorm with children to come up with real-time stories using their ideas.
This blog is based on my visits to schools around the country for students in grades three through six. This activity is such a fun and creative way to engage and engage your students in the classroom as well as at home through virtual learning. This training program can be conducted in a group or individually.
How To Brainstorm A Novel
First, it is important to encourage students to think about the main parts of the story that they will need to come up with their own idea. I encourage teachers to start with a quick and painless exercise for students to write what is important to the story.
Brainstorming Your Story Idea Worksheet
Now that we have an idea of what we need to create the story, and the students’ minds are thinking that way, let’s start brainstorming!
The first thing we need is the main character. When I do these classes with a group of students, I always tell them: it’s a big responsibility! This is the character we’re going to build our entire story around, so we’re going to need a name for our character and three things to complement it: 1) Something the character loves, 2) Something the character hates, and 3) Something you afraid of characters
We’re not done yet because we need more information about our important protagonist. Let’s add to each of our lists until we have 3-4 things in each of the three main categories.
Now, to keep the students focused, here I use a story prompt that includes the setting, story idea, and title. This prompt encourages students to think about how their character fits into the story. There are many places where you can find clues to history, including
Brainstorm Your Story’s Setting
This is where thinking really comes into play. Students have an idea and a character with unique characteristics that they will use to create an idea for their story. We select this request from
The Lake House notebook, something in the lake could be a snake. Why did I mention the snake? Because this is exactly what his main character is afraid of. We want our main characters to grow up and conquer their fears.
But as I always ask the students during this exercise, is our character just walking by the house and they are by the lake and come across a snake? No! Of course not! We need an epic journey to get there, and we’ll use as many of the features we’ve built as possible BEFORE we parse the request. It creates really interesting and diverse ideas.
Based on the character in this example, we know we’ll be introducing spiders, heights, and maybe even a slice of pizza on our trip to the lake. This will add meaning to our story.
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I always encourage students to break things. As we did with our character, we have to think about the lake. So what’s in the lake? What is around the lake: what is the terrain?
Then, when we have a good idea of the lake area, we think about our epic journey. What happens during our trip? What difficulties will our character face?
We’ve broken our story down into smaller pieces, now we’re adding everything together to form our whole story.
Each time your students create new story components, ask them why they did it. They must be able to relate each event to their character.
Build Your Writing Process
All these sessions will be unique. Each time your students do this exercise, even if they use the same prompt, the end result will likely be different. The whole exercise is basically based on the character they create that will drive their idea.
This question will allow them to use their imagination and refine their idea, which will ultimately help them reach the end of their story. And if they’re anything like me, they’ll want a great twist that combines all the features they used to brainstorm!
Once your students have their idea, they will need to organize and tell their story. We’ll save that for another time!
If you enjoy this activity but don’t want to organize it yourself and would like to invite someone into your class to do it, feel free to get in touch! I always enjoy the opportunity to lead FrightStorming sessions with students!
Help You Brainstorm Your Novel By Kimventrella
Middle grade book collection! So far, 9 books in the series have been published, with more to come soon. Kranz has hosted FrightStorming sessions across the United States, both virtual and in person. The result of these classes were enthusiastic students and extremely satisfied teachers. The FrightVision website has lots of reviews (click on the “Educators” tab), as well as a reading guide and curriculum for
And often hosts children’s video and writing contests, family events, and will soon host a book club. For more information on You have an idea for a story. It’s just a spark now, but you can’t stop thinking about it. Now is the time to harness your creative energy and turn your idea into reality. And brainstorming is an ideal technique for work.
This template and the steps below will help you turn your initial story idea into something real. Online brainstorming means you can invite other people to share your ideas wherever you are. This template is part of our Novel Planning Guide.
Whether you’re writing a novel or a screenplay, follow this step-by-step guide to the modern idea generation process in the free tool used by top creatives.
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What is the central idea or concept of your story? This is your starting point. At this point it may be a rough idea or topic you want to explore, but this process will help you see how far you can go. Start by adding a note that describes your concept in 1 or 2 sentences.
Then write topics related to your idea. Some starting themes might be era, setting, characters, or conflict, but there are no rules about how to do it.
Now is the time to get creative. Start adding ideas related to your main concept. Think about the different parts of your story, the place, the characters, or even the history of your object. Explore each thread until you fill the board. Setting a timer for 5 minutes is a great way to create a sense of urgency and prevent you from judging your thoughts.
Sometimes it’s easier to convey an idea with an image or video, especially if it’s a mood or style you’re trying to convey. Collect reference images, video and audio and add them to the mix. Images can help define things like fashion, attributes and emotions of characters, scenes, and more.
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Now is the time for criticism. Go through the ideas again, this time critically evaluating them against the original concept.
If you have a writing partner, ask them to pick their favorite ideas and explain why. Be ready to share your opinion and receive suggestions and improvements. Encourage constructive discussion. If an idea doesn’t significantly improve the story, discard it. You can always come back later.
Now that the brainstorming is complete, you have a solid foundation for your novel! Remember that creativity and inspiration are constantly evolving, so are ideas. Come back and think when inspiration strikes. Once you know why you’re writing a book and your vision for success after publication, the next step is to think about your book. There are three reasons to think before you start writing: it makes writing easier, your book is more focused, and you’re likely to get more ideas than if you just sat down to write it. Here are 6 ways to think about your book.
The brainstorming process helps you flesh out ideas for your main theme or story and create the framework for your book. The ideas generated will serve as chapter headings, subheadings, and topics within each chapter. The initial goal is not organization or a perfect story. Write down as many ideas as you can, whether they are good or bad, completely relevant or redundant. Include individual thoughts, stories, quotes, or facts, even if you don’t have exact words or numbers. Use one, two, or all of the brainstorming methods to find the one that produces the best results. The examples given here focus on non-fiction topics, but can also be used, in a general sense, for fiction. Although you can use a computer for brainstorming, science has proven it
How To Brainstorm The Perfect Novel Idea
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