Brainstorming for Writers III: Using Those Starter Lists

Last time I introduced the use of brainstorming starter lists to get a project started.  Sadly, I felt the need to make some pretty lame analogies. Sorry. I promise to avoid  that temptation today. At least, the lame part.

Even though the original instructions were to make at least five lists of a minimum of 15 items, let's see how this process works with just two. 

Okay, that's lazy, I know, but it was a long weekend and, frankly, I'm an old ferret in need of his beauty rest. (Come to think of it, I could have used that 45 years ago. Sigh.) 

Here's what I did for demonstration purposes: I opened a new document in Pages (I'm a Mac guy, but you can do the same in Word, if you must feed the Beast.) For five minutes, I typed whatever bopped into my brain that fit onto those two lists. Somehow, these items appeared: 

 Objects

• Pencil
• Stapler
• Ruler
• Glass
• Toothbrush
• Train
• Radio
• Lawnmower
• Ladder
• Chair
• Knife
• Sausage
• Ironing board
• Box
• Microscope

Places

• Las Vegas
• Forest
• Hawaii
• Bedroom
• Gymnasium
• Library
• McDonald’s
• Munich
• Arboretum
• Utah
• Antarctica
• Perelandra
• Buenos Aires
• Harbor
• Desert

Where’d these ideas come from? I don't know and it really doesn’t matter. If they're too weird and you want to call me a warped old geezer ... I’d have to agree with you. But there is method in the madness.

With the generated lists, the first step was to cull five words from each. Objects I found intriguing as to what I could do with them were train, knife, sausage, ironing board, and box. The places I selected were Hawaii, Utah, Perelandra (C.S. Lewis' version of the planet Venus), Buenos Aires, and a harbor.

“Why didn’t you just write five in the first place? What a waste of …”

I hear you cry, but wait. Notice when those items occurred while brainstorming. If I had stopped after five items on each list, only one (Hawaii) would have made the finals. Now I have ten which can easily be turned into plot points, topics, settings, symbols… Lots of fun things to explore. And if I have at least three more lists ... Wow!

But wait! I promised in the first brainstorming article we'd get to play in the brainstorming puddles, get drenched, and make mudpies. One of those lame analogies, remember? Well, it turns out it's not so lame. What if besides our finals lists, we make COMBO lists? Oooh. Playing.

So, randomly, I joined stapler with library, train with Munich, lawnmower with Las Vegas, chair with bedroom, and knife with harbor. 

Then the brain started doing its thing. The pairings took on a life of their own and I realized maybe those pairings weren’t as random as I originally thought. 

Glimpses of stories began to appear. 

Like what if a deranged video-gamer broke into the city library and stapled all the pages of the Danielle Steel books together? Or how would we answer the Great Question: Can a teenager earn money mowing lawns near the desert in Las Vegas? Or how could the police find the connection between a knife found at the New York harbor and the decapitated Barbie doll discovered under the backseat of Luigi Gambucci’s Fiat?

Oh, the mind reels! And that’s a good thing. That's what brainstorming is for. And starter lists can be just the beginning.

If you as a writer extend your starter lists, combine them, cull individual lists, whittle them, hack them, shape and reshape new ones, soon you will find yourself drowning in inspiration ... and maybe you'll find a better analogy than a drowning madman armed with a red pen. If so, let me know later. I'm off for a long summer's nap.