If you did the exercises in the first “Receive His Rain Brainstorming” blog, and you don’t feel like you have enough information, here’s some more information to get you to think about your strengthening stories.
- Describe the before and after.
- If you are writing a faith-based book, you may want to look up Bible verses about topics from your brainstorm.
So, if I’m writing a book about self-discipline, I would search for Bible verses about discipline or time on the Internet. I would see if those give me any insights.
The next three activities can be really time consuming, but for longer works like a book or book series, these may be necessary:
- I digitize my journals to find related stories if I can’t remember them. I also do a search on my pictures to help jog my memory.
- I could also look up others’ quotes on the subject—to support my points. I do a search on Goodreads.
- Then and only then, do I do a search on Amazon, and I read what others say about a topic.. Unless I’m doing a book that summarizes all the literature of the day on an important topic, this last step can be a distraction.
If I know I’m starting a new book, I typically do two or three brainstorming sessions. For a blog series, I do an abbreviated one-hour session.
For all brainstorms—regardless of size, I do a Scapple document.
And, even if I don’t end up writing about them for years to come, I find the brainstorms always help me get started whenever I’m ready.
