E47 – Idea Management

Show Notes

In this episode, Miss Catherine M.H. and V.E. Griffith answer a listener question and talk about managing ideas as they arise, separate from the actual writing output.

The Revision Wizards are at https://www.revisionwizards.com
V.E. Griffith’s website: https://www.vegriffith.com
Miss Catherine M.H.’s website: https://www.scribes-pen.com

Transcript at: https://revisionwizards.com/?p=2452

Transcript

[V.E. Griffith]
Welcome to the Revision Wizards podcast. I’m V.E. Griffith, and I’m joined by my co-host from the opposite school of magic, Ms. Catherine M.H. This week, we’ll be responding to a listener question from Shari.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
I probably should have asked how to pronounce her name.

[V.E. Griffith]
I don’t know how to- Their name. Shari, Shari, Shari. With deepest apology, Shari, I know you’re listening because I told you we were going to answer this.

Next time, I’ll ask you how to pronounce your name. Let me read what they wrote. We can just go for it.

Are they right? It’s a big topic and lots of ways to get at it, but I’d like to hear how you each approach planning a story. Not outlining versus pantsing, that’s the output, but from the idea of a story onward.

Captured on the back of an envelope, flesh it out with research, do up one of those bubble grams, carving out the pieces you use. This probably isn’t clear. My mind is full of a new story, and it’s too crowded up there for clarity.

We get that.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Yeah. Let’s start with you because your answer is a lot more simple than mine. Or I guess, hold on, wait, let’s go back and let’s look at the first part of this.

We’re going to break down this question.

[V.E. Griffith]
Okay.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
And it’s the approach. So it’s not the fact that we’re outlining or pantsing. It’s when that idea pops into your brain, what do you do?

[V.E. Griffith]
When I get an idea for a story, the truth is that I don’t really get an idea for a story. I have been working on my one story for so long that it’s kind of, I kind of have a one track mind about it at this point. I want to get it done before I start moving into other things.

So maybe I’m repressing myself and not coming up with a lot of stories. But right now, as I’m going through editing this document that’s now 51,000 words up from 40,000 words, I checked this morning. Yeah.

I feel like I’m not focusing on idea generation at all. I have some ideas about how I would go about it that seem to fit my personality and my writing style, but I haven’t gotten to those yet. And maybe over time, those will evolve.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Okay. Easy answer.

[V.E. Griffith]
Easy answer.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Mine will not be easy.

[V.E. Griffith]
Okay. Well, let’s hear yours.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
So first it would depend on the genre. If it is sci-fi, I’m probably just writing it immediately. Like I will, it’ll pop into my head and that’s it.

If it’s steampunk, I’m going to do a little bit of a dive because my steampunk tends to usually follow really dark topics and heavy topics of modern day. So like the one I’m working on, we’ll be talking about like abortion rights and women’s rights to not carry a child if they would prefer. So that’ll be part of my next book.

And so I’ll do a thought where I sit and I’m like, Ooh, this could be interesting. And then I have a very big process that I’m still trying to figure out how it works with the super note that I have. I have the paper process and then the typing process.

So for me, if I want to flesh out an idea or like see if I like the story and run with it, I will write it out in pencil on a piece of paper. And if I like it or it really is starting to register and it’s starting to ring and I just can’t get it out of my head, then I will start to type it. For me, if I’m writing it on paper, it’s not as important.

If I start typing it, it is something that I would actually consider writing. That also goes for if I write in print or cursive. If I’m writing in print, I am just jotting down notes.

So they’re just small little bits for my brain. If I’m writing in cursive, it’s more important. So it really just, for me, depends on the genre.

But an idea can pop into my head just by looking at a Pinterest picture. And then I will copy that picture and be like, let’s go. So the start of it depends on the genre.

And yeah. Where’s the next part of this question? Let’s see.

[V.E. Griffith]
Do you capture it on the back of an envelope, flesh it out with research? What’s your research process once you get to the point where you think, okay, this one’s a go?

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Okay, good one. I could use Scandal’s Pen and Gambler’s Rumor as a great example. I allowed myself one month to do research because I do have the historical and the steampunk elements to this.

So after one month of research, I’m no longer allowed to do research unless it’s a quick thing that I’m like, hold on, what year was this done in? And I can look that up really quick. But I do the big bulk of any kind of research that I think might be needed for that topic in that one month, because you can go down a big rabbit hole by doing research.

As for the envelope, the amount of, if you guys could see my paper closet, which my cat was just cuddling herself into. It got to such a point that my fiance was like, we’re not buying paper anymore. So I have sticky notes.

I have napkins. I have notebooks. I have the back of receipts.

I have you name it. I have written on it. And I have it stored in that closet.

And it used to be like I would not leave a house without a piece of paper in my wallet, in my pocketbook, in my coat pockets. Trevor would carry paper on him in case I was ever like, oh my God, hon, I need to write this. Or a pen.

So he would have it with me because he’s just like, we’re not buying more paper. If I keep a piece of paper in my pocket, it’ll be fine. So I’ve gotten better.

I now have, I think it’s like 17 open documents on my Supernote for just a few of the ideas that are going. And each time I start one, I’ll like pick a genre and then be like idea number one and write out some things. Idea number two.

And we’ll write out like a different version of it just to see if I like the idea of it. So for me, the research part is important if I’m deep diving. So my science fiction, I actually did a lot more research after I wrote the book the first time.

And I realized that wasn’t the smart idea to do. You can’t launch the ship I want off a planet without actually destroying the planet. Like there was a lot that I really should have researched before writing it.

So I definitely think researching a month in advance if you’re gonna plan out stuff. If you have an idea that you’re like, hey, this is important and I need to know about it, do that research ahead of time doesn’t mean you have to become the expert in it. And that you can’t go back to researching, but it does help to have that little bit of basis.

So when you are starting your writing, you’re not being like, oh, wait, now I have to pause and go look this up. You know the start of something and you can go into it. So for my steampunk world, I deal with a lot of women’s rights.

So I did a lot of research into what women’s rights were in the 1800s, which are not a lot in case anybody wanted to know. And so when I was writing, I knew that I could pull into those ideas. Like I could sit there and be like, all right, I know women didn’t have the right to see their children if they were divorced.

I know that women weren’t allowed to get a restraining order. I know women weren’t allowed to keep their money if they were married. So those things I knew.

But if I wanted to know at what time did we get those rights, I would then pause a moment, go look that up. But it wasn’t something that would dive me into a rabbit hole of research. So yeah.

Let’s see. What kind of bubble diagrams? You know, I don’t think I’ve ever done a bubble diagram.

[V.E. Griffith]
I have. And I found them to be not terribly helpful for me, because if you do them, if I do them on the computer, they take too long to do, to deal with, to make the shapes. And then they’re wrong.

And they’re the wrong size. And they don’t connect right. And I have to hassle with it.

And I don’t like that. But if I do them by hand, then I can’t read what the hell I wrote. So it’s kind of like now having said that I have tried a little bit on my new iPad that I got with the pen.

And I really like that because it’s relatively easy to change colors or change pen sizes. You know, the, the, the size of the line that you get, but I haven’t really used it for new idea generation yet. Most of what I have is trying to work out my current novel and trying to work out the next book in the series.

I’ve used a workbook that our friend Jeff Elkins put together, a previous guest on the show, The Dialogue Doctor. And it’s actually really neat to put that on something like an iPad or a SuperNote and use your pen to fill it out. Because if I did it by hand, I wouldn’t do it because my hand had hurt too much.

So, you know, I bought, I bought a copy of the books for sort of bookshelf look and for reference, but I’m not going to be filling them out. That’s what I think is my approach is going to be, is going to be working out ideas on the iPad. And it may become something like a bullet point list that I keep open so I can just pop open the, it’s called freeform, I believe.

So I can pop up in the freeform app and just jot something down. And in freeform, I can move the screen around. So I’ve got almost infinite paper space.

So I can make a note over on the left and I can have my bullet list over on the right and I can have a mind map in the middle. And then when all that doesn’t work, I can create a new document or I can erase it, or I can bring it up on my main computer and so that I can look at it all together on my giant monitor. It’s really, it’s really a powerful, flexible tool for me, but I haven’t gotten into using it for idea generation much.

I’ve mostly been using it recently for editing and for trying to work out the missing parts of my story that my story coach has helped me identify.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
I don’t do a bubble diagram, but I have done what I nicknamed the page of death. And I need to find one of those for you, which I have in that closet back over there, so I can send you a picture. And it’s, I write everything I know about that story idea on a piece of paper.

And you draw arrows, circle things, move them over there, point that this section then follows this section, but it goes back to this section. And it looks terrifying on one of those pages. The one I want to find is for my space opera where I described the nine book series that I have going in my brain where I’m like, I know it’s not just nine books, but at least it’s starting with nine.

And how I know how the story goes. And it’s also mixed in with like math equations from when I was researching how much space would be needed on a spaceship, or how much food per square inch, or how many people could this size of a ship actually hold with oxygen ratios, but would have been very helpful if I labeled which equations those were. Because now looking back at them, I’m like, I just know it works, but I have no idea where I got the numbers from.

So these pages of death help me because I can explain the entire thing to myself or to whoever is unfortunate enough to be around and ask me, what are you writing? I like the pages of death because it gets me thinking and I can have my story written out on a piece of paper that no one else would be able to figure out, even if they tried. Because I’ve looked back at some of them, and I don’t know what they’re saying half the time.

So it’s really in the moment. And then for me as a pantser, that idea is now in my head, and I can see it evolving. So it doesn’t really matter if I’m writing it, or if I’m changing it from what that piece of paper had said.

It’s not like I’m going to follow half of it anyway.

[V.E. Griffith]
Typical you.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Yep. So I think that’s how I go about the I have an idea, and I want to test it out. So I’ll write it on paper, or I’ll, you know, page of death it.

I’ll do some research. And then one of the other things I do is I really use NaNoWriMo as my guessing game. I take a, in quotes, break from my normal writing stories to test out any of these bunny ideas.

So that is my month to mess around, write whatever I want, see how it’s working, and see if any of those stories really stick for me. And then from there, if they’re really sticking, and they’re not going to go anywhere, then I will take it seriously and really start knuckling down into I either have to do the research, or we’re just going to write, and I’m going to leave little quotes of, please research. You’re dumb for not researching this.

And other nasty things that I can tell myself that I laugh at when I go back to edit and then curse myself, my past self for not having done it first.

[V.E. Griffith]
That sounds also very you. Well, I’m in the position where I am using some of these notes as I write them out. And sometimes I just, I write them out.

I save them to a PDF and I file them into Scrivener where I have everything. And yeah, you can’t see Ms. Catherine giving me the death stare because Scrivener is the devil.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Scrivener. Oh, someone asked me about that recently. And I was like, it’s the devil.

And like ran away from the conversation. And they’re like, okay.

[V.E. Griffith]
Okay. It’s how I organize things. I’m a very folder based hierarchical sort of person.

And that’s why outlining seems to work well for me, even if I don’t always stick to the outline Scrivener’s method of organization in the binder really helps me think things through when I have reached the point where I’m going from free form into Scrivener. A lot of times what I’ll do is I’ll sit and I’ll think through what scenes do I need to write? And if I was going to name them something, what would they be named?

Not cutesy names that I might show a reader, but just names that remind me what they are. Montington kills somebody. Montington goes to the well, something like that.

And Scrivener allows me to simply create an unsorted list of scenes that I can then go back and sort into chapters. I can write scenes out of order. I can move scenes around.

I can move chapters around. I can add chapters in the middle, depending on how my organization changes as I write. A lot of that comes organically as I’m doing the editing.

So it’s sort of a combination of both free form handwriting using free form and the pen and the iPad, and then moving that into Scrivener so that I can actually read it.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Mine’s just scattered, like my brain. But it varies, honestly, person to person. So what works well for me would not work for VE.

And I don’t think I could ever… Okay, that’s a lie. I can organize things.

And I do keep some of the research organized with my drafts. But I use OneNote, which is the devil to VE. So I will keep some organized, but I’m not…

I’m very much the pantser. One of the… Oh, I guess one of the big things I will plan out is my character, which I didn’t go into.

I just went research and stuff. I actually have a character template, and I’m working on a workbook for it that I flesh out my character as if I am doing an interview with someone and getting to know them. And that really opens the entire world for me in my head.

Like, it’s amazing. I wish I could show people the visual that happens in my brain when I create a character, because it’s just… The entire book opens up for me, and I’m like, I could write this.

So that’s the thing. I will get very serious about writing a book if I actually write out a character sheet. Before that, I’m just fiddling around.

[V.E. Griffith]
I’ve learned to think about characters in terms of story hypothesis, which we have gone over in the past with our friend J.P. Ryan Flesh the ninth. And that helps me… A lot of my characters are based on me, which is problematic because then they all sound the same because they’re all me.

Story hypothesis and going through a character template that is short doesn’t ask me 900 things about a character, but gives me prompts about what are the important points of this character? How does it vary from me? Is the character shy?

Is the character not shy? Those kinds of things. What is the character’s role in the story?

That’s very important. Do they help the protagonist along? Do they not help the protagonist along?

Do they drag the protagonist back, the lead character? Or in the case of my second book, I’m doing two lead characters, which is a new stretch for me. So we’re going to see how that works out.

But how do those two characters interact? Because they’re going to have to sum. Obviously, we’re not going to have a story where two ships pass in the night and neither of the twain shall meet.

And then how does that lead into the next story? So all of this is sort of inchoate in my head until I get it to the point where I can start putting it, honestly, into scenes, into a firm event that happens at a specific place, at a specific time in the story, using specific characters. That’s, to me, that is a scene.

A specific time, specific place, specific event, specific characters. If I can put those things together, I can make a scene out of it. And then I simply have to find the logical progression of one scene to another, which is sort of like climbing a mountain.

The end of the story, the climax of the story is the top of the mountain. And how do I get from the bottom, where the inciting event is, up to the top? How do I get up the mountain?

What do I have to do to get from where I’m at to the next stop on the mountain? Helps me think of it like that.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
You’ve just got to bounce from A to Z, but then go back to B, and then hop over to P, and jump to T, and then go back to C.

[V.E. Griffith]
Only if I want to confuse my reader. Now, some writers may want to do that, and I’ve seen that done to good effect. I’m not that good a writer, so I’m not going to do that.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Not yet.

[V.E. Griffith]
Not yet. Maybe for book number 27, I’ll attempt something like that. But it’s the same reason why I deliberately don’t really write diverse characters, because I’m not good enough to write them well.

And I think it’s more of a disservice to write them poorly. So I’m not going to write them at all, at least right now. That’s a place I want to grow as a writer.

But in the meantime, we’re going to skip that. But it all comes back to the best way for me to record my thoughts. That’s sort of the takeaway that I get from Shari’s question, is what’s the best way to record my thoughts?

What’s the best way to record my ideas? What’s the best way to do the thinking? And for me, for right now, ask me again in two years, it’s a combination of freeform writing on the iPad and drag and drop in Scrivener.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
And mine’s literally in all over the place.

[V.E. Griffith]
And I know that it’s common for people to have an Ideas Scrivener document, or an Ideas Word document, or Google Docs document, or Notebook in OneNote, or whatever it is you use that’s got a bullet point of ideas. What happens if story idea? What happens if another story idea?

What happens if another story idea? What about this story idea? And it’s just a bullet point list that people sometimes pick out of their bullet journals.

So any method that works is what works. And so there’s not a right way or a wrong way to do this, except Katherine’s way is always wrong.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
I was just about to say, I don’t have a bullet point. Actually, I think that would be really cool if I was like, what if this? How about this story idea?

No, it’s me like writing four pages worth of the start of the story and being like, nah, doesn’t work. KATHERINE Hence the amount of notebooks I have, that only have one story started in them, by the way, and nothing else continued.

[V.E. Griffith]
The best thing that I could tell somebody who doesn’t have a method is to try and keep trying. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on equipment. Google Docs is free.

Many of us have Word anyway for school or for work. Many of us, you can get OneNote for free, either for Mac or PC, and you can start keeping notebooks that way.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Legal pad, if you’re handwriting.

[V.E. Griffith]
Legal pad works great, yeah. The ever popular notebook that you pick up at the stationery store that your average writer has 500 of, but they’re so pretty and you don’t want to mess them up and you got to buy another one instead. Whatever works is fine.

For me, electronic storage works better because I have limited amount of space in my home and I am poor at managing paper. So, if I don’t have to manage paper, that makes my life easier and it makes my housemate’s life easier, my fiance’s life easier because she doesn’t have to clean up all that crap. And then when she cleans it up, it gets lost and I hate it.

So, if I keep it electronically, she won’t mess with my electronics. I don’t mess with her electronics. Everybody’s happy.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
I will say that since I’ve gone to digital paper, A, it’s much easier to organize in my digital little super note. But I’ve also found that I’m starting to run out of paper in my house because now I’m like, oh, I need a piece of paper and I’ll use the paper from back there to like write normal things, grocery lists, you name it. Like, and now I’m being like, I don’t have a notepad that sits on my desk anymore.

And I’m like, that’s kind of weird. I might have to get one just because. But I also haven’t bought paper in almost three years.

[V.E. Griffith]
Wow.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Yep, which is very impressive because I was extremely like order level because of the amount of story ideas that would be written all over them. He threatened to burn them.

[V.E. Griffith]
TONY I know what I need to send you for your birthday.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
KATHERINE Yeah, but yeah, no, he was like, I’m going to burn them if you keep buying things. And I was like, never mind.

[V.E. Griffith]
TONY So that’s the takeaway. The takeaway for me is it just depends on who you are and you got to sort of find your method and see what’s comfortable for you. And keep yourself open to the idea that what’s comfortable for you may change over time as you evolve as a writer.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Yeah, I like to, if I’m starting to get serious with a story idea, think about what would be a new challenge for me in writing that I can grow with. So my steampunk The Scandal’s Pen, I wanted two main characters. That was very important to me.

I wrote it with two main characters. You take one out and literally you do not have a book. My space opera, I wanted to have a cast that can rival Robert Jordan.

[V.E. Griffith]
And it sounds like you’re going that direction.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
I am going that direction, but I’m also trying to keep it third person limited. It has been extremely difficult to do that.

[V.E. Griffith]
It’s a good exercise though.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
One chapter, a point of view. Like, it’s rough. I might change my mind on that and go back.

But I like to try to see what I can challenge myself to grow as a writer when I’m trying out these story ideas to see how it would work for me and how maybe to find my voice better as a writer.

[V.E. Griffith]
All righty. Well, that sounds like we’ve covered the topic at least a little bit for now.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Yeah, we hope we answered your question. If not, leave more questions for more clarification.

[V.E. Griffith]
Yeah, you’re welcome. Anybody’s welcome to get in touch with us.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Yeah, we can go further into details if need be, because I always love to word vomit at people, especially about my books.

[V.E. Griffith]
Okay. Well, then I guess we’ll see everybody next time.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
KATHERINE Stay magical.

[V.E. Griffith]
Bye.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Thank you so much for joining us for today’s episode. You can find every episode on your favorite podcast player and on YouTube. For transcripts, please visit our website at revisionwizards.com.

They go live the same day as our episodes.

[V.E. Griffith]
If you’d like to reach out to us separately, you can find me at vegriffith.com and Miss Catherine at scribes-pen.com.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
Stay magical. Well, I still wave every time. Nobody’s watching me.

It is always a wave up the screen, like I’m actually doing little magical things off my fingertips.

[V.E. Griffith]
Well, at least you’re no longer doing the sign language episode number, because nobody’s watching.

[Miss Catherine M.H.]
That’s true, yeah. Yeah, and I’ve gotten laxed on my numbers, so I really need to get back into them.