But did you know you can use games to help with your writing? Collective storytelling games come in many forms but I find the most useful for writing are tabletop games that involve roleplaying. When running tabletop games, I put a lot of effort into world building and I want to share some ways collective storytelling games can help with your world building as a writer.

The World

When I create a campaign for my table, I have an idea of the story I want us to explore. In order to ground my players in that story, I will build a map. To build a world map I start by taking a handful of polyhedral dice and dropping them on a blank piece of paper. I trace around the dice to create the shapes of continents then add details like cities, rivers, lakes, forests and mountains. If you don’t have dice, you could use small pebbles, buttons, or coins. I highly recommend getting a set of polyhedral dice though. You can find beautiful sets of many colours and materials and they make the most satisfying sounds when rolled.

I do the same when I’m writing a story set in a world that isn’t our own. This visual representation of my world inspires me to think about how the regions interact with each other, what resources they have, and what their cultures are like. It helps to ground the movement of your characters within your world, and it’s fun to do!

Cities, towns, and settlements 

Creating maps for prominent locations, like cities, helps me maintain consistency when writing in those settings. The visual aid is an easy reference to see where a certain house, tavern, or church is in relation to the rest of the city.  

Recently I’ve found a really enjoyable way to create maps for cities, towns, and settlements is to play a game called The Quiet Year by game designer Avery Alder. It’s a fun and interesting game in which players take turns drawing cards from a standard 52-card deck. Each card represents a week of a standard year and comes with a prompt that encourages players to think about the community, infrastructure, and culture of a settlement. The city comes together as players add features to the settlement map, create community challenges and victories, and establish the attitudes prevalent within the community. The game is designed to help you tell the story of a community built after the collapse of society, but can be helpful to inspire the construction of locations in any setting.

This collaborative experience can be really fun to make locations in the world of your writing as well. The best way to approach the game for this purpose is to explain the way you picture your world and then give your players free rein to play the game. You don’t have to keep everything that comes out of it and they may inspire you to write something you never would have imagined otherwise!

The Campaign

Tabletop games are usually run in sections. A single game session is called an episode or an adventure. A group of game sessions that resolve one smaller part of the overarching story is called an arc. All the game sessions that make up the time the party has spent in the world you’ve created (ideally resolving the overarching plot) is called the campaign.

Campaigns are gratifying to create and run because you get to watch your friends become heroes or villains as they navigate situations they would never encounter in their real lives. You all get to explore alter egos and build empathy as you consider life from another perspective. Campaigns give you experience creating engaging conflicts for your players that you can use to help write a larger work. 

If you set a campaign in the same world as the story you’re writing you’ll have to populate it with NPCs (non-player characters) that your players like to interact with. That is a great beginning to creating side characters that feel fully realized and will help you write in their voice. 

While running a campaign your players will ask you questions about your world and you will have to answer them. This is an excellent way to perfect your world and add detail in corners of your world that you hadn’t thought of on your own. 

Running a campaign requires that you create conflicts for your table to encounter. Your characters can face these conflicts in your writing and you can redesign them to account for loopholes or solutions your players came up with that you did not foresee.

These tools are easy to employ in fantasy works because many of the best known tabletop games are created for fantasy settings, but there are games for many genres from pulp fiction, to horror, to thriller and more.

I hope I’ve inspired some of you to try some collaborative storytelling games. I’ve loved them since middle school and I’ve found aspects of myself I may never have realized through them. I know that you’ll encounter some great people in the community of collaborative storytelling and you will deepen the friendships you already have. As a bonus, you’ll add tools to your writing toolbox that are invaluable in world building!  

Have you ever used tabletop games in your writing?

Kris Hill is working on several genre fiction novels because she has difficulty sticking to writing one project at a time. In her daily life she attempts to navigate the corporate world as a data analyst. When Kris is not working, she can be found sprawled on a couch reading or running tabletop adventures for her friends. She lives in Canada’s capital city with her husband, her best friend, and four cats.

The post World Building Using Tabletop Games appeared first on DIY MFA.

I want to tell you a secret about my own experience with this exercise. When I first started, I had a grand plan of taking my daily data and creating a beautiful graph in Excel that would reveal the secret inner workings of my mind. What actually happened is that, about a month in, I realized I didn’t need the beautiful graph. While the data was important for giving my routine structure and to help my comparison from day to day, the most important thing I got out of it was the general awareness of myself.

As I progressed with this daily routine, I found it easier to apply it to my writing even though I was not tracking anything specific from day to day. Thanks to my daily habit I became aware enough that I finally noticed what my Writer’s Intuition was telling me: I was happier writing in the mornings, I need to have no distractions when I’m writing new words, and I love revision. I had always “known” these things, but now I could actively work toward writing in the situations and places that helped me be the most productive. That is when my Writer’s Intuition really took off because I could more easily separate problems with writing from problems with myself.

Let’s discuss how to use your Writer’s Intuition to help when you get stuck in your writing…

Figure out where the problem is.

Most often when I get stuck writing, I ask myself one simple question first: What is the exact problem keeping the story from moving forward? A lot of people know there’s a problem but aren’t able to narrow it down any further. “There is a problem” doesn’t really give you much direction. So read over the section, the page, or the story again and this time listen to what your Writer’s Intuition is trying to tell you. Try for a definition such as, “The character isn’t doing what I want here,” “There’s no way to get them out of this situation” or “This plot point doesn’t make any sense because of this other thing.”

At first you might have trouble defining the problem, but again, the more mistakes you make and the more times you get stuck, the better your Writer’s Intuition will get at telling you where the problem is. That being said, your brain knows when it can’t focus on writing, but it doesn’t always tell you in an easy-to-understand way. Sometimes you might get stuck on your story for a reason that has nothing to do with the story.

If I can’t come up with a specific problem with the story, then my Writer’s Intuition might be telling me the problem isn’t with the story. That means the stuck spot might actually be me. Maybe I’m worried about something at work, perhaps I didn’t get enough sleep the night before, or today could just be a self-care day due to my depression. If this is the case, then I take a step back from my story to take care of my own needs so I can come back when I’m at my best.

When you have identified the stuck spot in your story, even if you’re not 100% sure you have it right, it’s time to…

Dive into your toolbox

Sort through all the writing skills and exercises you have accrued over your writing time. I’m not going to go into any specifics here, since that’s not what this article is about, but think of the ways you have dealt with this problem in the past. If you haven’t dealt with this specific issue before, or if what you’ve tried isn’t working to fix the problem, then head to the Internet. Ask your writer friends if they have suggestions, search for the problem and see what kind of articles come up, or take a writing course based around the problem you’re having.

You will make mistakes. You might think you’re having trouble writing because you’re worried about your spouse’s job, but it’s really a plot problem. You think a character has a motivational issue, but it’s really that your well is empty and you need to recharge. Your Writer’s Intuition can just be wrong, because you can’t know everything. My advice to you is…get used to being wrong. It happens to everyone. But don’t let that discourage you from trying! Making mistakes is how humans learn; it’s how we hone our skills and develop our Writer’s Intuition. Plus, if everything went perfectly all the time, that would make for a pretty boring story.

And always remember to…

Trust your Writer’s Intuition

Writing a book is a marathon, not a sprint. Don’t think you have to solve a problem right away if it’s giving you trouble. If you can’t define the problem, or if you try a few things and it still hasn’t helped, then it’s fine to take a step back. Go take a walk, do the laundry, play with a pet, read a book. Your Writer’s Intuition will continue working on the problem subconsciously, because that’s just what it does.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that it always comes up with the perfect fix. Your Writer’s Intuition is a compilation of all of your experiences. If you’re continually pushing yourself to be a better writer, you’re going to run into problems you’ve never had before. Don’t let these stop you. Sometimes I have problems in my story that I simply don’t have the skill to fix yet. In that case, all you can do is keep going, and keep learning, and work on fixing it in the next draft. Your Writer’s Intuition will continue to expand and grow.

Laura Highcove has a degree in computer science, which is obviously why she is a fantasy writer. She is influenced by anime, video games, table-top gaming, programming, horses, and Norse mythology in no particular order. She currently lives in beautiful Blacksburg, Virginia with her computer, two cats, and husband. Her psychic abilities have not yet developed, but she remains hopeful. If you’d like to learn more about her, head over to her website and sign up for her newsletter (and get a free short story) here.

The post Using Your Writer’s Intuition Intentionally appeared first on DIY MFA.

If you’ve ever experienced writer’s block, you know that you have to get through all these stages to be able to get back to writing. Writer’s block is painful, but not writing is even more painful.

Listen to the episode below for details about the five stages and how to overcome them.

Stage 1: Denial

“I don’t have writer’s block. I’m just really busy.”

If you’re going to get past a block, you have to acknowledge that it is there and that any excuses you have for not being able to write are just a way of avoiding writing.

Stage 2: Anger

“I never have time to write. It’s not fair!”

Anger is a defense mechanism. It masks the truth that you’re not writing by shifting the blame to someone or something else. The cure is simple. Just start writing. Use your anger to fuel your creativity.

Stage 3: Bargaining

“If I don’t write today but I write twice as much tomorrow, it will even out, right?”

Bargaining is just a fancy word for denial. Don’t let the cycle of procrastination pick up momentum. Sit down and write, even if it’s only for 15 minutes.

Stage 4: Depression

“Why bother? Everything I write is lousy.”

Up until now, the focus of your inability to write has been external, but now it is internal. This phase happens when you let your frustrations about writer’s block become personal. It’s important to remember that this is just a temporary phase. The best way to work through it is to sit down and write something. It doesn’t have to be good. Failure is ok. Mistakes are what teach us so that we can do better next time.

Stage 5: Acceptance

“Maybe I have writer’s block, but it’s ok. I can still sit down and write through it.”

All it takes is one small step at a time to get back on track. Just sit down and write. When we carry our stories in our head, it’s like we’re carrying all of this excess baggage in our brains. We need to dump it onto the page so that we can clear our minds and so that we can make it into something beautiful.

Link to Episode 13

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, leave a review, and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available. Also, if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please share!

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome.

The post Episode 13: The 5 Stages of Writer’s Block appeared first on DIY MFA.

But setting limits for your writing can be a good thing. It’s only in limiting your choices that you are able to start writing and create a story. Also when you have fewer options, you are all the more likely to make the most of the resources you have. In this episode I’ll share with you exactly why setting limits are the key to unleashing your creative spirit.

Having too many options open can be paralyzing. It’s like when you have a blank page in front of you it’s so hard to write, but when you put something (anything!) on the page, the writing suddenly becomes easier.

Here are 5 Reasons to Set Limits:

1. Limits give you freedom. Sometimes having too many choices can be paralyzing and the best thing we can do for our writing is to set some limits.
2. Limits give you focus. When you focus, your writing becomes more potent and concise, instead of scattered and dilute.
3. Limits make you stop and think. When you pause and think things through before writing, you’re more likely to get it “right” the first time and you can avoid costly mistakes.
4. Limits give your writing voice distinction. Sooner or later, you have to own your voice and start having opinions. When you share what you really think, you may not appeal to everyone, but you’ll connect with your ideal readers.
5. Limits give your story shape/structure. Every choice you make when writing is a limit that you set for yourself, your characters, and the world you are building

Some Ways to Set Limits:

1) Use prompts.

Prompts are a great way to challenge yourself by setting limits, and we have some for you to try! Our Conquer the Craft writing challenge is going on right now! With 29 prompts in 29 days, this challenge is the perfect way to set some limits and improve your writing.

2) Put something on the page.

A quote, a sentence from your previous writing session, whatever. It doesn’t matter what you put on the page as long as you just start writing. Something on the page will get you focused, thinking, and most importantly… writing.

3) Close a door for your character.

If there are too many directions where your story can go, then it’s not really a story. Limit those options. Eliminate some possibilities and watch your character take decisive action.

4) Leave something to chance.

Pick prompts at random. Roll a die to decide which way your story will go. Do something that leaves the choice up to chance, then work with the result that you get.

Resource Recap:

Conquer the Craft: Try the Conquer the Craft writing challenge, 29 prompts in 29 days. This challenge is not only designed to help you write more, but to make you write better. For more details or to join, go to DIYMFA.com/challenge.

In case you’re curious, here’s a link to the research article about that Iyengar jam study. There’s a lot of statistical details in there, but this article will give you the most detailed view about the study.

Link to Episode 4

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, leave a review, and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available. Also, if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please share!

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome.

The post Episode 4: Why Setting Limits is a Good Thing appeared first on DIY MFA.

As the name suggests, StoryADay is a creative writing challenge where the goal is to write a short story–start to finish–every day for the month of May. Julie Duffy founded this challenge in 2010, around the same time that DIY MFA was starting out, and I’ve had the pleasure of seeing her project build momentum from the very beginning. I participated in StoryADay in its first year, which happened to coincide with my MFA thesis deadline, so not surprisingly I failed miserably at StoryADay.

Julie did a great interview at DIY MFA last May and at one point I told Julie “you do realize that writing thirty-one unique short stories for a month is HARD. Like almost crazy hard.” But Julie answer to this challenge is surprisingly simple: creativity leads to more creativity. I couldn’t agree more.

This is why, when looking for someone to talk about creativity at Lit Loft, I knew it had to be Julie. She’s great at motivating StoryADay participants, giving them prompts to jumpstart the creative process when they become stuck. She also provides free story starters on her webpage every week, and she’s working on a new project that will help writers at home bolster their creativity and pursue their craft.

With many writers struggling to find new ideas, finding new ideas for thirty-one days in a row isn’t just admirable, it’s practically miraculous. Julie’s certainly an expert in fighting every writer’s most dreaded nemesis: Writer’s Block. We all fear that one day the creativity well will run dry, but Julie knows how to keep the fountain of ideas flowing. How? By gathering three “Story Sparks” every day.

What are Story Sparks?

They’re triggers for the imagination. Story sparks aren’t fleshed out ideas or outlines, they’re the first sparks that eventually turn into an all-out blaze. Here are some examples Julie shared with us.

• The woman you saw at the coffee shop with the expensive scarf and broken-down shoes. Maybe you’ll write a story where she’s the main character, one day. Maybe she’ll just be a walk-on, but catch her on paper.
• That stray thought you had while your boss was talking to you. Maybe it’ll spark a whole story. Maybe you’ll just have a character do the same thing in a story sparked by something else.
• A reminder about the ramshackle house you pass every day but hardly ever notice. One day soon, you’re going to need a setting. This Story Spark will remind you about a thing you see every day but might not think about otherwise.

Clearly inspiration can come from anywhere, and when you’re writing thirty-one short stories a month, inspiration is crucial. Julie recommends catching three story sparks a day, to get yourself into the habit of noticing things like a writer, and finding stories everywhere.

Though many writers find writing short stories particularly challenging, Julie thrives on the exhilaration of writing about so many new things. One of her favorite things about writing is the moment when you realize where a story is going and can race downhill all the way to the end.

So, how does she find time to write so many stories?

Once I asked Julie if she could be a literary figure, who would it be. She named Anne from Anne of Green Gables. Not surprising, given that Anne is idealistic, courageous, and when she failed she’d get right back up. These are certainly traits needed by any writer, but especially from one who writes a short story every day for thirty-one days.

I’m delighted that Julie will be speaking at Lit Loft 2013, sharing her insights about the creative process.

Julie Duffy will be discussing creativity at LitLoft 2013
Are you ready for Lit Loft? Register today!

The post What I Learned About Finding Story Ideas from Julie Duffy appeared first on DIY MFA.

When you work in a creative industry like toy design, you don’t have the luxury to “wait for inspiration to hit;” you have to deliver, whether you feel particularly creative in that moment or not. Last week, Emily Wenstrom shared some excellent advice on how to rev up your creativity using various writing techniques. Today I wanted to share a design technique you can use to give your writing a boost.

What is a Mood Board?

A mood board is exactly what it sounds like: a board where you post images that set the mood for your project. You use the mood board to capture the emotional core of your project and to figure out how your audience will connect to it.

Here’s an example. In one assignment we had to design packaging for a line of bath and body products, but for a specific niche. I chose to focus on kids who hate to take baths. To get inside the head of my audience, I thought back to when I was a kid, and how my siblings and I loved watching  the kids on Nickelodeon get buckets of green goo dumped on them. We’d watch the Ghostbusters movie repeatedly, rewinding it to the part where the little green ghost slimes one of the guys. I cut out pictures and words that reminded me of experiences from my own childhood, creating the mood board above.

As I developed the mood board, I realized that there was an inherent conflict embedded in the project I was developing. The kids might hate taking baths, but the parents want them to be clean. The solution was to turn getting clean into a gross and disgusting process. This way the parents get the kids to bathe, but the kids still get that “yuck factor” that they love. Voilá! You Stink Inc.

You Stink Inc. Bath Products Design

You Stink Inc. Soap Dispenser

I built on this idea of bath products for kids who hate taking baths and created a creepy and scary soap dispenser to house the bath products. The bar of soap goes in the monster’s mouth. You fill the tubes on its head with liquid soap, shampoo and bubble bath. The tongue is actually a terrycloth washcloth. When you reach to grab the soap and your hand hits the monster’s teeth, it screams. Here’s a rough sketch of how I envisioned the final product:

How to Use a Mood Board for Your Writing

1. Use it to set the mood. If your story is set in a certain time period, culture or just has an overall mood to it, use a mood board to capture that feeling. It can be helpful to hang your mood board near your writing nook, to help you get into that writing mood immediately.
2. Get into the heads of your readers. I know, I know. We’ve all been told a million times that we’re not supposed to “write to the market,” we’re supposed to write from our hearts. This is all wonderful in theory, but sometimes it’s good to get into the heads of readers and figure out what really makes them tick. If we understand our readers–with all their hopes, fears and imperfections–then we can craft our stories to really resonate with that audience. With You Stink Inc., for instance, I realized that what kids wanted (yuck factor) went directly against with the premise of bath products in general. This meant that to get my audience to use the line of bath products I was designing, I’d have to “gross it up.”
3. Look for tension and conflict. When you create a mood board, you’re tapping directly into the emotional essence of your story. You can get at the core conflict much faster. In the case of You Stink Inc. there are two conflicts. The superficial one is this idea that kids who hate to bathe won’t want to use bath products, but there’s another more emotionally-laden conflict beneath that: kids vs. grown-ups. Many kids rebel against baths because they’re imposed on them by grown-ups, but if suddenly the bath is slimy and gross (something that grown-ups might object to) then kids might go for it for those same reasons.

Even though it has been many years since I studied design, I still use mood boards regularly. In fact, it was a mood board that helped me come up with the concept behind DIY MFA. To this day, this is one of my favorite ways of getting creative on demand. And the best part is, once you’ve made the mood board, just hang it in you writing space and you’ll get those creative juices flowing right away, sidestepping the need to wait for inspiration.

The post Use a Mood Board to Boost Your Writing appeared first on DIY MFA.

I’m not going to get into the ethics of it all; that’s a topic for another post. And I’m not here to start a flame war over situations that have already been discussed at length in other online venues. I want to talk about fear.

The way I see it, there are two ways that idea-stealing can involve fear. First, there’s the writer who’s so afraid that someone will steal his idea that he never shares any of his work. On the other hand, there’s the writer who is so afraid of unknowingly taking someone else’s idea that she never writes anything at all. These are the extremes, but most writer often oscillate between these ideas, sometimes worrying that their original ideas might get stolen, sometimes worrying that the ideas aren’t all that original after all.

Don’t get me wrong, a healthy respect for the intellectual property of others is a good thing. That little nagging fear in the back of our minds–“was that really my idea?”–helps keep most writers on the straight and narrow. But when fear gets out of control–when it leads to paranoia–then it can cause serious problems. Here are some tips to help lessen that fear.

Fear of Having Your Ideas Stolen

I’m a firm believer that the best way of protecting one’s intellectual property is to have LOTS of it. The more ideas you have, the less each individual idea matters so if one is copied or doesn’t work out, the sting won’t hurt as much. I like to have at least 3-5 projects of varying intensity going at the same time. At DIY MFA I hardly ever put all my energy into only one project. There’s usually at least a couple of things in the works: a series or two of articles, at least one eBook and one larger, more long-term project. What can I say, I’m  a polygamist when it comes to writing projects, and my friends and colleagues often joke that I start almost every conversation with: “So, I’ve got this crazy idea…”

But what if you’re more of a serial monogamist when it comes to your writing, completely dedicating yourself to a project and completing it before you embark on something new? When you invest all of your energy on one project at a time, it’s perfectly understandable to be afraid of having your idea stolen before you’re ready to share it. Here are a few tips to help you manage that fear:

1) Challenge yourself to juggle more than one idea at a time.

This point is worth emphasizing. Cover your bases and have a few different projects going in case you have to abandon an idea. Actually, the odds of having an idea stolen are much smaller than the odds of that idea just not working out. Even if you do encounter another book out there eerily like the one you’re working on, the odds of it being theft are also small. Many times, writers or other creative people will work on the same idea independently only to realize late in the game that someone else “scooped” their project.

Regardless of whether something is theft or not, if your idea has already been done and there’s no way you can make your project new and different,  it could still mean abandoning the project altogether. Even if you’re not comfortable working on multiple projects at once, keep ideas for new projects in a notebook or file. It’s useful to have a stash of ideas that you can turn to if the one you’re working is no longer feasible. Of course, giving up a treasured project will always hurt, but if you have other ones on the side, it will hurt a lot less. At the very least, working on something new will distract you from the pain.

2) Document your work.

Heaven forbid you ever have to file a lawsuit over your intellectual property, but if that ever happens, it helps to document different versions of your work with date and time stamps. Emailing drafts of your work to yourself using gmail can help establish a timeline of when you developed an idea. Plus it’s a great way of backing up your work because if you ever need to go back to an early version it’s right there in your email.

3) Be smart about what you share (especially online).

The internet can be a big scary place so be smart about what you share. For instance, while I share a lot of DIY MFA information on this site, I rarely talk about my own fiction writing. The fear of having the idea copied is actually not my main reason for holding back from sharing that work. My bigger concern is that if I talk about projects before they’re done, I’ll suck the life out of them and then never finish. Also, if I decide a project isn’t working, I hate having people asking me: “So, when’s that book coming out?”

Most people in the online writing community are good and generous and would never steal an idea. Still there are a few rotten apples out there so be careful about what you share via the internet. Not only do you have no control over what people do with your tweets or blog posts once you put them out there, but there’s a certain permanence to the internet and once you make something public, it’s really hard to take it back. Also, some publishers and publications consider content that has been posted online as “previously published” so you might make things difficult for yourself if you try to publish that same work later on. There are many good reasons to hold back on sharing some of your work online. Idea theft is only one of them.

Fear of Accidentally Copying an Idea

Let’s face it, there’s a finite number of truly original ideas out there especially when it comes to story-telling. While the execution of an idea might be fresh and new, chances are there’s a nugget buried in there that has been done before. Depending on who you ask, there’s only two (six, twenty) basic plots and every story is derived from those basic story archetypes. Whatever the exact number, one thing is clear: the number of completely original ideas is finite and like it or not, it’s all been done before.

The other problem is that many times, different people might arrive at the same idea completely independent of each other. For instance, the idea for the television was something that several scientists were working on in different labs at the same time and it’s hard to really know who the true inventor is. Other innovations like Tivo or Pets.com were launched but the timing or business model wasn’t right and it was only later that companies were able to launch similar ideas (DVR and Wag.com) that were actually successful.

I for one am constantly terrified that I might unknowingly take someone else’s idea without realizing it. After all, I go to a lot of conferences, I read a lot of books and I talk to a lot of writers. When an idea pops into my head it’s hard to know whether the concept came solely from me or from some other creative input I’ve ingested. Chances are, ideas are a combination of both internal A-Ha! moments and external inspiration. Here are a few safeguards you can implement to help you avoid accidentally taking another person’s idea:

1) Let ideas hibernate before you execute.

I have ideas for new plots and characters several times per day. If I acted on every single one as soon as it popped into my head, I’d never finish anything! Times like this is when I’m glad I have an idea jar (pictured above). I’ll write a concept on a slip of paper and tuck it inside. Then, every few months, I look through the contents of the jar and cull through the ideas. Some of them I can toss out right away because they’re just plain awful. If an idea really resonates with me, I’ll paste it into my notebook and start planning out how I’ll put it into action. The rest of the ideas I just tuck back into the jar and revisit them in a few months.

2) Train yourself to identify your idea’s USP (Unique Selling Proposition).

If you’re going for something completely new and unique you’re fighting a losing battle because the odds of inventing something completely from scratch is virtually zero. Instead, focus on finding that piece of your idea that is different. In product development and marketing, this is called the USP or Unique Selling Proposition. For example, when I worked in the toy industry, I managed products in the toddler division of a company. The products we were making weren’t all that earth-shattering in terms of concept (puzzles, lacing boards, arts & crafts kits) but what was unique was the target market. At the time there were lots of baby toys and preschool toys, but that 18-month to 3-year age-group didn’t have many options made especially for them. By taking preschool toys and modifying the designs so that they complied with infant and toddler safety standards, we were able to create a line of products that found its niche in the market.

The same is true with your book. OK, so vampires have been done to death and dystopian isn’t all that new, but can you find something in your dystopian vampire novel that makes it completely different? For instance, the Harry Potter books were a new concept, but magic had certainly been done before and so had the good-versus-evil theme. What made those books so engaging were the compelling characters and tightly-woven plots. And let’s face it, while the Twilight saga wasn’t exactly an original concept (vampire love stories have been around since the 19th century), I can see why girls would enjoy reading a book where an ordinary Bella is the object of affection for not one but two sexy boys with superpowers.

Find your idea’s USP and even if it’s been done, you can salvage something from it and give it a new spin.

3) Learn when it’s time to let go.

Some years ago, I had the unfortunate experience of having to abandon an idea I truly cared about and believed in.  If I had not let that project go, it would have brought much grief to me and the other people working on it, but more importantly I would never have learned some important lessons about business, writing and life. Also, had I remained on that project I would never have embarked on DIY MFA and I wouldn’t be where I am now, building a business and writing life that I love. Sometimes–no matter how much it hurts–you just have to let go.

Now go on, write your heart out and remember that without fear there is no courage.

The post Idea-Stealing: How Not to Let Your Fear Stifle Your Creativity appeared first on DIY MFA.

It all started with a bunch of writing prompt books. Over the years I’ve acquired many. In fact, the odds of my ever running out of writing prompts is probably slim-to-none. Still for some reason a bizarre fear has always plagued me:

Seriously, this is what keeps me up at night. I always think my current idea will be my last. I think this is why I’ve accumulated so many writing books. Even with just these books I’m probably set for life with enough story ideas but believe me, if budget and shelf space allowed it, I’d buy every single one in existence. These books are “Idea Insurance,” a fall-back plan if I ever run into a creative rut.

One day, while browsing the children’s book section, I saw one of those flip books where you match the head of one animal with the body of another and the feet of yet another for hilarious effect. And it hit me: what if you did the same thing with writing prompts, combining different elements of a story? This could make one idea go a LONG way.

Using Combinations to Scale Ideas

When I was studying psychology in grad school also I minored in statistics. When the idea for the Writer Igniter popped into my head, the dormant math part of my brain instantly jumped into high gear. Bear with me while I indulge my inner-geek for a moment. See, when you look at combinations of variables, things scale very quickly. Suppose you have three categories and you brainstorm just ten things for each, automatically you get 10 x 10 x 10 possible combinations. That’s 1000 ideas right there! By combining categories, you turn an initial investment of 30 ideas into 1000! Newsflash: geeky stats minor finally pays off.

By now I had the basic concept for the Writer Igniter, so all I needed was to figure out which categories to include and come up with the different possibilities for each. Easy, right?

Like any good procrastinator, first I decided to do some arts and crafts.

Prototypes and Testing

In a past life–somewhere between being a psychology researcher and a children’s writer–I was a toy designer. This means that I’m incapable of thinking an idea in my head. I have to see it with my eyes, hold it in my hands. Just thinking of the Writer Igniter idea wasn’t enough, I needed a prototype.

First I made a  flip-book, just like the animal one I saw in the children’s book section, except here instead of combining a head, body and feet, you flipped to different characters, situations and props. The original version looked like this:

Then I thought it would work better as a deck of cards. This meant adding a fourth category (setting) and limiting the number of possibilities in each category to thirteen. This way, each suit would represent a different category and you could use the Writer Igniter as a functional deck of cards as well as a prompt generator. The logic behind this idea was that I could use the deck to play solitaire (i.e. procrastinate). That way, even when I was avoiding my writing, the story ideas would still seep into my brain as though by osmosis.

The deck of cards version looked like this:

I tested both the flip-book version and the deck of cards version with friends in my critique groups and students in the workshops I teach. They loved it, but I still wasn’t satisfied. I wanted something portable, something that I could carry in my pocket and access anytime I wanted, but that also had millions of possible combinations. Oh, and I also wanted to share this idea through DIY MFA.

Around this same time I was working on the web redesign for DIY MFA and I mentioned the Writer Igniter concept to the web designer. Immediately she ran with it and discovered a simple bit of programming that would turn the Igniter into a web-based prompt generator. She even figured out a way to make it work like a slot machine. Fun!

Brainstorming as a Team

Now all I needed was variables… lots and lots of variables for each category. I quickly realized that my little brain would not be able to come up with enough ideas unless I enlisted some help, so I got the DIY MFA team involved in brainstorming characters, situations and props, as well as collecting images to use for settings. Together, we brainstormed hundreds of options for each category, then narrowed our choices to the top 100 (or so) each. We added and removed variables from the master list, building on each others’ ideas and suggestions to come up with the best list possible.

What amazed me was that by responding to ideas and suggestions from my team, I was able to think up even more ideas myself. Their suggestions led my thinking in directions I hadn’t previously considered and by working as a team, we were each able to be more creative as individuals. The team was more creative than the sum of the parts. Awesome!

Which Brings Us Back to Writing

Writing and polishing a novel is not unlike developing a web app like the Writer Igniter. You get that initial flash of inspiration, followed by testing out the idea in various formats. Eventually, you pass your precious work along to trusted colleagues who promptly pull it apart and challenge you to make it even better. Finally, you have a product you’re really proud of and can’t wait to share with the world.

I suppose it’s true what they say: all roads lead to writing.

Ignite Your Inner Writer

And so, this is how the Writer Igniter came to be. Now it’s ready for you to hit shuffle and start writing. And keep an eye on the website because very soon we’ll be unveiling an exciting new project that will involve the Writer Igniter, so stay tuned!

Know any writers in need of an inspiration boost? Tweet this and help spread the word.

What are you waiting for? Ignite and write!

The post Writer Igniter: The Story Behind the Web App appeared first on DIY MFA.

But even as I was walking the flight deck, looking at the planes, my thoughts turned to writing and I began to muse how these vehicles and powerful weapons were not so different from the words we craft as writers.

Think about it. These military planes, the Cold War Era submarine U.S.S. Growler, the space shuttle Enterprise, these are all tools in the hands of people. And like any tools, they could be used for good purposes… or not-so-good purposes. In the hands of a skilled writer, words can have huge creative benefits or cause serious destruction to the human spirit. Words can persuade people and open their minds to new ideas, or they can brainwash people and convince them of grave untruths.

This time of year, as a presidential election approaches, there are a lot of words being thrown about. Some words are being used with care and precision, while others are being slung the way an ogre might wield a club.  As a writer, I must confess that the blatant disregard for accuracy that we’re seeing is rather appalling. It’s not my job to pick sides, and frankly even if I have chosen, I don’t think either side is completely free from blame. If anything, we should place a higher burden of truth and honesty on our leaders, because their ability to influence people with their words means a higher responsibility to those same people. (Yes, I am making a Spiderman reference.)

But before I wax philosophical, let me get back to the central point of this post. There are tools–I’m dubbing them “Creative Power Tools”–that are like power tools for your creativity. The first power tool is Words. Over the next several weeks, I’ll be doing a series of posts on these different Creative Power Tools and why they’re important. I’ll also talk about how to use these tools to maximize your creativity and get the most out of your writing. This is all building up to an exciting project that I’m launching later this fall with Dan Blank of We Grow Media. Stay tuned because it’s going to be exciting.

Creative Power Tool #1: Words

There are only two things you need to remember:

1. Use with caution. Words are powerful. You wouldn’t point a loaded gun at someone unless you had a really good reason for doing it. So why point a loaded sentence? Weapons can destroy people’s bodies but words, if misused, can destroy people’s minds. You tell me: which is more dangerous?
2. Use with precision. In our culture, we’re like the verbal equivalent of someone wielding a machine gun, scattering words every which way, hoping one or two will hit the mark. Instead, we should strive to be verbal snipers, applying our words with precision and accuracy.

I often joke that as a writer, I make things up for a living so technically, I’m a professional liar. I suppose on a literal level that might be right, but I think as writers, the burden is on us to be fully honest. We might bend the truth in order to shed light on the Truth-with-a-capital-T.

So go let’s go out there and use our words with caution and precision. And let’s show those clowns how to do it right.

The post Creative Power Tool #1: Words appeared first on DIY MFA.

Jenny Lawson, AKA The Bloggess, talked about this idea of self-doubt in her closing speech at the BEA Blogger’s Conference this past Monday.  It’s called imposter syndrome and I think many creative people have it.  A not-yet-published author might think: “If only I could get a book contract; then I’ll know that I’ve arrived.”  But then once published, that very same author might raise the stakes and say: “Being published is nothing.  But if do a signing at a big event then I know I’ve produced something.”  At a trade show like Book Expo America (BEA), where everyone is trying to find the “next new thing,” it’s tempting to pin all your hopes and dreams on that one book.

Dan Blank at WeGrowMedia.com wrote a great article about this today entitled: Your Writing Career is not a Lottery Ticket.  The call to action at the end of his post is one all writers need to hear, but most especially those who encounter the experience I’ve described above.  Because the truth is, ideas are just ideas.  They’re vapor.  They’re air.  An idea is nothing until you make it happen.

When we place all our aspirations on one idea, that idea becomes precious to us and we feel that we must defend it.  But the truth is, an idea is just an idea.  Just because your book is a romance with vampires doesn’t mean you’ve written the next Twilight.  Your book might be completely different… maybe even better.  It also might not be nearly as successful.  This is what happens when similar ideas lead to very different executions; you never know which one will find success.

And sometimes it’s OK to let an idea go.  Because ideas are like subways at rush hour; if you miss out on one, you can always hop on the next.  But to do this–to let go and not doubt your own creativity–you need to train yourself to generate a steady stream of ideas.  This way no one idea is all that precious and you can always move onto the next.

This topic of generating ideas on demand is one that Dan and I have been discussing a lot lately.  We have something in the works that will help writers to come up with ideas when they need them and also figure out which ideas to pursue.  I’ll be sharing more details on this project as the summer rolls along, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, just remember this: you ARE creative.  Every story you develop, each word you write helps build a track record of creative success.  Trust in that.  Because creativity isn’t something that happens to you; it’s something you can make happen.

The post You ARE Creative appeared first on DIY MFA.