Capturing Story Ideas

On my novel writing journey, I’m starting out by capturing ideas, which are plentiful. I find that committing to a project summons a flood of ideas, and this one is no different in that sense. When I say a firm yes, reality says: Great… let’s unlock that idea space for you. The ideas have been flooding my mind frequently – when I wake up in the morning, while eating, while running, and even while blogging. At any time I might be struck by an idea for a character, scene, location, plot twist, theme, or anything else related to the novel. When I’m at my computer, I like to capture these ideas on virtual index cards in Scrivener. Otherwise I’ll capture ideas anywhere convenient, and then I add them to Scrivener later. You might think that I do this to make sure that good ideas don’t slip through the cracks, but that isn’t really an issue. Ideas are so plentiful that there will always be more good ones to consider. The main reason to capture them is so I can let go of them, which allows more ideas to come through. If I don’t write down an idea, it can remain stuck in my mind, continually refreshing itself and blocking other ideas from flowing. So capturing ideas also serves to clear them from my mental buffer, thereby creating space for more. So far I’ve added 77 of these idea cards to Scrivener, probably half them them just today. Each card contains anything from a few keywords up to several paragraphs. I’ll ...
Source: Steve Pavlina's Personal Development Blog - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Productivity Source Type: blogs