CHAPTER 6

Stormwriting:

The Tool of Tools

Now you’re to the point where you’re ready to start crafting your book.

You’ve done a bit of brainstorming, and perhaps you’ve done some writing. But there’s something about brainstorming that’s only partly right. After years of writing, teaching writing, and talking with writers, I’ve come to realize that brainstorming is a critically misunderstood process. Bad practices have become common.

Most people have been told that brainstorming is where you sit with a blank piece of paper and you’re supposed to just, like force out new ideas. Well that’s fine, but how?

Too often we get stuck in a rigid idea of what a brainstorm is supposed to be. We figure we’re supposed to go fast, so we’re supposed to write only ideas. Single words, little phrases, just get the gist of the idea down and move on to the next. We’re supposed to ‘think laterally’, but lateral all too often winds up being shallow, a few interesting thoughts but no depth.

There is a better way.

The answer, I found, lies in the very word ‘brainstorming.’ I don’t like that word. It puts too much emphasis on thinking.

You need to use something deeper and more productive to write a good book: You need to engage your heartbrain, that is to say your whole, deepest self. When you tap into your heartbrain, you’ll be writing up a storm, which is why I call this next technique stormwriting. This is a results-driven tool that you’ll use time and again. I use it constantly.

Stormwriting is essentially a heartbrainstorm, a process by which you open your heartbrain and provoke it to not merely dump stuff out, but generate new questions and ideas that lead you to more good stuff: The stuff that becomes building blocks for your book. How do you provoke it?

In one of my mystery series, my main character is an actress. In gathering background on acting, I often talk with a friend of mine who’s a professional actor. One day we were talking about improv. You know, improvisation, a theatrical situation in which actors play off of each other unscripted. They create little dramas and comedies just by speaking dialogue and acting out scenes they think up as they go.

I said I thought improv must be awfully hard.

And my friend Phil said that what makes improv hard is having the wrong attitude.

“What attitude is that?” I asked.

“No,” he said.

“You mean as in No, I don’t like that idea?”

“Right.” Phil then revealed the most important attitude to have when doing improv.

It is, simply, “Yes, and—”

Meaning that no matter what somebody comes up with, no matter how much it’s not what you’re expecting, no matter how off the wall or even dumb, you don’t resist it or ignore it. You run with it. You say, “Yes, and—” … and the room begins to fill with the mutant ions from the forgotten medical waste facility next door! “Yes, and—” … and suddenly your ingénue character is on a ten-million-dollar yacht with the dictator’s son, who just opened champagne and proposed marriage.

You never say “No, but—.” You never even say “Yes, but—.” You say, “Yes, and—.” You accept it and you go with it, and you build on it and you play off of it. The whole act might stumble and change direction anytime, but you’ll be in harmony with it.

And I realized that writing is improv.

I thought about that some more and the idea of stormwriting came to me. I realized that in practically any stage of writing, when you’re brainstorming, trying to create new material, it’s like doing improv. And just like improv, it requires more than your head. It requires your heartbrain.

So now we have:

The First Stress-Free Guideline to Stormwriting

Yes, and—

Use this when you’re forming ideas for your book. Don’t just write down the beginning of a thought and then sit and stare at it. Move with it. Let it move with you.

Yes, and— goes perfectly with:

The Second Stress-Free Guideline to Stormwriting

What if?

The golden guideline all excellent storytellers keep in their back pocket is What if? They’re never without it.

Yes, and— and What if? together, are the most fruitful, lively activators you can use in mining your heartbrain and crafting creative material. These two tiny phrases will take you as far as you can dream of going.

Let me demonstrate how they can conduct you from an initial idea to a whole book.

One day I got an idea for a novel I wanted to write, using my actress hero, Rita Farmer. I thought, wouldn’t it be cool to have her dressed in police costume on a movie shoot, and she wanders away from the set for some reason, and gets drawn into a real crime scene?

That was the nugget I started with. I thought, that’s a terrific opening. That’s all it was, an opening, but I immediately saw that mistaken identity, costume, impersonation, could all become themes going forward, subjects for me to explore and have fun with in the book.

I stormwrote. It stood to reason to use Los Angeles as the setting for this story, since that’s where Rita lives. Questions that I asked myself were: OK, what’s the main plot, and what are my subplots going to be?

OK, we’re in a big city. What’s a typical street crime in a big city? Well, there’s drug dealing, there’s assault and battery, there’s rape. I’ll make my initial crime a combo: I could have a young guy being beaten up by two gang-bang types. Yes, and Rita will walk into this assault and stop it. What if she gets shot while she does it? Yes, and she’ll ride to the medical center with the beaten-up kid, and they will find out that they have something in common. But what? I’m not sure right now, but I know the young kid will be the messenger in this heroic adventure that Rita will take.

Wait, what do you mean by ‘the messenger’?

I think you already have a sense of what I mean, but for the full deal see the Hero’s Adventure Foolproof Story Map, Chapter Ten.

Suddenly I was writing lots more than just little isolated words or phrases on the page. I was stormwriting, going off on major tangents, writing half a page, two pages, or more per idea, then returning to my main idea page. My head was engaged. I paid attention to my emotions, too, letting them come and go with the flow from my pen.

I wrote a couple of pages on what the assault might look and sound like; I started a list of stuff I needed to look into. Started a list of characters I needed: the movie crew and the other actors, the young kid, the thugs who were beating him. I wrote half a page about what kind of movie might be shot in a gritty area of L.A., then a page about the kid. On and on.

The Power of Tangents

As you can see, stormwriting is all about tangents. Because when you start with a single idea or concept, everything that comes off of it is a tangent.

Yet we’re conditioned to reject tangents. “Now, don’t go off on a tangent; stick to the point.” Too often we stop a new thought in its tracks because, well, maybe it’s irrelevant.

The thing is, in the early stages of creative work, we don’t know what’s relevant. Something that’s totally off-the-wall today could be tomorrow’s central driving force. Sometimes an idea just grabs you, or some scrappy little thing pops up and your first instinct is to just make a quick note and keep going, trying to generate more ideas. This—temporarily quashing an idea so you can go on to the next one—is the novice’s critical mistake that you will now avoid forever. Because the thing is, that tangent never comes back as fresh as when it first bursts upon you.

Tangents are the key to fresh, great material.

You must follow them.

This is a tremendously liberating thing to realize. You’re free! No more hobbles. No more rigid process. Each tangent, when you write on it, becomes a building block for your book. Just as a builder doesn’t use every scrap of material he hauls to a building site, so will you sort through and keep or toss these chunks of writing.

Run, my dear writing hound, run! Follow your nose, your heart, your mind. Chase down those tangents, revel in them, chew on them, and write deep.

One chunk at a time, all this will add up to your book.

CHISEL IT IN STONE:

WHEN IN DOUBT, DON’T OVERTHINK IT. MOVE FORWARD.

Now back to my stormwrite on the Rita book. I went deeper. I thought about the urban experience in general, and I thought about my own experience living in big cities, and I decided to make use of my fascination with street people. Just out of my own interest, I had observed street people, talked with them, talked to police who dealt with them, talked with service organizations who provided help to them, and I had kept up with my cities’ efforts to solve an intractable social problem.

And I thought, OK, where can I go with this? What are the elements of street-person-hood? Well, there are shelters and missions that offer help to the homeless and the needy.

The farther I let my thoughts roam, the more ideas came to me, and a plot began to take shape. It felt good.

What if I had a mission run by a sort of charismatic figure? Yes, and she seems to be hiding some kind of trouble. What if this angel of mercy has a dark secret? What if this dark secret involves a long-ago crime? Yes, and maybe the dark secret that involves crime wasn’t what it seemed? Well, how could that be? Well, what if there were two dark secrets? (My heart started to beat fast. I paid attention and kept going.) Yes, and one exists to cover up the other one, the worse one! Yeah! What if the root secret had nothing to do with homelessness or drugs or violence, but something else altogether? And what if the angel of mercy was the grandmother of the kid that got beat up in the first scene? Yes, they’re related!

You see, it doesn’t have to hold together at first. Just allow yourself to reach out and gather stuff, and keep asking your heartbrain questions, prompting yourself with questions about the world you want to write about.

So, all that got me going on a plot and a subplot. You can see layers of complexity forming as we go.

This novel became The Extra, the second in the Rita Farmer mystery series. The story ranged all over Los Angeles, and up to a ramshackle farmhouse in Bakersfield with an old widow living in it, back down to a mansion in Hancock Park where a prize-winning beagle stud has gone missing, over to streetcorners in South Central Los Angeles and the secret rooms in a rescue mission with a very bad vibe.

This is the same approach you should take. Unleash your curiosity; fling open possibilities. If you do, ideas will come up faster than you can address them. The key to developing ideas in writing is to plow up questions and chase down tangents.

That’s what stormwriting does.

In a minute I’ll show you an example of a nonfiction stormwriting session.

Every now and then check in with your gut, with your heart, and consult your feelings. If you go dry while stormwriting but you don’t want to stop, try starting a list. Just write down a list of things related to your stormwrite, such as, ‘What locations might be useful in telling this story?’ or ‘What do I need to learn about to write my book?’ or ‘What are all the things that might happen at the beginning? Who are the people the reader should meet? What am I sure of? What am I unsure of? What stuff should happen near the end?’ Lists themselves will become idea generators.

STORMWRITING STEP BY STEP

  1. Gather your writing materials.
  2. Find a comfortable place.
  3. Enter garret mode.
  4. Write down your subject or idea to explore at the top of a blank page. Or write it in the middle of a page, if the idea of spinning off ideas in a cluster sort of way appeals to you.
  5. Throw down everything you can think of relating to your subject or idea. Use more paper if needed. Write line by line if you want, or go off and group words together and connect them with slants and circles, or leave them orbiting alone, whatever feels right.
  6. Using Yes, and— and What if?, let each item suggest a new one. Welcome tangents. Write on them as long as you want (even for pages and pages!), then come back to your original stormwrite.
  7. While you work, if your gut suddenly jumps or your heart starts to beat faster, notice and follow.
  8. Keep going, don’t stop to criticize or censor. Open your heartbrain’s throttle wide. Plunge into your subject.
  9. When you feel you’re ready to stop, stop.
  10. Take a break.
  11. Come back and look over what you’ve done. Look for patterns and anything that strikes you as important or thrilling. Explore those things some more or set them aside for their own stormwriting sessions.

Do you see how stormwriting is a totally individual way to develop your book?

You start with an initial idea for your book, just a general idea like the one I demonstrated above. This leads you to sub-stormwrites, all of which will help you write your book.

If something off the wall occurs to you, go ahead and write it. It might be:

Never go, Well, I’ve never seen anything like this before, so maybe I should trash it. Always go: New? Yes! And open it up, write deeper, write long, write relaxed, write loose.

And never ever worry about your finished product in the midst of all this messy glory.

STORMWRITING FOR NONFICTION

Stormwriting is the best way in the world to get a nonfiction project going. Start with your initiating idea, and proceed with a massive brain dump, using Yes, and— and What if? the whole way. Which will lead you to sub-brain dumps. Write lists as they come to you. Here’s an example.

Main subject: How I coached a high school track team to 3 state titles.

My background—Dad—how I grew up loving the sport—My first coach, Mr. Cole—Yes, and that kid from 32nd Street—My record as a miler. What if my knee had popped when I hit that hole at regionals?

How I came to coaching. Yes, and how Shirley helped me.

Our marriage as a coaching tool? Coaching helped me to be a better husband. Explore. Is that true?

The Wildcats—their history before I came to that school…

What do I need? Get at school archives—local library—yearbooks—talk to veterans of earlier teams.

What made me go for the job?

Drills, workouts, nutrition, and hydration plans.

What if I’d done that vertical-jump drill differently?

Opposition to my ideas. Fears, doubts.

The kids were open, but the parents and principal had issues with me. Yes, and that one little jerk that tried to get me fired.

The incidents with parents.

What if we’d lost that first championship?

What if we’d won the 4th one?

Regrets?

In this case, an example of a tangent might be this: You’re making a list of the outstanding kids you worked with, then you remember a coach from a rival school whose son was on his squad, and you find yourself writing about that man and that boy and the things you learned from watching their relationship twice per season. Keep writing! You might use all that material in your book. Write down as many incidents as possible, knowing that you’ll winnow out, save, and use the most illustrative ones later.

FOCUS

If you try to keep your whole project in your head at one time, you’ll keep trying to write it all at once, and that’s a recipe for a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Just focus on one small part at a time, and really write the hell out of that part.

After you’ve done a bunch of this kind of work, read it over and look for patterns and gaps. Is there a thing, a person, an idea that keeps cropping up? How’s your comfort level with it? Do you feel curious, weary, resistant, inflamed? Pay attention. Write more. Patterns can lead to interesting places.

Same with gaps. As you look over your stormwrite(s) do you get the feeling that something waits under the surface and is straining to come up? Tune in, get calm, listen. Let it come. Write it down. Patterns and gaps will point you forward to more writing, more learning, maybe some soul-searching.

I want to make clear that when I say don’t censor yourself (under No. 8 of Stormwriting Step by Step), I mean that literally. If you find yourself using a swear word or some extreme vulgarism, don’t stop to decide whether you ought to use it or not—just throw it down and keep going.

And certainly don’t stop yourself from writing on a taboo subject. If for instance you find yourself thinking, “Oh, I shouldn’t write about sexual abuse,” do a mini stormwrite. Ask your heartbrain, “What if I did?”

The best artists know that if they dedicate themselves to the process, a beautiful result will follow. It might not be the result they first envisioned, but it will be honest and true.

Launch a stormwrite anytime you need ideas and anytime you need original material. The beauty of stormwriting is that you can use it anytime, anywhere, for any purpose of development. Be liberal with paper and ink, be happy, be sloppy, follow tangents, and let tangents develop as far as you want.

Remember you are more than your head. Be sure to pay attention to your feelings as you go. Maybe some fear is coming up, maybe some anger about what you’re writing. Whatever emotions come, never resist them. Allow them to be. Notice them, and neither suppress them nor go drama queen about them.

As you write, ask yourself: How am I feeling now? Is my belly nice and loose, is my breath coming freely? Are my neck and shoulders loose? Am I having fun? Have I smiled in the last few minutes? Have I smiled at all since I started doing this? Am I taking myself too seriously?

Challenge an Idea With Stormwriting

Alternatively, you can challenge an idea using a stormwrite. If you have an idea that you’re a little unsure of, do a stormwrite on it.

What ideas, what characters, what events excite you as you write? What catches at you in an uncomfortable way? What begs for more attention? What do you feel like shying away from? How come? As you stormwrite, this emotion will resolve one way or the other. Maybe it’s a subject you should plunge into with more depth and honesty, maybe even with more courage than you thought you needed at first.

You can use the stormwriting technique to address large issues such as, “Should I write a book about my grandmother’s past as a marijuana smuggler?” or small ones like, “Should my fictional tank commander be religious?”

List pros and cons; write it one way then the other.

Let’s go back to improv for a minute. Imagine the pressure and the excitement of it: You’re in a studio or on a stage with other people, and everybody’s watching one another, everybody’s thinking, feeling, talking when they’re moved to do so. All of your senses are alive, you’re attuned to the others, you’re attuned to yourself, you’re striving to let the moment be whatever it wants to be, you’re striving to be in harmony, you know that trying to force something could ruin the moment.

Yet you can’t be passive because, if you are, the moment will either die or pass you by. You can’t stop to evaluate the idea or emotion that has just come to you; that takes time and moves your focus away from creativity. You’ve got to pour it out and keep going.

What exquisite aliveness actors and actresses must feel!

This kind of aliveness is what we hope to achieve when we engage in the writing process. This is the aliveness we can achieve when stormwriting, and of course it is the flow of unfettered life.

As you can see, stormwriting is all about taking your initial ideas logically further and turning them into building blocks for your book. Doing this makes your unwritten book unfold before you like a flower or a road or a landscape you’ve never before seen.

Some teachers say, “Be in the now, and your creativity will flourish.”

They’re right, but the hell of it is that now you have to figure out how to meditate your way into the now (whatever that means). You have to do this homework assignment of getting into the now before you can be a good writer. Sure, just attain Buddha-hood and then maybe you’ll be able to write well.

No!

Here’s the great fun of it: If you get into your creativity via the guidelines in this chapter, you will already find yourself in the now. You don’t need perfect consciousness to start. Perfect consciousness is your reward when you tune into your creative core, when you unleash your heartbrain.

Don’t seek the Buddha. Be a Buddha.

Perhaps Yes, and— and What if? are stress-free guidelines for not merely writing, but for living.

ACTIONS