Thought Dumping

At this point in your story, you’ll probably have a whole bunch of ideas buzzing through your head (If you don’t, don’t worry, they’ll come). First and most importantly: Write EVERYTHING down. You never know what ideas are going to be useful for your story so it’s always best to just write them all down before you forget them.

I suggest you carry a notepad around with you in case you get a random idea and need to jot it down. Alternatively, you can get a notepad app on your phone (I use google docs).

This notepad will be a mess, and that’s fine. Don’t worry about organizing these ideas yet. For now, just make sure you get them all written down in a way that you can figure out later what the heck you were trying to say.

Once you have a few ideas down, designate a time during the week for idea refinement. This is when you’ll take what’s written in your notepad and decide what to do with it. Maybe you want to expand on an idea. Maybe your idea sucked and you never want to look at it again. Either way, don’t throw your ideas away. Just because an idea isn’t useful now, doesn’t mean it won’t be later. Put all unused ideas in a backlog somewhere. When you’re stuck with writer’s block, going through your backlog of unused ideas can sometimes help to get you unstuck.