How to Use What Ifs While Revising

Photo credit: Marco Arment on Flickr

When talking about brainstorming, many writers often speak of employing the What If? method. For those who don’t know, the What If? method basically calls for asking yourself What if ____? while brainstorming ideas.

For example, if you were brainstorming Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, it might go something like this:

• What if the protagonist was a wizard? 
• What if he didn’t know he was a wizard? 
• What if everyone but him knew he was a wizard? 
• What if his family knew he was a wizard, but didn’t want him to know (or ever find out)? 
• What if the wizarding community tried to contact him, but his family hid the correspondence? 
• Etc.

The What If? method is a fantastic way to generate ideas and explore possibilities for your book, however this post on revision by Veronica Roth reminded me that the scope of it’s usefulness doesn’t end in the brainstorming stage.

You see, the point of revision isn’t just to make the words on the page grammatically correct or sound a little nicer (that would be final edits or copyediting, not revision). The purpose of revision is to take the story that you have and make it better. Explore the plot, add more layers and levels of complexity, push the limits, delve into the characters and cut it down to the core of the novel.

It’s a lot to try to accomplish, for sure, and sometimes it can seem overwhelming. Where do you even begin?

A great place to start is by going back to the What If? method while re-reading your work. Maybe your first chapter is off—go through it and start questioning everything. Be open to making changes—even huge changes—and know that just because you write down a What If option doesn’t mean you have to use it.

Maybe your protagonist isn't sitting right with you. Start thinking about possible changes in What If? terms and write down possibilities.

The What If? method can open up new directions and potential revision ideas that you might not have considered otherwise. Next time you’re gearing up for revisions, keep this method in mind—it might just open up some new doors of plot possibilities for you.

Have you ever used the What If? method for brainstorming or revision?

When Your Novel Isn't the One

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There comes a time in every writer’s journey, where you have to accept that the book you just wrote isn't ready—and may never be.

Sometimes you know right away, so it’s not quite as difficult to put it away, but sometimes the realization doesn’t come until months of writing and editing and rewriting and submissions. And it’s hard. It’s hard having to accept that maybe this book you’ve spent so much time on, this book with characters you love and a plot you thought could actually work is in fact not working.

It happens to everyone, guys. And it’s ok.

I know I’ve mentioned this before in my post about why gatekeepers aren't evil, but I want to talk about the writer side of it. I want to tell you that I know it’s not easy to shelf a novel, but it doesn’t make you a bad writer. It doesn’t mean you’ll never write the one.

It just means you need more practice.

Don’t be discouraged if the book you thought would be the one, isn’t the one after all. Don’t give up just because you’ve written two or three (or however many) novels and you had to shelf them all.

And please don’t self-publish just to avoid putting your book in the trunk. That is absolutely not the reason to self-publish and you’ll be glad you didn’t later. 

The fact of the matter is, at first anyway, your passion will not be equal to your skill. Your story might be great, your characters might even be fantastic, but your skill level won’t be there yet and that’s ok. These things take time and practice and practice and more practice.

And eventually, as long as you keep pushing, you will write the one. And it’ll be amazing—the best thing you’ve ever written—not perfect, but really good and you’ll feel it and you’ll know that the time is right. You’ve paid your dues.

The point isn’t how long it takes you to get there or how many books you write before the one is born—the point is that you keep going until you reach it. The point is that you accept every book you write brings you one book closer to the one.

Then, once your skill level is equal to your passion, you might find that you’re ready to go back and salvage the good from those stepping stone novels. You never know—with a little extra work, they might be the next one after all.

Have you ever had to shelf a novel? Are you glad you moved on? Tell me about it in the comments! 

Brainstorming

As I’m currently in the brainstorming-editing-brainstorming-rewriting-brainstorming-WAITING FOREVER TO EDIT MY RECENTLY FINISHED WIP!-stage, I thought it appropriate to talk about ferrets and how ridiculously adorable they are.

Aha! Weren’t expecting that, were you? Just kidding. Today I’ll introduce you to my two favorite brainstorming techniques; one of which I’ve used for ages and another I just recently fell in love with.

TECHNIQUE #1: THE WHAT-IF GAME

I’m sure many of you have tried this, but if you haven’t, for the love of all things bookish, TRY IT!

The What-If game is very simple. I’ll describe it in steps, because steps are fun.

STEP ONE—THE MAGICAL QUESTION: sit down with a blank sheet of paper and a pencil (or pen or marker or crayon or keyboard or what-have-you) and at the top you write the miraculous words “What if…?”

STEP TWO—DOT: Now make a bullet point (or star or heart or fish because you can).

STEP THREE—BREATHE IN, BREATHE OUT, THINK: Close your eyes, take a deep breath and let the question hang. What if…what if what if…what if ALIENS INVADED THE EARTH AND THEIR ONLY WEAKNESS WAS…WAS…FERRETS! Ok, that one might be a tad bit ridiculous, but write it down anyway. There’s no such thing as anything that’s too out there for the What-If game.

In all seriousness, this really works. Start with an idea, a basic idea (What if I wrote about pirates?) and see how far you can push it. What if their Captain was a crazy, egotistical half-wit only someone as insanely talented as Johnny Depp could play convincingly? What if he didn’t have a ship? A crew? What if the world was flat? What if they sailed over the edge?

This can go on forever people, FOREVER! And it’ll help you uncover some gems you may not have thought of otherwise. Trust me.

TECHNIQUE #2: THE IDEA STORM

As I mentioned earlier, I discovered this technique very recently, but it’s quickly becoming a favorite.

The idea storm is simple and best done on a sheet of notebook paper or on a program that lets you write literally all over the page, like OneNote. I still think pencil and paper will work best, though. It helps with the whole freeing, creativity thing which is what you’re going for here.

So! I was inspired by the Wordle word clouds online and thought it’d be fun to make one by hand, except instead of writing words that you use often, you write words that relate to whatever you’re trying to write. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Step by step, here we go!

STEP ONE—PAPER: Get your notebook paper out and turn it SIDEWAYS. I don’t know why this helps so much but something about writing over the lines instead of conforming to the shape of the page really gets your right brain going.

STEP TWO—THE FIRST WORD: Write a word somewhere on the page. It can be as big or small as you like, except it’s probably best that you don’t take up the whole page (unless you want to cram the rest of your words in tiny little letters around it. Actually that might be fun. Maybe I’ll try that.). Anyway! If all you know at this stage is that you’re writing a dystopian novel, then go ahead and make your first word dystopian. Maybe you want to make your antagonist sympathetic. Write that. Maybe you only have a name. Go ahead and slap that baby down.

Great. Now you have the first word.

STEP THREE—GO CRAZY: This is pretty self-explanatory. Go crazy. Write all over the page. Write in funny angles if you want, different sizes, above and below the red line, around the holes in the page, it doesn’t matter, write wherever you’d like. The goal is to fill up the page with ideas, words, thoughts, names, even full sentences that pertain to your new WIP idea. If you’ve got some symbol in your head, go ahead and draw it. There are no rules here. Use funny colors, use pens and pencils. Doodle if you’d like. Just think about your idea and get it down.

Best part is you can use either one of these at any stage of the game. Don’t have a novel? Start with this. Stuck in the middle of a scene and don’t know how to end it? Whip out the paper and get your brain storming.

I challenge you guys to try these at least once. Who knows? You might just find you like these methods too.

These are obviously only two of many different brainstorming techniques. What do you do to get your ideas on paper?