The Creativity Workshop

Everyone is creative This isn’t a mind-boggling, back-breaking treatise on creativity. Much has been written on the subject and there are hundreds of approaches to help you become creative. In this workshop I cover a handful of these…the things that have worked for me and for the folks who’ve taken my writing workshops over the last decade and a half. Keep this in mind: Everyone has a creative wellspring. Many of us lose it for whatever reasons, but it’s still there and you can release it. That’s what this workshop is all about.

What This Workshop Will Give You

• A method to overcome your inner critic and let your creative self be the boss of you
• Exercises and tools to help you release the awesome, really awesome, wellspring of your creative self and see the world in a whole new way
• Tools to help you explore possibilities and turn them into something real

What Went Wrong?

We started our lives with wonder and curiosity. All of us. You can see this in every newborn’s eyes. Later, in school, we drew things with crayons and finger paints. The drawings may not have looked like anything we would recognize today but at that time they were expressions of how we saw the world, how we interpreted it. They were our creations. We were free to express ourselves. We were creative.

But then the straight jacket of other’s expectations of us took hold and tightened its grip as we grew. We were forced to join the herd and be as much like everyone else as possible. It started in school and continued into the workplace. We began living by schedules and routines and, bit by bit, our creativity was swallowed by the need to conform: conform to dress codes, work schedules…all things left brain. As aged, the need to think creatively became less useful and less used. We fit ourself es into schedules and routines, we worked and slept against our biorhythms, we lost our wonder and curiosity and focused only on those things advanced us in our jobs or entertained us.

We can see this in how children are taught in school and how adults are taught. Once out of school and on-the-job, learning becomes less exploratory and generalized and becomes linear and focused on specific tasks that relate to work. Adults can still take courses and workshops that aren’t related to work but these are called extracurricular or non-essential. Most businesses will not pay for courses that are not related to the workplace. I say most…some businesses see great value in a creative and curious workforce but they’re in the minority when it comes to actually paying for it.

Our creativity, our curiosity and our wonder tend to die off in a world more concerned about getting and keeping a job and buying things than with nurturing those things that you can’t really assign a dollar amount. Creativity is one of those things.

But here’s the good news: You never really lost your childhood creativity. It’s still there, living and breathing in your right hemisphere and you can get it back.

Hopefully, this workshop will help you to do that.

Mindless Writing

In this section you’ll learn how to break some of the barriers that inhibit your creativity. You’ll also begin to develop your own personal voice.

The single biggest block to getting started on the first line or paragraph of a novel is the expectation that the first line will be the greatest thing you’ve ever written and that it has to be perfect, that everything you’ll be writing will flow out of those first few inspired words.

The truth: the longer you spend trying to make the first line perfect, the less likely it is that you’ll ever finish what you started to write. You may never even finish the first sentence.

The only way to write consistently and regularly is to write without elevated expectations of yourself, without editing, and without your imagined reading audience looking over your shoulder at everything you write. The best way to break this blockage is to write mindlessly.

Do this every morning for 5 to 15 minutes. Pick something to write about. It could be a dream you just had, it could be a conversation you heard, it could be something you read in the news or heard on the radio, it could be an object in your room, it could be symptoms you’re feeling from a cold. Just pick a subject and start writing.

Here are the tricky parts―you pick a time to start writing and you stick with it, whether you have something to write about or not. You may start off by writing “I have nothing to write about” over and over until something else comes into your mind.

Once you start writing, you can’t stop. It doesn’t matter if you run out of things to say, you keep writing, putting whatever words come into your head onto the paper. If you find yourself wandering away from your topic, go with it. Just keep writing down whatever comes into your head.

When the 15 minutes are up, stop writing. You’ve made a deal with your subconscious. Keep it. You’re building a sense of trust between your conscious mind and your subconscious…opening a portal into the wellspring of your creativity so that your creativity can emerge freely, without judgment or criticism.

In short:

1. Pick a time period (beginning and end)
2. Pick a subject
3. Write continuously, without stopping
4. Write for the time period you agreed on and then stop whether you’re finished or not

EXERCISE

Look at the image on this page. Think about it for a moment or two and then start writing about it. Once you start, don’t stop until the 15 minutes are up.

If you stop to correct spelling, grammar, punctuation or a change of mind, a 10,000 pound ball of steel will drop on your head. But don’t think about that…just write.

And that’s it. You did it. You wrote continuously for 15 minutes without stopped or judging. You just let your mind dive into the creative wellspring and dabble around for no reason other than doing it. You just did what the vast majority of the planet’s population will likely never do: free your mind.

The Benefits of Mindless Writing Mindless writing is exploratory and spontaneous. You relax and expect nothing of yourself other than to put words on paper for a specific period of time―you let the words flow out of your subconscious without stifling them by editorializing, evaluating or judging. Editing and reviewing can be done later. Here are just a few of the benefits:

• Opens your creative mind for the rest of the day
• Helps to break down the hold of that inner judge
• Helps to release your creative potential and subconscious thoughts
• Overcomes writers’ block
• Helps to develop your personal writing voice

Do this exercise every day. You can do it in the morning before you go to work or class. It’ll set your mind to creative mode for the rest of the day. After doing this for a few weeks, you’ll find it easier each day to use your creativity when you need it. BTW, the concept of mindless writing was developed by Dorothea Brande who introduced it to the world in her book Becoming a Writer way back in the 1930s. You won’t go wrong buying your own copy.

Mindless Drawing

Like mindless writing, mindless drawing forces you to let go of criticism and judgment. You don’t have time to acknowledge the inner voice that says, “This is a waste of time.” It’s just you allowing you to express yourself on your own terms…without evaluation even from yourself.

It follows the same process as mindless writing: you think of a word, idea, event…anything. Think about it for a few minutes, then put a pen or pencil on a piece of paper and make it move. Try to keep your original thought in mind as you move the pen over the paper…but keep drawing.

Your pen should never stop for more than a couple of seconds for things like moving it to another area of the paper. If you mind wanders from your original thought, go with it.

Your drawing might be awful. That’s OK. Keep drawing.

As with mindless writing, pick a period of time and stop when you’ve reached it. During that time, you shouldn’t stop drawing. If you draw a line you don’t like, leave it. Whereas mindless writing is more cerebral, mindless drawing is visual and appeals directly to your right hemisphere. Doing this a for a few minutes a few times a day will keep your creativity active. It’ll also relax you, and relaxation allows your creativity to flow more freely, without blockages, like criticizing what you see…just accept it and keep drawing.

You might want to carry a notebook or sketchpad with you for drawings. On the other hand, they might be so awful that you’ll do them on scraps of paper that you can fold up and eat before anyone sees them.

It doesn’t have to look like anything. It can be as abstract as you want it to be…just lines made on the paper wherever your eyes lead your hand.

Awful drawings are OK. You’re not trying to be Rembrandt, you’re just trying to relax and let your creativity flow. If you draw, no matter how bad it is, then you’ve accomplished your goal. You can throw it away when it’s done…or keep it.

After doing this exercise for a few weeks, you might want to start a drawing sometime in the morning and keep at it, off and on, for the rest of the day. I do this at work. When I switch from one task to another, I draw in between. It’s usually something I start in the morning and come back to during the rest of the day. I use a black gel pen and computer paper or postcards with a surface for watercolour painting rather than a photo.

The work I do, designing online learning, involves a wide variety of tasks (research, interviews, working with various software programs, and so on). I draw between each of them. It keeps my mind active and open to creativity.

EXERCISE 1

Grab a pen or pencil and a piece of paper. Look at the flower picture to your right for a minute or two and then start drawing without looking at the photo. Try to keep the ink or graphite flowing without stopping except to put the tip on another part of the paper and keep the flow up. You can throw the drawing away when you’re finished. It’s done its work.

EXERCISE 2

Do the same as in Exercise 1 but use a larger piece of paper, like a full sheet of computer paper. Start the drawing in the morning with a minute or two of drawing and put it away. Bring it out a couple of hours later and do some more drawing.

Keep this up until you feel the drawing is finished, at which point you can throw it away or keep it. It’s done its work.

When you first start doing this exercise, you’ll probably hate what you see and think something like, “Well, that does it…I can’t draw worth a damn.”

Most people can’t. This exercise is not about the quality of the drawing, it’s about the quality of creative thought it releases.

Try it for a couple of weeks and see if it works for you.

Mental Awareness

Putting your mind into something else like a person or an object will give you new ways of seeing and feeling the world around you.

As a creative person, you need to be empathetic, to everything around you on a personal and emotional level that few others experience. You have to be part of your environment, not just something passing through. The ability to get into the minds and hearts of other people and see the world through their eyes is a key advantage in any pursuit or occupation.

The salesperson who can get into the mind of the buyer is more likely to make the sale than that salesperson who has no idea what the customer is thinking. In my own experience, the best salespeople were highly creative thinkers who empathized with their customers.

You might not always agree with the other person. You might not like the way they act, talk, think or dress. As a creative person, though, you accept them for who and what they are and try to see the world the way they see it.

When you listen to someone talking, make an effort to understand what they’re saying. One of the things I’ve noticed with increasing frequency is that people tend to talk at each other instead of to each other. Try listening more than you talk. You might discover a lot of things you missed.

EXERCISE 1

You’ll need someone else to help you with this. Face someone about 4 to 5 feet away and look directly into their eyes as they look into yours. Do this for 5 minutes without looking away. This will be painfully difficult for most people. Don’t talk. Just stare. And as you stare, try to think about what’s going on inside the other person’s head. How is that person responding to looking into your eyes? What can you tell about a person’s mind from looking into their eyes? After the 5 minutes, grab pen and paper and write down everything you can about what you felt.

EXERCISE 2

Close your eyes and imagine you’re a tree. Visualize your trunk, your roots, branches and leaves. How does it feel to be a tree? What does each part of you feel like? Can you feel the wind rustling your leaves? Can you taste the earth your roots are digging into? Can you feel insects burrowing into your bark? Do this for 10 or 15 minutes and then write about it mindlessly for 5 or 10 minutes. Try this while imaging yourself as other objects, as other people, various animals… the more you do it, the more you’ll become aware of the world around you on a much more intimate level.

Physical Awareness

We rush things. We’re impatient to the extent that we click out of a website if it takes more than 10 seconds to load. We’re in a hurry that puts our lives on an A to Z route that has little or nothing in between. We miss a lot of things.

As a creative person you need to notice those things for the richness of experience they’ll bring into your life.

For instance, stop occasionally and close your eyes...listen…sniff the air…touch a tree trunk… touch the rock foundation of an old building… not just with your fingers, lay your hand on it and run it along the surface…is it cold or warm, smooth or coarse, are there variations in the surface? Eat a blade of grass. What does it taste like?

Listen to snippets of conversation. What sounds do the traffic lights make? Are there birds in the air, on power lines, on eaves? What kinds of birds? What sounds do they make?

What other sounds do you hear? What are the faraway sounds? Is there an underlying sound? What is the most pervasive sound?

Are there other people on the street? What are they doing? What do they look like? What colour is the sky? How many other colours besides blue are there in a blue sky? How many colours are there in a cloud? Is there a breeze? What does it feel like? Does it carry any smells?

EXERCISE

Pick a spot along the street. Stand or sit in that spot. Look around you. What do you see? Close your eyes. What do you hear? Keep your eyes closed. What do you smell? Touch things around you. Kiss them, lick them, smell them if you want. Notice the textures, sights, sounds, smells, and feelings. What impact do they have on you? Does this setting evoke memories, feelings? Are they positive, negative?

Now, with your eyes closed, tune yourself into the complete environment around you. Try to zero in on the single most over-riding impression you get. Jot that down and write mindlessly about it for 10 or 15 minutes.

Ask Questions

Creative people ask questions. They want to know how things work, why things are the way they are…and there’s no better way to learn these things than questioning.

Questions open new ways of seeing things, things that might lead to understanding and insight, things that might help you make sense of world, and things that you might not want to know.

Suppose you find yourself becoming angry and more aggravated by everything more often. You might just chalk it off to a bad week or month or the full moon. But you might ask yourself, “When do I get into these bad moods?” You might ask, “Where to I get into these bad moods?” You might find these questions leading to the same thing. It might be your work, your marriage, something important to you. It might mean having to make life-changing decisions, giving up your comfort zone.

Or you might have to give up strawberries because your questions led to seeing a doctor whose diagnosis was: “You’re allergic to strawberries. They turn you into a crazy person.”

Questions give you deeper insight into things; for instance, life. Life is layers. The layers have a surface that might mean something to you and something completely different by the person standing beside you in the airport. And that layer may not come close to reflecting the layers beneath.

For instance, you might know someone at work who does their work so efficiently that they’re promoted to a management position in record time. Everyone sees this person as confident and always in charge of things. But they never smile.

You might ask the person why this is and find out that they don’t believe for one second that they deserve to be promoted. Asking further, you might find out that this person was accused repeatedly as a child of being worthless and a failure by a nasty parent. Upon further questioning, you might learn that this person did well in spite of the parent, but somewhere deep inside that voice is still there, “Who do you think you are to be successful? You don’t deserve this.” And thus the lack of smiling.

EXERCISE

Pick a ritual or habit you have, maybe chewing your nails or procrastinating when you have an essay to write or some work to do for a friend. Ask yourself why you do that and when you get an answer, question the answer. Keep asking until you run out of questions.

Ask the who, what, when, why, where and how questions as much as you can.

The Story Dump

If you’ve done the coffee shop writing workshop, you can skip this section or use it for review.

We all have ideas, some of them great, some not so great. Some get out there and make a difference in people’s lives. Most don’t. Most ideas are never developed, generally because we just see part of it and not the whole. It might be a single line of dialog or a visual image deep in our heads or an idea we’ve had for a novel or play that’s been stuck in our heads for years.

I know people who have been talking about the same novel they’re going to write for decades. They talk for about five minutes, which works out to one or two pages of writing. I see them again in a few years and they’re talking about the same thing and they still have only one or two pages of writing.

The germ of an idea is never enough. You need an idea that’s more like a seed, something that will grow and take on form, direction and life. You do this with the story dump. The story dump is like a box into which you throw any and all ideas you have and when it fills up you empty it and put things together so that they make sense.

I use a hard-back notebook and pens. I can carry these around with me everywhere I go and they never run out of batteries. But you can use a laptop, cell phone or whatever device that fits your comfort zone.

Begin by writing down all the ideas you have so far for your novel or project. Get this down as quickly as possible. If new ideas come to mind, make a quick note but don’t develop anything. When you have everything written down, go through your notes and start asking questions. How does so-and-so manage to get into a job he’s obviously not qualified for? Who murdered Little Joe and why? Why did Janice do this? What was she thinking when she did it? What research will I need to back this up?

As you develop each of your ideas, more ideas will come. As you answer questions, more questions will come. Writing a story dump is like rolling a snowball down a hill. As it rolls down, it gets larger and larger. The more you write in your story dump, the more you’ll have to write about.

I start each my novels off with a story dump but it can be used for any type of project…an essay, a proposal, a thesis, a non-fiction book, a series of blog postings…anything.

Take your story dump to dental appointments, social events…everywhere. When you run out of things to write, go back through your notes and read them. New ideas will come. Do backstories for your characters. See the link in the resource section for backstories. Sit two of your characters down in a confined space and write up a conversation for them.

Basically, the story dump is just that…a place where you dump everything that comes out of your head. Write about the characters, the plot, the settings, the mood, the themes, the story structure, everything you can think of about a specific scene, dream sequences, snippets of conversation, anecdotes, observations, topics to research, relevant news items…everything.

Go into as much detail as you want, but don’t feel obliged to push yourself to do things like write perfect conversations. At this point, you’re just getting whatever comes off the top of your head, writing quickly and mindlessly and having fun. The detailed writing comes later, after you’ve committed to the story. At this point, you’re just trying to decide if you’re really that committed to spend months or years on this idea. You’re trying to determine if you really have enough to write this story, or if this story is compelling or interesting enough that anybody would want to read it.

The best way to do a story dump is to ask questions and then answer them and let the answers go wherever they will.

After you’ve become familiar with the general idea of the story, start asking yourself what scenes you’ll need and write mindlessly about the scenes. Come back to them later and develop them more. The more scenes you write, the more scenes they’ll inspire.

If you can’t help yourself, and you ramble on for several paragraphs, then go ahead. Be random. Let your mind relax and just write what comes into your head. After a month or so, you’ll know if you have a good idea and if it’s something you can commit to for the duration.

If it isn’t, then come up with another idea and story dump it. The beauty of a story dump is that it allows you to size up your idea and decide if you can really stick with it before you spend several months or years writing a story that you’re never going to finish.

On the other hand, you might begin story dumping an idea and a better idea might come out of it. This is why you should treat the dump as a huge mindless writing exercise. Don’t think too deeply at this point. Don’t commit to anything. Let your thoughts wander all over the place. Nothing you do at this point is wrong. Don’t make it a brain buster. You can linger over something for a minute or two, thinking about how a character might respond to something, or what details would be necessary to make a setting real but don’t get caught up in this. The idea is to be writing. If you can’t think of anything to write about, look back further into your previous notes and start writing more about them. The more you add to the story dump the more you’ll release thoughts and ideas about your previous notes.

Keep writing. Tell yourself, “If I stop writing, a ten thousand pound weight will drop out of the sky and land on my beer.”

NOTE: Make labels in the margins of your story dump. If you have a character description on the first page using Sarah G, then wherever you describe her in the following pages, label them Sarah G. You might even want to put extra notes like Sarah G – conversation with X, or Sarah G – on catwalk.

EXERCISE

Using these four scene elements, write a story dump. Write down anything that comes to mind…even if you begin to digress.

• Character: Adam’s dog died this afternoon.
• Setting: The street was deserted.
• Mood: Something wasn’t quite right.
• Plot: The victim’s throat had been cut from ear to ear.

Jot down notes as fast as you can. They can just be snippets of ideas, conversations, theories, observations. Or maybe you have an idea for a novel. Start a story dump for that. Stop when you have 5 or 6 pages of notes. You’ll be using these for the next couple of exercises.

When the Idea Box Is Full This is going to be different for everyone. At some point, you have to stop story dumping and start arranging all those disparate ideas into something coherent, something that is plotted.

I use two methods to do this: the treatment and the storyboard. Let’s look at them.

Visual Plotting – Building Scenes and Storyboards

By now, you have lots of notes. You’ve been mindlessly writing in the morning to find your writer’s voice and free your creative self from the humdrum scheduled prison of everyday life in the 21st Century. You may have ignored my advice and used your morning notebooks for story development. That’s OK. If you’ve done this, go through these notebooks and circle every passage that might have gone into your story dump.

In your story dump, you’ve made notes in the margins, numbered the pages, and you’ve joined related notes by referencing their page numbers. In short, you have a lot of material spread all over the space of several notebooks or all over a very long digital document. Now it’s time to bring all this together.

But first, you have to know what a scene is. That’s Step 1.

Step 1: What the Hell Is a Scene?

Stripped down to the bare essentials, a scene is where something happens. Yes, where. All scenes have a location. Everything that happens has to happen somewhere.

Next, a scene has to advance the story in some way. Scenes that don’t advance the story are nonessential. Scenes that don’t provide some form of function are non-essential. Once a scene becomes non-essential, it stops being a scene and you delete it. Later in this chapter we’re going to look at a great tool for identifying scenes that should be deleted.

So, the next time you’re strolling down the street minding your own business and thinking happy warm thoughts and a troll being stops you dead and says: “Tell me the four defining characteristics of a scene and I’ll let you live.” Shout right into the troll's face:

• Something has to happen
• There has to be a location
• It must advance the story
• It must have a function

Now, this assumes that the troll is honorable. Some are not. So the troll says, “Good answer, but I’m not an honorable darkling being, so I’m not going to let you live unless you can explain each off those defining characteristics.” So let’s look a little closer at what makes a scene.

Something Has to Happen

Back in my hippie days, I listened to a recording of a poem called Fire. It was a repetition of the word fire. Fire…fire…fire…over and over for several minutes. I thought it was the most brilliant piece of literature I’d ever encountered. I was almost in tears. I thought I’d just been touched by God. I was a hippie. I was on LSD. When I listened to the poem again years later, it didn’t have near the same effect.

Nothing happened.

Granted it was a poem and not a scene in a novel, but I think it makes the point. You have to assume that your readers are not on drugs and that it’s going to take more than one word to keep them reading. You have to assume that your readers are going to expect something to happen. The good news here is that anything can happen.

An argument can happen. A fight can happen. A murder can happen. Part of an investigation into a murder can happen. A chase can happen. The happening can be anything: an action, a feeling, a realization, a description of a building, a backstory.

A scene will generally describe one happening, like the opening of a murder mystery showing the victim rushing down a dark alley, looking over his shoulder at some unknown threat, stumbling over garbage cans and finally hiding in a doorway, hearing footsteps approaching slowly and eyes widening in terror as he feels a knife sliding into his heart. Cut to next scene: the crime scene filled with cops as the sleuth who will solve the murder arrives.

There Has To Be a Location

Whatever happens, has to happen somewhere, even if it’s just in one of your character’s minds. For instance, in a dream where the character is somewhere with no possible physical description, just an overwhelming sense of fear. The location? The dreamer’s mind.

Outside the mind, every place is a physical location that can be described. Here’s a scene from my third novel:

“…my big toe…”

“What, Mom?”

“What, dear?”

“Your toe?”

“My toe?”

“Your big toe.”

“What, dear?”

“What did you say, Mom?”

“Is that you, Abner?”

Kind of breaks all the rules I’ve set so far, doesn’t it? Taken by itself, yes, but in the context of the novel, no. This scene is actually an entire chapter and it’s a continuation of scenes earlier in the novel in which two sentient virtual beings are transferred to a computer that can’t support STORYBOARDING 101 3 their programs, which causes them to slowly disintegrate as the novel progresses. The location and circumstances for this scene have been given to the reader by the time they reach this page, making this scene the continuation of a series of scenes. Once that's established, you don't have to re-establish it in successive scenes…unless you change the location or something in the location changes the mood or direction of the story…like stones falling off a large rock as an earthquake intrudes on the blissful picnic scene.

You can get away with individual scenes that don’t have a location for the sake of, for instance, creating a sense of mystery, but somewhere in all that interconnectedness of scenes, you’ll have to establish a location for the reader to fully grasp what’s happening.

Last thought on location: Generally, if you have more than one location in a scene, you’ll have more than one scene, but not always. An argument between a husband and wife can start in the kitchen and move to the bedroom and still be one scene. In this case, the scene is defined by the one action, the argument. If the couple go to the car, stop arguing and just sit quietly, simmering, then you have a new scene defined by the change in location and the nature of the action.

It Has to Advance the Story

Every scene has to advance the story in some way. The sleuth might come one step closer to solving the mystery. A character might learn something that helps in understanding something important going in in their lives. The reader might gain a deeper understanding of a character’s personality. A group of people lost in the woods might overcome an obstacle to escaping. A character’s personality might evolve.

It Must Have a Function

Sometimes a scene might take a step backwards, as in a calm moment after a few pages of intense action. This may not advance the story, but it helps to modulate the story. Two hundred pages of non-stop intense action is too much for any reader. You need to throw in some time for the reader to catch her breath. You do this with a scene that creates a mood of stillness, some quiet in the roar of action.

So now you’re ready to explain scenes to the troll and now you're ready to identify them in your story dump.

You’re ready to ask: Does something actually happen here or is this just three pages of well written but pointless conversation? Does this scene do anything to advance the story, give insight into any of the characters or help the reader to understand what’s going on? Is there an identifiable location and, if not, will that be implied in previous or forthcoming scenes? You have to answer those questions honestly, no matter how good you think a piece of writing is that, under scrutiny, doesn't belong in your novel.

But you don’t have to do that just yet.

All you have to do is go through your story dump and identify possible scenes. Some of these could be backstories from your characters that you might be able to drop into your novel with little or no revision. Others might be an action in your novel, like a spy dropping off a secret message in a dark and stormy place or a long description of several old friends on a patio drinking and talking, and the dynamics and interplay of their personalities gives insight into each of them. Remember the passage where Katie rips Alice’s new blouse? That was a scene. You may already have marked some of the passages in your story dump as scenes. You’ll be surprised at how many of these scenes will come from your character studies.

You should get at least twenty to thirty scenes from your story dump, hopefully more. Circle (highlight on a computer) as you read. Make notes on entries that, if combined with other entries, could be made into scenes. And here comes that hard part.

If you’ve been using pen and paper for your story dump, you’ll have to put all those scenes into a word processor. (Did I mention that I wrote the entire first draft of my first novel in pencil? Don’t do that.) You don’t have to copy over every word, though this might make things easier later. You can just sketch out the scene and then refer later to your story dump for more information.

If you’ve been using a laptop all along, I would make a copy of the story dump, highlight the scenes and delete everything else. Call this document “Scenes.”

Step 2: What the Hell Do I Do with All These Scenes?

This is where we start getting into the real business of plotting. You’ll need a bundle of computer printer paper (8.5" x 11"), a thick black felt tip pen (or a black marker) and a blank wall for this. Yes, a wall. A blank wall with no windows or paintings.

Now tear the pieces of paper in half along the 11" side to make two 8.5" x 5.5" pieces of paper. We'll call each of these a "card." (I used to use large filing cards for my storyboards, but printer paper works just as well and it's cheaper.)

Do this until you have thirty or forty cards. In the top left hand corner of each card, write Scene ___.

Drawing from your story dump or Scenes file, write a brief note about each scene on its own card. For instance, this is the scene description in your notes:

Joanie and Michael in their final argument. They're in the kitchen and Michael has just dropped one of Joanie's favorite dishes while he was drying it. He makes a crack along the lines of "well, I guess we won't have to worry about washing that one again" and smiles. Joanie falls to her knees on the floor and starts picking up the pieces of plate, tears stream from her eyes. Her movements are frantic as though she's trying to save Michael denies this. Joanie gives up on the plate shards and stands up and starts yelling at Michael who yells back at her. They're both yelling at the same time, not even hearing each other. This goes on for a few minutes before Michael storms out of the kitchen, out of the house and Joanie hears his car screeching out of the driveway. She never sees him again.

This is the description on your card:

That's all you need, just a very brief reminder that this is what happens in this scene and this is who's in it.

• At this point you just note the scenes
• You don't have to put them in order

We'll get to that in the next step.

Step 3: Building the Storyboard

So you have maybe twenty or thirty cards (maybe more), each representing a scene in your novel. Now you have to organize them into chronological order. You have to ask yourself, "What comes first? What comes after? How does this start? How does it end?"

You might want to start your novel with Joanie and Michael's argument and him suddenly disappearing. This might have been an early entry in your story dump and later you made an entry that he does comes back into her life, unexpectedly, just as she's about to marry someone else. Or you might have notes on their happy marriage and then the slow disintegration of it after Joanie has a miscarriage and they find out they can never have children. In this case, the first scene might be a wedding or pre-wedding scene. Or it might start with the argument in the kitchen and then flash back to the wedding.

When you have all your scenes entered on the cards, put them into whatever chronological order you think works at this time. You don't have to be accurate. The order you choose is very likely to change in the next step.

Now arrange them on a wall in the order you think they will appear. This is called storyboarding. It helps you to organize your novel by letting you see the big picture easily. It helps to see the relationships between the scenes, identify gaps, and make decisions on which scenes may not be necessary. It will also help you to see where scenes may be merged or split into two or more scenes, some of which may appear in another part of your novel. For example, you may have a scene with a flashback in which one of your characters thinks back to a point in their past but, as you look at the storyboard, you may decide that this flashback makes more sense as an entire scene earlier in the novel.

This is what the scene descriptions on your cards might look like:

1. Joanie/Michael Marriage day/Baby talk
2. Joanie/Michael First home/Room for baby
3. Joanie/Michael/Doctor Joanie is pregnant
4. Joanie/Michael On couch with Michael's ear to stomach/happy
5. Joanie/Friends Baby shower
6. Michael/Karl At work, talk about parenting with best friend
7. Joanie/Michael At prenatal class/Joanie is testy/something wrong
8. Joanie/Michael Kitchen/Joanie faints
9. Michael/Karl In ER waiting room/Karl consoles Michael
10. 1Joanie/Medical staff Doctor shakes head, miscarriage
11. Michael/Karl/Doctor Doctor breaks news/Michael cries
12. Joanie/Michael Hospital room/Michael consoles Joanie
13. Joanie/Michael Joanie staring into the baby room/Michael's consoling brushed off
14. Michael/Karl At work/Karl suggests counselling/Michael is angry
15. Joanie/Michael In bed/she turns away from him/no sex/he lies with eyes open
16. Joanie/Friends At gathering/Joanie jealous of babies
17. Joanie/Michael Kitchen/Michael Kitchen/ Broken plate/Argument/Disappears
18. Joanie/Adam Joanie meets Adam at coffee shop
19. Joanie/Adam Adam proposes to Joanie
20. Joanie/Adam/Michael Michael shows up just before wedding

Remember: All you need to put on the cards is just enough information so that you know what the scene is about. Don't put all the information from the story dump onto the cards.

Here's what the initial storyboard will look like:

Impressive, isn't it? And it gets even more impressive as you build onto it and watch the plot for your novel grow on your wall. Here’s how it looks closer up:

There’s just enough information on each card to remind you of the notes you made in your story dump. That’s all you need. At this point, you’re not writing scenes, you’re arranging the scenes you have in what you feel at this time is their chronological order (which might change several times) and identifying other scenes that you’ll need.

Notice that the storyboard is built in rows. The topmost right card is whatever you feel is going to be the first scene. (I've built only one storyboard where my first choice was still the first scene by the time the novel was completed.)

Place your cards (use a single piece of tape in the middle of the card) in chronological order to the right of your first card. When you reach the end of the wall, start a second row under the first scene card, and so on until you reach the floor. But reaching the floor is highly unlikely at this point…with one exception: If you have a card for the last scene, place it at the bottommost right corner.

Now, how do you space the cards between the first scene and the last scene? So far, you have a rough idea of the chronological order of your scenes, but there are still a lot of scenes missing. This is where you begin to play with the cards.

Step 4: Play with the Storyboard

See all the gaps between the cards in the picture? Those are areas where more scenes are needed. This is going to require some guesswork on your part. You’ll have a sense for approximately where the scene should be, but you might not know what scenes come immediately before it or after it. So you leave spaces for those scenes. At this point, your storyboard is going to be anything but accurate. Keep everything fluid and uncommitted. This is where you experiment with possibilities. For instance, there could be several more scenes with Joanie and Michael interacting between themselves and with friends before the emergency room scene. And notice the big gap between Michael leaving and Joanie meeting Adam. Obviously, there will have to be more scenes in this space.

And that's the beauty of a storyboard…you can see where those scenes are needed. If you have chapters, you can see what scenes will go into each chapter.

You can also see where one scene might be better off placed before another scene. For instance, in scene fifteen, Joanie turns away from Michael just as they're about to have sex and Michael lies in bed, eyes open, not happy with the way things are going. As you're looking at this card and the previous card where Michael's best friend, Karl, suggests they see a counsellor, it might occur to you that it would make more sense if this scene comes after the bedroom scene. When you can actually see the relationships between the scenes, it becomes easier to make these decisions.

Once you have your storyboard up, step back and admire it. I built my first storyboard on my livingroom wall. When I had friends over, they were in awe. They suggested that I keep it up after the novel was completed. I mean, how many people have a storyboard for a novel in their livingroom? But it's more than just a conversation piece hanging on your wall. Don't just admire it…study it, ponder it, see the connections between scenes, ask questions such as:

• Do I need a new scene to make this scene make sense?
• Do I need this scene at all?
• Should I combine this scene with the next scene or a previous scene?
• Do I need some kind of transition scene between this scene and that scene?
• Should this scene come earlier in the novel or later?

The more you study the storyboard and ask questions, the more ideas you'll get and that huge arena of scenes between the beginning and end of your novel will start to fill out.

When I have my storyboard almost completed, I look at each scene and ask myself if it's fast paced or slow. If it's fast, I draw a dot at the bottom of the card with a red marker. When I stand back and look at the storyboard as a whole, I can see the rhythm of the novel, where the action is furious and where it's slow. This allows me to judge where I might have to slow a long sequence of fast action with a slower scene or two to give the reader a chance to catch their breath or where I need to add some action to stop the reader from falling asleep. It might take a few weeks or a few months to complete your storyboard. You'll know when it's finished: You'll have a wall full of cards and no more questions. But even if you still have a couple of areas where you're not sure what happens, if you have a wall pretty much full of cards, you're OK to go to the next step. But first… …one last word on the storyboarding. Remember that little blank line after the word Scene in the top left of each card? It's there for a reason. When your storyboard is complete. Fill in each of those blanks, numbering the cards from 1 to whatever number of cards you have. Number 1 will, of course, be the first scene. Now, if you have to tear down your storyboard (for instance, if you need that wall for pictures or it has to be painted) then you can put it back up in its original location or somewhere else (like the floor) and you'll know where each card goes. You might even want to take it with you on vacation and cover one of the walls in your hotel room.

Now let's get writing that first draft.

Step 5: The First Draft – Card by Card

Having a storyboard not only helps to visually plot your novel, it makes it easier to write it, especially if you're a busy person. Once the storyboard is completed, you know exactly where you're going with your novel; you have a blueprint of everything that has to be done from start to finish. You may still make some changes over time. Once you start writing and get into the flow of the novel, you may find that you'll need additional scenes or some may need to be deleted. You may still change the order of some scenes. But that's OK. You still have a basic structure to work with. You're not sitting in front of a monitor with "It was sort of dark and stormy…" And where do I go from there?

Your storyboard is your workflow for your novel. Each card is a unit of work that has to be done, unit after unit, until the first draft of your novel is finished. The best way to do this is to put aside a block of time each day for writing. Schedule it. Make it an essential part of your day with a beginning time and an ending time.

Find a place to write, somewhere you can go each day at the scheduled time and write without interruption or, at least, with the least number of interruptions as possible.

I do all my writing in coffee shops. I've been doing this for so long that, as soon as I sit down all the noise and clatter of the shop fades and I'm in writing gear. That's my place to write and when I'm there, I write. I get there at 7 PM and finish writing at 8:30 PM…exactly an hour and a half. When I first started doing this, I didn't get much done but, after a while, I started increasing my output so that, in the hour and a half, I write one to two pages. Now, think about that: if I write just one page a day, in 365 days I have 365 pages. That's well over a 400 page novel. At a rate of an hour and a half per day for one year.

On the other hand, you might be one of those people who needs variety for inspiration, so you might want to change locations, even spend some time writing indoors and some outdoors. Or you might have just a half hour to spend on writing each day. That’s better than nothing. You might want to write whenever you find a window for it throughout the day. You might want to spend two or three hours each day and maybe more on the weekends. Whatever works for you. Experiment. Try different times and places until you find the right place and pace that allows you to write consistently each day. You don't have to set goals such as having the first chapter or a hundred pages done by a certain time; just make sure that you spend a scheduled period of time writing each day (even if that period of time is spread throughout the day).

So, you have your schedule set up and you're ready to write. On the first day, take the first and second cards off the wall. Go to your writing place at the scheduled time. Take:

• One or two cards
• Implements of writing (laptop, notebook and pencils/pens or stone and chisel)
• Story dump
• I strongly urge you to use a laptop.

If you're writing at home, then use a desktop or laptop. Writing a novel by hand is hell, and you'll eventually have to turn it into an electronic document for submission to a publisher or to post to a self-publishing site. Even if you use a typewriter, you'll eventually have to turn your typewritten manuscript into an electronic document.

Look at your first card. In the sample storyboard it's Joanie and Michael's marriage ceremony. Go to your story dump and read the notes on this scene. The story dump could contain one or more pages on this particular scene and introduce some of the minor characters like Michael's best friend Karl. Now, make a few notes on the scene (I do this with paper and pen)…things like the mood of the scene, who's in it, the order of events, the tempo and the main action. Take a deep breath and think for a moment. Then start writing.

Write as quickly as possible. Don't stop to correct grammar. Don't stop to think things out in minute detail. Just write the scene as quickly as possible. If you've been doing your morning mindless writing exercises (and I know you have) then writing quickly at this point won't be a problem. It's what you do every morning. It's what you've been doing in your story dump. It's what you've been doing in your character studies. It's what you'll be doing each day as you write the first draft of your novel.

It may take just one siting to write your first scene; it may take several sittings over a period of several days. You might even finish your first scene in just a few minutes and start into the next scene. You may have to start taking three or four cards with you.

At the end of your writing period, you can read over what you've written, but don't get into any micro editing. If you see what changes need to be made, make a note to that effect but, unless the changes are minor, leave them until you've finished your first draft. The idea at this point is to get your story and not get bogged down in the details. You have all the time you need to make revisions after you've finished your first draft. But if you don't have a first draft, you have nothing to work with.

Suppose you spend hours revising parts of the first draft to make them perfect. Then when you do your first round of editorial revisions you realize that some of the scenes you put so much effort into don't do anything to advance the story and you have to delete them. I've had this happen. It's heartbreaking. Write quickly without revising.

When you start your next card the next day, you can read over what you wrote the day before if you’re still writing the same scene; if not, then start right in on the next scene.

One of the things I love about a storyboard is its modularity. Each card is a module inside the framework of the novel. The cards are there and you know what has to be written to complete the scene for that card. Suppose, though, you have a card and you just can't seem to write that scene. Maybe something's missing or you just don't get it, but you know that scene has to be written. In this case, go to the next card or to a scene well into the storyboard, and write that scene. You have your plot (the storyboard) so you can write things in any order you want. Leave the difficult scene behind until you're ready to write it. In fact, writing scenes later in the novel might help to break down the barrier to whatever was stopping you from writing it in the first place.

Because your storyboard is your plot and the plot is fully (or as close to fully) developed before you start working on your first draft, you'll always know where you are and where you're going with your novel. If you have to take a week or two or more off, when you come back to your writing, you'll get back into the groove quickly by reading what you've written and looking at the storyboard to see where you're going.

I've used storyboarding to plot several of my novels. Being a busy person with a full-time job and other things on the go, using the storyboard was the only way I could get those novels written. It may sound like a lot of work…it is. But I suggest you give it a try if nothing else has worked for you.

EXERCISE 1

When you’ve finished your story dump or when you have about 10 or 15 pages, Go through it and identify as many scenes as you can. Sometimes, several notes spread through your story dump may blend together as one scene. Sometimes, you’ll see a short entry that you believe might make a good scene if you develop it more. Go ahead…develop it. That’s the idea behind the story dump…a place to breed ideas.

EXERCISE 2

You may not be ready to begin your story board yet. That’s OK. Grab a few cards and invent some scenes. Maybe take those scenes from an event in yours or someone else’s life. It could be the first day on your new job or the Nth boring day on the old job.

Or you might just invent a fictitious scene. Maybe take it from whatever notes you have on your story dump in progress.

A Space to Create

By doing the exercises in this workshop, you’ll dig into your creative wellspring and it shouldn’t matter where you are…your creativity is a part of you and you carry it wherever you go.

However, some people like to do their creative thing is a specific space. Artists paint in studios, writers write in coffee shops or a corner at home, project managers write reports in offices, students write essays in libraries, photographers do portraits in studios or outdoors and programmers create software in dungeons (at least the ones I know do). Some people can create anywhere: they can write a novel on a train, paint in a store showcase window, write a proposal in the lunch room, or turn a perfect piece of pottery in front of thirty people.

I don’t like writing at home. That’s where I watch movies and waste time. I write in coffee shops and as soon as I sit down with a cup of coffee the words start to flow because that’s where I make the words flow.

It doesn’t matter where you create as long as you can create. You might have several spaces or you might have just that one special space.

Here’re a few things to keep in mind:

Access

You need a space you can get to when you need to get to it. A place that’s a two hour drive away is probably not going to work. A space that keeps irregular or undependable hours is not going to work. Make sure that you can get to your space easily and whenever you want.

Ease of Use

Your space to create should have everything you need to create. In my case, I take a laptop, paper and pens. You might need more…like food or a power cord.

Comfort

Your space should be relaxing for you, whether it’s noisy or not, busy or quiet, hot or cold…if you’re relaxed you’re more likely to create.

No Distractions

If you’re easily distracted then you need a private space like a home office or the library. If you choose your home office or a kitchen table put everything else out of your mind. If you wash dishes or vacuum when you should be creating then home is not your space to create.

A Space that Inspires

I know artists who can’t do a thing at home, but as soon as they get to their studios, they’re off! There’s something about an art studio that makes you want to create something. Other places might be outdoors with great scenery, the beach, the middle of a rain forest. This is obviously a niceto-have, but it’s something to look for when you’re looking for a space to create.

Personal

I’ve known people who’ve shared creative spaces with other people and things worked out nicely but I’ve also seen the opposite, with one person feeling that they’re being blocked from creating by someone who’s in the space too much. Make sure that your space is always available to you, personally.

Long Term

Make sure that you have access to your space all year round. If your space is a park bench you might have some serious problems in winter. Unless you’re a poet…read on.

EXERCISE

Experiment a little. Try doing something creative like writing (it can be mindless writing) or drawing (it can be mindless drawing) in a variety of places…even a park bench (best if you live in a warm, tornado-free place).

Try for as much variety as possible. I know a woman who walks around the city in the summer drawing things wherever she goes. She sees the world as her studio.

It doesn’t even have to be a physical space. I know a writer who does all his writing on his cell phone. He writes on buses, in waiting rooms, on the toilet, in bed…wherever he happens to be. For him, the phone is his place to write.

I know a poet who used to stop people in the street and demand a penny for a poem. I saw him one day writing one of his poems on a park bench. In the winter.

Eons ago, I knew a flutist who could only play the flute during a full moon. He played brilliantly for a few days each month and couldn’t play worth a damn the rest of the time. His perfect creative space was a time, no matter where he was.

Experiment.

Using Your Camera or Phone to Visualize Ideas

One of the best ways to develop an idea is to “see” the idea, or see the “shape” of the idea through visual connections.

I did this with a novella called the Ladies of the Fountain. The story begins at a fountain in a park area called the Green and ends in an entertainment area called Piper’s Lane, which is several blocks away from the Green.

The action in the story plays out in various places along the several block walk to Piper’s Lane.

I walked the route with my camera, taking pictures of each place that was used as the setting for a scene in the story. This helped me to plot the story, gain a better visual grasp of the action in each scene and generally make the story more real to me, which helped me to make it more real for my readers.

When I arrived home, I downloaded the images and pasted them into a Word document in the order in which they appear in the story and I pasted the notes I had for each scene into the document below their respective pictures.

Looking at the picture as I wrote the scene made it easy for me to visualize and write the action in the scene. You could even glue or tape some pictures of scenes right onto the storyboard cards because each card is a scene, though I’m not sure how this would work for an entire novel with a hundred or so scenes…maybe best for short stories and novellas.

EXERCISE

Go for a walk in a place you frequent. It could be a street, a park, a building, a beach, a wooded area…anywhere you want. When you get there, imagine a story or event happening there. It could be a chase, a murder, two people having a conversation as they walk, an alien invasion… whatever you want.

Take pictures of the place. If the action in your story or event happens in chronological order, then order the images from beginning to end and mindlessly write following the pictures.

For a non-fiction book, say on The Ultimate Egg Boilers Book, you can take pictures of the process from beginning to end and then write about it. Your writing will likely be a lot clearer and more entertaining than if you did the whole thing with words only.

Your Creativity

Everyone is born creative.

Bit-by-bit, as we grown older it becomes buried under schedules, routines, other’s expectations, judgment, criticism, fear of being wrong, fear of being right, insecurities and a myriad of other creativity killers and, like anything, if you don’t use it, it becomes rusty, difficult to call up when you need it and something you no longer associate with yourself.

But it’s always there, just under the surface of everything you’ve been taught to believe and accept. You just have to start using it. Hopefully, the information and exercises in this workshop will help you break through the barriers you’ve placed between you and your creativity.

This may sound a little over the top, but one way to release your creativity is to associate with people who encourage it, people who show an interest in what you do and make you feel that you are, in fact, creative.

This might mean removing yourself from elements that don’t support your creativity. You might have to stop hanging around with an overly critical friend (or friends), or a work environment that leaves you feeling emotionally stifled or choked at the end of the day.

You may have to change your lifestyle. Generally, creativity flows more freely when you’re relaxed than when you’re emotionally turbulent. Taking a course in meditation might help…or removing yourself from situations that stress you out. On the other hand, I’ve known people whose creative juices don’t start flowing until the heat is on.

Your creativity never left you; you left it. Now it’s time to get it back.

EXERCISE

Think about the things that you think might be holding back your creativity. Make a list. Think about the things on your list. See if you can identify changes you can make to your life so that you get your creativity back and keep it.