Map the Dragon
Sage
I thought some of you might get a kick out of this, or may want to try it out yourself.
Basic Idea: Keep a Word file of your ideas, this is especially helpful if you have a close writing friend who you can meet with every so often. My best friend and I sometimes write together, but both have our own novel series. For fun, and as a cure for writer's block, we keep an encyclopedia of ideas. It's actually a lot of fun, especially for those of you into worldbuilding. He and I will sit down and just comd up with ideas for various categories of our fantasy worlds.
We categorize into three vague categories: Creatures, People (cultures or races), and Places.
We just write as we go and each keep our seperate file. The idea here is that we have numerous ideas from which to draw as we continue writing. We then color code....I highlight in one color if I use an entry. If he uses one, it's another color. A third color signifies our co-written uses (like our short stories). Anything not highlighted is still up for grabs. We just have a rule that once one of us uses something, the other has to email it over to take it off the board.
We both got some of our best and original creature characters from this process.
Basic Idea: Keep a Word file of your ideas, this is especially helpful if you have a close writing friend who you can meet with every so often. My best friend and I sometimes write together, but both have our own novel series. For fun, and as a cure for writer's block, we keep an encyclopedia of ideas. It's actually a lot of fun, especially for those of you into worldbuilding. He and I will sit down and just comd up with ideas for various categories of our fantasy worlds.
We categorize into three vague categories: Creatures, People (cultures or races), and Places.
We just write as we go and each keep our seperate file. The idea here is that we have numerous ideas from which to draw as we continue writing. We then color code....I highlight in one color if I use an entry. If he uses one, it's another color. A third color signifies our co-written uses (like our short stories). Anything not highlighted is still up for grabs. We just have a rule that once one of us uses something, the other has to email it over to take it off the board.
We both got some of our best and original creature characters from this process.