Writing The Perfect Story

SIMPLE TRICKS TO USE IN COMING UP WITH A PLOT

SIMPLE TRICKS TO USE IN COMING UP WITH A PLOT by Olamiji Bankole (olamijibanks)
• Author of Behind The Walls
• The African Awards Judge.

Hi guys, so I've thought long and hard about how to write this ( should it be informal, formal or just normal.) However, I've decide to write this like a blog post so let's delve into the main matter at hand.

As a creative, mainly one of the major problems we deal with is having so many ideas at the same time. The problem then is to sort through this ideas and pick the more reasonable, realistic and authentic ones. That's basically how picking a plot goes.

However, there are some of us who sometimes or even everytime does not always have series of ideas in our head and we'd have to be forced to start thinking about how to come up with a plot.

In this article or whatever this actually is (I don't know guys, I'm lost.) I'll be telling you some tricks of coming up with plots. These tricks are tried and tested. (Why?), because I had once experienced the problem of coming up with a tangible plot and I still sometimes face this problem but below are the tricks I use.

• Forced brainstorming: Sometimes, you just feel like you have a great idea in your head but there's just something that's holding it back or blocking it. It's at this moment that you need to use this trick. At this point, you have to force your brain to work even if doesn't want to (lol.) When you want to do this, I recommend when you are relaxed and not tense ( what I'm saying basically is don't do this when you are in a hurry or stuff.)

Do this when taking a cold drink or water, swimming or listening to music. Just think, think, think and store whatever you can get at the back of your mind or if you are like me (I forget storylines that haven't been sorted easily.), write it down somewhere.

• Read a lot of book reviews or books itself: There's just something about reading other's work that gives you that vibe and ideas, especially a very good book. I'm not asking you to steal other people's stories but when you read a lot of book reviews, you gradually start to form new stories from different books reviews in your head. (PS: This works a lot for me.)

• Listen to Music: This is my most favorite trick. Of course, I'm not talking about music with no content ( Most Nigerian artist are known for this.) Listening to music that tells a story sometimes arouse variety of emotions and their lyrics open up our imaginative worlds.

Then you can get a storyline from the stories of different music. It might not be concrete but once you get a part of the plot, you can always use the other tricks to complete it. ( I mainly use Forced brainstorming or just keep writing to wherever the half storyline takes me.)

• Surf the web: There's a reason I call google my best friend (lol.), it's because it basically knows everything. Surf the web and research about plot stories, you will find it. I'm not asking you to use the storyline you  see online which I'm sure many other writers can also copy but seeing series of plot works just like reading lots of book reviews (for me.), It opens up my imaginative mind and I start to think "What if it's the other way round?, What if she survives?" At the end of the day, you'll have a new story entirely.

• Writing prompts and photos: There are various times when writing prompts challenges are going on. A lot of time, I don't meet up with the deadlines (lol.) but I write them anyways and while writing the prompt which sometimes could be from an image, I get more ideas that can transform the whole prompt into a book.

Also, this last bit is one trick that I haven't really tried but heard it works from different people and its Pinterest, many people claim surfing the app helps open their creative minds but I haven't really used it before. Anyways, I figured it should work since writing a prompt with an image works.

If you use Pinterest, comment down below if it really does work for you.

These are the few tricks I use and I hope it works for you.