Staying the course when writing
How to start and finish with the same story idea and not go off on tangents
I started writing a blog many years ago after a rather harrowing experience. It was my way of debriefing myself so that I could make some sense of what I’d experienced.
My story wasn’t unique and so I thought a blog might help others on the same journey. While I loved the writing part, as an amateur blogger I reaslied that I had a lot to learn about the process of writing for others, as opposed to the random ramblings in my private journal.
As I started my writing journey, I discovered a talent for outside the box thinking but I also lacked an important skill, and that was how to stay ‘on message’.
On message is a term often used by public relations and advertising professionals. It means to have one clear intention/message, to be consistent in making your point and not stray into other topics or ideas.
But staying on message can be challenging when you have a brain that takes a global view, that sees the interrelatedness of everything! For me, it meant I was constantly diverging onto multiples streams of thought, getting further away from my original message, all heading in different directions. Before you know it, you’re lost at sea and wondering how the heck you got there.
Initially, writing my blogs was slow work, as I tried in vain to steer myself back to the topic I had intended to write about. I’d stop, start again, only to find I’d digressed once more. So, frustrating!
When I started writing on Medium, I thought, I’d done my apprenticeship via my blog, so with more writing experience under my belt, I thought writing would be a walk in the park. It wasn’t. While other aspects of my writing had improved, staying on message had not.
I did some research but couldn’t find any useful advice on how to help me develop this skill, so I came up with a technique that works for me and I hope it works for anyone else suffering with what I call, ‘divergent story syndrome’.
I‘m’ a spontaneous writer. I get an idea and start writing, it starts well but soon enough, I’m off on another tangent, again. While being impulsive is valuable, I need to temper that with a little planning.
Here’s what I found.
Got too many ideas?
I’m currently writing a story on sentimentality. I jotted down the initial story idea that came from feelings that arose when I found some old and beloved trinkets in my cupboard. As I wrote the piece, I’d started to write about the feelings that came up, but soon found myself talking about poorly made goods, consumerism and landfill! Not where I had intended to go.
Yes, there is definately a link between my beautiful hand-made items of pre-mass-produced days and I could have written about that, but that wasn’t my intention for writing the piece.
Brain dumps
To help me keep the story on track, I decided to do a brain dump of the initial feelings and emotions that popped up when I found my treasures. Despite my typing skills being superior to my hand writing, I chose to use pen and paper for this exercise. Hand writing helps my busy brain slow down, so that it can process ideas more thoroughly, and to manage my diverging thoughts.
Save those dumps
Notice I didn’t say stop my diverging thoughts. The reason I don’t want to stop these sidetracks is that they often generate new story ideas. So my sentimentality story has now generated another story idea about mass-produced goods compared to hand-made. I want to keep and record this idea and any others that stem from my initial thought.
So here’s the technique I developed.
Note it in your notebooks
I decided that I needed to allow a place for stream of consciousness thinking and then another place to record all the off-shoot ideas. For my process I purchased two notebooks. Mine are actually Visual Arts diaries because I’m nuts about colour and design. I incorporate art tools because I want to turn what has become a difficult task, into a fun one, but you can use any kind of tools that work for you.
Notebook #1
In Notebook #1, I write my initial story idea, and then jot down all the feelings, emotions and ideas that flow from stream of consciousness writing.
If I find some of those large global ideas popping up, I’ll ask if they serve the initial story idea. If they do, I’ll include them, if they don't, then I put them in Notebook #2.
Notebook #2
Notebook #2 then becomes the storehouse for all the ideas that pop up in relation to my original idea. This now provides me with a bank of ideas for those zero ideas days, when my mind does the opposite and goes blank.
Mind maps can be useful for this exercise as can other tools like Post-it-notes, whiteboards or large sheets of paper. Whatever works for you.
The aim of this technique is to get all those multiplying rapidly flowing ideas down on paper quickly, then you can take your time and choose which thread you’d like to follow, making the actual job of writing, much easier.
This idea won’t work for everyone, as each brain is wired differently, but for those overwhelmed with ideas and trying to manage them, while they’re writing, this just might help you stay ‘on message’ and stop your brain from having a meltdown.
