📌 How I Storystorm
Everyone's got their own Storystorm style...including me! (Links and files updated for 2024!)
Do you know about Tara Lazar’s Storystorm? It’s a month-long story brainstorming event for picture book writers. The idea is to create 30 story ideas in 30 days—maybe a clever title, character name, rough idea…really anything will do. As Tara explains, “The object is to heighten your idea-generating senses. Ideas may build upon other ideas. Your list of potential stories will grow stronger as the days pass. Eventually, you will have a list of ideas to flesh out into concepts, premises, and manuscripts in the coming year.”
Here’s why I participate (in no particular order):
It’s amazingly productive.
It’s fun.
It’s free.
There are great prizes.
If I don’t schedule this stuff, I don’t always do it!
You can read all about how it works (mostly, it’s the honor system) in Tara’s blog post about it.
Like so many of these things, there are a million ways to do this event, but I liked what I tried last year so well that I’m sticking with it this year, too.
Basically, I print out a January calendar—and then write down at least one idea (sometimes several, if I’m on a roll!) on each calendar day. Last year, I clipped the calendar paper to a clipboard (just so it was super easy to find, even in my paperwork piles), and voila! At the end of the month, I had one fantastic piece of paper, teeming with new story ideas! Of course, not all of them will amount to much—but a surprising amount do! And still others at least push me towards a new option I wouldn’t have considered otherwise. I highly recommend it!
Here’s the calendar I made to use (the file is a .pdf) if you want to try it.
Join in if you haven’t! It’s super fun. :)
Happy Storm chasing!
Yours in brainstorming,
Elayne
My posts are always free, but my focus isn't; if you found this post interesting or useful, please consider ♡’ing it so I know. Thank you!
The calendar is a great idea, Elayne! I write all mine down in a writing ideas journal that I have! But, I tend to forget I have this notebook, to go back and reference thoughts that I had! So I like the idea of a calendar to put right in front of me!