List of Twenty

Over at The Kill Zone Boyd Morrison has a post on Hunting Down the Muse. It's all about what authors and writers should do when they are looking for their next book idea.

I've heard many of the techniques he brings up, from continuing on in your daily writing routine to writing what you know, etc. One I had never heard before was using a list of twenty.

Writing down twenty ideas. The first ten will be typical. It's those last ten that will make a write use their creativity and strive to make an idea unique. Thinking outside the box so to speak.


One technique that I’m trying was suggested by my agent. It’s called the List of Twenty. You come up with a list of twenty of ideas for a novel. The first ten or so will be obvious, so obvious that someone else may be having the same idea as you’re typing (which is why we end up with situations like two movies this year about the White House being taken over by terrorists).

But when you exhaust those first ten ideas, you start having to come up with more unusual and off-the-wall ideas, and that’s where you find the gold. Those are the ideas likelier to be unique and amazing.

It's not a bad idea. I hope to have to use it soon cause that will mean that I am done with my third novel.