I'd like to thank everyone who participated in the polls I posted last week about the number of themes and anthologies for next year.  There was some interesting discussion, and I will be taking a close look at all the comments and the poll results this weekend and will open up further discussion in next week's anthology blog.  This week, we have a guest blog post written by @CassieQ about her take on writing for themes.  She's given us some great food for thought when it comes to writing for anthologies.  

So, you’re thinking about writing for the anthology.  Awesome.  They are a lot of fun, a great way to expand your skills and garner new readers.  Go for it.

         The problem?  The themes.

         I get it.  Sometimes the themes are awesome and resonate with you and you can’t wait to get words on paper.

         Sometimes, they just don’t.  That’s what I’m going to talk about.

         First point, please remember the anthologies are inclusive and not exclusive.  If your story only kinda matches the theme, it’s fine.  It doesn’t have to be a literal interpretation, unless that is what you like, in which case, go for it.  You do you. 

         Every year, we vote on themes, and every year, I look at them, sigh and think I can’t write for those.  18 anthologies later, here I am.

         Before I get into the brainstorming section of this, I want to note that these methods work for me when trying to come up with story ideas, and that they may not work for everyone, and there are many different ways to come up with ideas.  Furthermore, I am very much a pantser when it comes to writing and abhor planning of any kind.  Therefore, I would love to hear from other people about their brainstorming methods, and especially from plotters. 

         So, you have the themes in front of you and you’re not crazy about them.

         First, decide between the two themes.  You may not like either one of them, but there is usually one that is worse than the other.  Get rid of that guy.  (Unless you want to write for both, in which case, go for it.  If you know a way to do so without feeling like your brain is melting, hit me up). 

         Okay.  So you have a “meh” kind of theme.  I have 2 methods for coming up with ideas.  The one I use the most often is the less exciting.  I just toss it the in back of my mind and let it marinate there for a while.  Think about it absently when doing other things…showering, driving, walking the dog, pretending to listen to your boss/teacher, stuff like that.  After a few days, I’ll usually get an idea about a scene or character that I can start building from.  You can outline from there, if you are an outliner, which I am not, so it’s usually just a messy jumble for me, but it’s something I can work with. 

         I like that method because I’m lazy and it’s easy.  There are some things I like to be hard, but this isn’t one of them.  (Yes, I 100% meant that the way it sounded).  If that method doesn’t work, then I go for the mind map.  (I don’t know if my method is genuine mind map, but it looks close enough for me). 

         So, I am going to describe the methods I used for coming up with an idea for a themed contest using a mind map.  I busted out a large sheet of paper and some markers because it’s more fun that way.  The theme was “Summer”, so I wrote that in the middle.  I already knew I was going to look at summer vacation themes, so I wrote that down too.

         Then I drew fours lines branching off from the main theme, like the spokes of a wheel and labeled them.  The labels were “camping” “road trip” “beach” and “meeting a summer fling”, all things that can happen during the summer.  The camping idea died first.  I’m not a fan of camping, nor of writing about it.  Nothing wrong with camping, I’m sure it’s fun for some people, I am just not one of them.  The “road trip” idea spun into an idea about fixing a troubled relationship and then into four more spokes about what might cause a troubled relationship.  It was an interesting concept to explore but didn’t really excite me.

         That left “meeting a summer fling” and “beach”.  I elaborated on both of them.  The “beach” idea had another spoke that lead to “friendship into lovers”, then two more off from that idea: “near drowning” and “drunken escapades”.  Sounds like fun. 

         The “summer fling” idea had two lines branching off, one reading “fall in love” and another reading “solve a mystery?” (I guess I had reservations about it).  From the “solve a mystery?” idea was another line, leading to an idea about a light house mystery.

         I ended up going with the lighthouse mystery as my main idea, but I liked the ones from the beach idea so much that I ended up including those (with the exception of drunken escapades, as my characters were teenagers).  Those ideas developed into a novella called Geist, which is up in the Premium section.

         I used this a lot when I was staring out, but not often now.  I typically utilize it when I am struggling to come up with idea.  It’s fun, though, because it often yields ideas I wasn’t otherwise considering.  At this point, some writers could start planning or outlining.  If you’re me, it’s throwing words at the paper and hoping they make sense.   

         So, if someone is struggling with the themes, I hope this helps you out.  If not, then I just spent 20 minutes typing to myself, which is fun too.  Also, please let me know your methods of brainstorming in the comments, I would love to hear from other writers!