Is your blank monitor screaming for you to start typing an intriguing plot?

Are you at a loss for a good story?

Characters won’t come forward and introduce themselves?

Then play What if?

Take an ordinary situation and make it worse by asking What if . . . ?

For example, a girl runs away from home. Very ordinary, yes? Now, what if a tremendous storm sweeps her to a distant land? Still a bit ordinary? Okay, add another What if: While trying to find her way home, she meets three very odd characters: a tinman, a scarecrow, and a cowardly lion? Add a cast of odd characters and you may recognize that story. (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz)

Let’s try another one. A young boy moves to a new town. He’s not happy about leaving his friends and moving to a strange place. Yawn. What if at this boy’s new home a mountain sits at the back of his house? Better . . . What if the boy climbs this mountain and discovers a mythical bird who takes him to fantastic places where he encounters more mythical creatures and wild adventures? Now you have a memorable story. (This is my favorite childhood story called David and the Phoenix by Edmond Ormondroyd.)

Next time you’re in need of a good story plot, play What if . . . ?

Want to share what you came up with?

    How long has it been since you played pretend? For me, it was just today!

     To write fiction, you must free that childlike quality and see where it will take you.

     I’m not sure how adept I was at pretending when I was a little girl—too long ago, folks! But when I took a stab at it a couple years ago while working on a plot to match the characters in my mind, I realized I was very rusty at pretending. I had to work at it not play at it.

     Now I drive my youngest kids (ages seventeen and fifteen) crazy with my pretending. Recently we had some serious fog in the valley. We live on the eastern slopes of the foothills, so our house was above the fog. As we were driving into town, I studied the large cloud that would soon swallow us. As we entered the gray swirling mist, with my scariest voice I asked the kids what we might encounter within the belly of the fog. Would we emerge unscathed? What lurking evil might entrap us, never to release it from its vaporous veils?

      Had my grandkids been in the car, we would’ve had a grand time pretending—and I wouldn’t have been so scary; we would’ve pretended that fairies guided us! But with my ever logical teenagers (poor dears), they just rolled their eyes and gave me lip: “Mom, why do you always do this? It’s just a stupid cloud!”

      I ask you, where’s the fun in just driving through a cloud? Isn’t it much more daring and exciting doing it my pretend way?

     Don’t let your pretending die. I’ve struggled to resurrect it, but I’m so glad to have it back. Life is so much more interesting!

Colleen Shine Phillips is new to the professional writing scene. An ACFW member, she is an American missionary to Chile. I thought you’d find her story interesting.

“Stash”: hiding place; something hidden or stored away

Everyone has some kind of stash. As a mom of seven children, I was rescued many times from insanity by contents of my stash—mostly chocolate. I’ve encouraged my daughters when they married to make sure they have a little stash of money (what my grandma called “pin money”) for those little extras not included in the budget.

Writers need a stash of ideas—snippets of conversations, characters who pop into mind unexpected, news items that trigger a plot, a Bible verse that explodes into a theme. I promise, if you don’t jot these ideas down and file them, you will forget them.

It doesn’t matter what the stash looks like. What’s important is that you have one! Keep a shoebox, a small hatbox, a basket sitting in a handy place to toss in scribbled notes. If you like more organization, use index cards and a file system.

When you have a few spare moments, pull out one of your ideas and write a paragraph about it. If it’s a character, write a description or give him or her a history, or a goal to reach. If the idea is a plot, write a paragraph or two telling what, when, why, how (you may not yet know the “who”).

At times I’ve pulled out some of my ideas and used them as a writing assignment for my kids (yes, I homeschooled all seven). It was fun to see what they did with my ideas—my middle daughter is now writing a novel!

A stash of ideas is vital to writers.

I’d love to hear how you “stash” your ideas.

I’m driving through upstate New York. If you’ve ever seen calendar pictures for October with the brilliant reds, golds, yellows, and greens, you know what I mean. It’s beautiful. I live in Western Montana, in the midst of the rugged Rocky Mountains, and am blessed with glorious fall colors, too. But a definite difference exists between these two fall displays. My fall colors are limited to the valley floor, with the exception of tamaracks in the mountains, but here in NY the colors flow with the rolling hills, which affords a dimension to the hues I don’t get to experience in Montana.

When writing fiction, setting is as important as characters, plot, and theme. In fact, the setting can become a kind of character (think: creepy mansion with a malevolent personality; or the sand and surf where your protagonist goes for comfort and solace, or add clouds and wind and it becomes a raging surf, tempting our hero to throw himself off the cliff into the crashing waves below—remember Rebecca?

Setting can create additional conflict for the protagonist, adding depth to the plot. For example, your story might center around two brothers who are always locked in one quarrel or another: they both want the same girl, one is smarter than the other, one seems to get all the breaks, mom loves one best . . . any number of typical struggles brothers can have. But let’s put them in the midst of the Civil War (or for my Southern readers, the Northern Aggression), one fights for the South, the other for the North and your setting kicks up your conflict to new levels.

Also, setting can simply be someplace we could never “see” without the author’s creation of the world he or she takes us into. C. S. Lewis and Narnia, and J. R. R. Tolkein and his world come to mind. These are nonexistent settings, yet these authors make them real for their characters and for us. Because of the authors’ vivid descriptions, we readers can move through and experience these “make believe” worlds alongside the characters.

What author creates the most fascinating settings for you?

Most activities and projects require advanced preparation. Taking a trip involves planning your route/flight, gassing up the car or buying tickets, packing your bags, canceling newspaper and mail deliveries. It’s a lot of work, but doing these things makes the trip more enjoyable and reduces the stress level along the way.

The same can be said for planning your next great American novel. Preparation will make the journey of writing your book, a difficult task, easier: create your characters, including their back stories and motivations; determine your protagonist’s conflict and how she or he will change; build your setting; establish your plot and subplots—all before you write one single word.

If you’re a SOP writer (seat of pants), this preparation will, do doubt, be difficult or boring for you. You might be tempted to skip it. But if you don’t prepare, I promise you’ll have an abundance of stress that could have been avoided. If you’ve done the preliminary work, you’ll know how your character will act in a given situation. If you’ve not done it and your character is in the toughest circumstances of her life, you’ll have to stop and think and ponder and hunt through the previous 100 pages and . . . see what I mean? Determining the plot and subplots ahead of time could reveal some logic problems, which you can easily fix—much easier to do before you write than after you’ve penned 150 pages, and then have to go back and do a massive rewrite of the last 149 pages.

And a reminder to those who get a rush from the preparation—all that organizing and planning: don’t go overboard. Planners can enjoy the preparation stage so much they become obsessed with it and miss their flight! Or for the writer: they dream, plan, create, sketch, plot . . . but never get around to writing the story!

Each of these writing styles has strengths . . . and weaknesses if taken to the extreme. So identify your style, borrow some strengths from the “sister” style, and write that great American novel!

What’s your writing style?

This week I’m giving you a list of my favorite “Help Me Write” tools. These are books or other sources I turn to when I’m editing or writing. I hope you'll find them helpful, too.

Top-notch fiction articles from top-notch writers, editors, and agents—beats Writer’s Digest hands down for content, and it’s FREE: http://www.christianfictiononlinemagazine.com (Technical editor is Yours Truly!)

Sample documents for writers: http://scrivenings.com/resources/sample-documents-for-writers

How to write nonfiction proposals: http://www.stevelaube.com/How%20to%20Write%20a%20Non-fiction%20Book%20Proposal.pdf

Fabulous workshops and lecture packets filled with everything you need to write the next best seller; best bang for your $20 bucks: http://www.margielawson.com/

How build and write a novel that is sure to break out of the pack: Writing the Breakout Novel (book and workbook) by Donald Maass

Not only a great how-to-write book, but how to break into the industry and build a career in writing: Writing for the Soul by Jerry B. Jenkins

Create a believable and memorable plot: Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell

Beyond a dictionary and thesaurus—helps you determine the precise word: Flip Dictionary by Barbara Ann Kipfer

I could list many, many more books and Web sites, but I don’t want to overwhelm you. What I have offered is a small sampling of resources that address the various aspects of writing, including self-editing and a bit of the business side of the biz.

What are some of your favorite resources?

I am sitting in the hospital birthing room, awaiting my eleventh grandchild. (No, I’m not that old; I’ve been blessed with many children who love children!) This baby boy is one of those “surprise” babies. (Been there; done that.)

Before labor gets too intense and I’m called into action, I have time to wonder how this child will enrich our lives. Each time a new baby joins our family, he or she adds a new dimension to us all. What will he be like? What quirks will he have? What kind of personality will he have?

This baby, Jude Isaac, is taking his time to make his entrance into the world. I was a slow laborer with each of my seven children. You’d think that after even the second one, I would be more efficient about this birthing business. But no, that’s not my reality. (And I have to admit that even now, after all these years, when I hear of a woman giving birth in a matter of a few hours, I feel a twinge of jealousy.)

This is how it is as authors give birth to their characters. Sometimes they come to us quickly, and other times they come to us after only weeks and maybe even years of “labor.” We begin to ponder what kind of person our protagonists are. How they will handle their challenges. Maybe we know what the story we want to tell and create someone to fit into it. Many times we have no clue what the plot is, but we see in our minds’ eyes a full-bodied character that begs to live, to be seen and heard.

Either way, giving birth to characters who tell our stories is a labor of love.

What is your experience in birthing characters? I’d love to hear your story!