Writing novels by design thinking

Marshmallow Challenge What motivated you throughout the challenge? When did you lose motivation? What might have helped you be more motivated from the beginning and throughout? How did you feel through each point of the process? Beginning, middle, end? What patterns of behavior did you notice in yourself and your peers during this activity? How can we apply the larger patterns of this activity to writing a novel? What does your approach to this challenge tell you about your approach to writing?

What the heck is design thinking? Design thinking is a process designers use to build things. It is a method for approaching problems with a solutions-oriented mindset. Typically the process is to Understand Define Ideate Prototype Test

Approaching our novel like designers Think like a designer! Develop a bias to action Embrace failure Be curious Reframe dysfunctional beliefs to be functional ones Collaborate radically

Understand/Empathize What is your writer’s view? What in your life has led to this very moment in this class with this assignment? How can you reflect on those choices in order to go forward in an authentic way? Read Joan Didion’s essay, “Why I Write” Now write your own…

Define Why are YOU writing in the first place? What do YOU hope to accomplish for yourself through this endeavor? Define those goals for yourself. Also, what do you envision your product to be? Is it a story? Self help? A memoir? Poetry? Or some version of all of the above? Create a How might I…? question. Doing so will frame this endeavor as a challenge for yourself, rather than a task to complete.

Before you define, wayfind… Navigation is like plugging a destination into your GPS and following directions to get there. Novel writing is not navigation. WAYFINDING is having a compass and a direction and using the clues to take the next step. Novel writing is wayfinding. SO…when defining this challenge for yourself, create a compass (strategies you will use to guide your path) and a direction (your goals and your particular challenge question). Complete the compass journey sheet to consider about this. Read “Writing Hell…”

Ideate! Another trick for ideation is group brainstorming Here’s how… 4. Name and frame the outcomes. For each member, categorize the ideas to help him/her narrow the focus. Consider the following for narrowing… Most exciting? The one we wish could be done if ______________ were no object The dark horse—probably won’t work, but if it did… Most likely to lead to a great book If we could ignore the laws/rules/boundaries of writing books… 5. Collect the data in the following statement… We had _____ amount of ideas, we grouped them into ______ amount of categories, and based on our challenge question, we selected _______ amount of killer ideas for ________ to prototype. Another trick for ideation is group brainstorming Here’s how… Frame a question. One member of the group will pose his/her challenge question Each member of the group should have pen and paper to record and map ideas as they come Begin brainstorming with the following rules in mind… Go for quantity, not quality. Defer judgment and do not censor ideas. Build off the ideas of others. Encourage wild ideas.

Ideate! Quantity is quality when it comes to ideation One trick is to mind map Write your challenge question or goal in the center of a page and free form (must be instinctive!) as many ideas that come to mind from that initial goal/challenge

Prototype…aka, write your novel already! Read “The First Rule of Novel Writing…” Discuss and create a class list of novel writing rules based on our exploration thus far Now, you have some prototype ideas. Pick one and…