Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

50%
+0 −0
Q&A How specific should I get when brainstorming with what-if exercise?

Not a direct answer to "how specific", but a technique you might find useful not to get bogged down in details: instead of writing a list, make it a tree. In your example, "writer", "actor", "prog...

posted 5y ago by Galastel‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-12T21:57:37Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43620
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T11:22:33Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/43620
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T11:22:33Z (almost 5 years ago)
Not a direct answer to "how specific", but a technique you might find useful not to get bogged down in details: **instead of writing a list, make it a tree**.

In your example, "writer", "actor", "programmer" are all children of "talent". "Talent", on the other hand, is the only child node of "doesn't want to work with his father". Having arranged your ideas like this, you immediately, visually, see where you are going after a multitude of sub-sub-sub-branches, and where you haven't explored other alternatives at all.

When I'm unsure how my story should develop, I find it useful to construct such a tree with about 3 children per node, and I usually make it about 3-deep. That said, my 3-deep wouldn't be just variations on a theme (writer, actor, programmer), but directions the story could go - choices a character makes, or something that happens to the character. Then the next step would be possible consequences, etc. I'd be looking for significantly different options, so I could weigh them against each other.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2019-03-16T10:33:11Z (over 5 years ago)
Original score: 3