Novel Writing Spot World Tour: Transportation Hubs

In my last blog, I wrote about people watching at Fast Food Restaurants. This time, let’s dive into Transportation Hubs. These are great places to get ideas for storylines!

How to get the most out of the experience:

  1. Locate a spot to camp out and watch people. You can do this conspicuously or inconspicuously.
  2. Use your dossier notebook to create characters inspired by the people you see.
  3. Look at luggage/purses, shoes, and coats. These are all high ticket items that reflect economic status fairly accurately.
  4. Observe groups of travelers: singles, friends, couples, families, social/school groups, business travelers.
  5. Are they coming or going?
  6. People who are waiting for passengers are interesting, too. Who are they? A romantic rendezvous? A distant relative? A chauffeur? The spouse of a soldier returning? An illicit affair? A business associate? A boyfriend?
  7. Where are they going? Where have they been?
  8. Business or pleasure? Or family emergency?

Here’s a checklist of transportation hubs to observe people. Which one is your favorite?

  • International Airport
  • Train station
  • Subway stop
  • Taxi stand
  • Bus station
  • Bus stop
  • Cruise ship terminal/port
  • Small regional or private airport
  • Airport concourse or restaurant

Novel Writing Spot World Tour: Fast Food Restaurants

I like to get outside my regular living areas to find inspiration and get some real writing. One key to success is to appear as though you are working very hard on your stuff so people ignore you. Being a creepy weirdo could get you kicked out of a prime place.

Our first stop on the world tour is fast food restaurants. For my purposes, fast food restaurants are places of low commitment to food as a culinary experience with a focus on speed and expense. Patrons do not typically stop in for a leisurely luxury lunch here. They are usually in a hurry or have limited time and/or budget.

How to get the most out of the experience:

  1. Sit where you can observe employee activities (hostess station, drive-thru, counter help, etc.)
  2. Observe employees. Imagine what has brought them to work at a fast food restaurant. Who is in charge? Is there evidence of teamwork or is it a broken system?
  3. Identify individual quirks of the workers.
  4. If you are lucky enough to be able to observe the same set of people repeatedly, try making a notebook of fictional dossiers of the players. Include a rough sketch, habits, dreams, realities, physical descriptions, personality traits, etc.
  5. Observe patrons. Why are they there? Habit? Circumstance? Laziness? Guilty pleasure?

Here’s a checklist for the most popular fast food restaurants! Which one is your favorite for people watching?

Camp NaNoWriMo 2014

It’s that time, again! I’m buckling down and getting some real writing done this month with encouragement from the good folks at Camp NaNoWriMo. I’m using all of our writing tools: Lists for Writers, Story Spark, Story Dice, Name Dice, and Spooky Story Dice.

Story Spark

My goal is 50,000 words this April and a complete first draft of a novel. We’ll see how that works out. I’m using a handy web tool call Word Counter to analyze my writing. The writing analysis tool is just one reason to visit their site. You will find a lot of helpful writing advice on their blog, too!

Another thing I’m trying is camping out at new places to write instead of my dining room. Right now, I’m writing from a local gaming store. I’m a huge fan and frequent customer here and they are very generously allowing me to hang out and work at a table today. I think I might have to make this a regular thing. It’s very peaceful here. If there were a lot of gamers here right now (middle of the day) it would be a temptation, but right now, it’s just a great place to concentrate on what needs my attention.

Take the title of “Camp” very seriously and get out of your normal surroundings to boost your creativity!

Happy camping!

 

 

 

9 Packing Tips for Camp NaNoWriMo

Camp NaNoWriMo Participant 2013 blog header

Camp NaNoWriMo is a spin-off program of the very popular NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month.) In the single month sessions of April and July, you can get some encouragement to get significant chunks of writing done. Visit campnanowrimo.org to join! It’s free!

1. Set a reachable goal (with mini-goals.)

With Camp NaNoWriMo’s lower end goal only being 10,000 words in a month, this is an easily reachable goal for most people. If you have plenty of time on your hands and think you can turn yourself from a couch potato into a writing machine, maybe 50,000 words is within your reach. Once you set your word count goal, it’s very important to have some checkpoints along the way. If your goals is 10,000 words for the month, you need to write 2500 words each week, and around 500 words, five days each week. Print out a blank calendar and mount it somewhere you will see everyday. Cross off each day as you complete your word count, and make a note of your daily word counts.

2. Set up a regular writing spot.

Do you work best at your desk? Dining room table? Recliner? Window seat? Library? Park? If you have one productive spot, take some time to clean it up and refresh your supplies. If you need a variety of places, make a list of those now so you don’t have to think about it later.

3. Assemble resources.

Some writers need paper, pens, dictionaries, thesaurus, etc. Others need a laptop and an iPad or phone with apps. I’ve been in both camps and can do it either way. I highly recommend that if you work on a laptop, that you turn off your internet connection during your scheduled writing time. This will increase your productivity greatly!

4. Schedule time to write.

Gaining skill and mastery requires regular practice just like playing the piano or fencing. When is your brain firing on all cylinders? Early morning? Late night? Find a time and carve it out on your calendar. Don’t skip it. Just do it. Even if you write nonsense for an hour, you might write one great sentence that will help you accomplish your goal tomorrow. Legendary composer Aaron Copland said that he found the greatest time of inspiration to compose between the hours of 8am-4am, Monday through Friday. Get busy and just do it!

5. Get to know your characters.

Who are these people you are writing about? Spend some time making character profiles, family trees, relationship flow charts, and finding reference photos. The more fully you envision your characters, the more easily dialogue will form between them. If you write a brief backstory for each character, that will help you find their motivations for the way they behave with your other characters.

6. Do your research.

Researching setting improves the process by providing a great deal of credible information to draw from. Is your novel set in 18th century France? You might want to study! Is your main character a neurosurgeon? Read up on it! Are your characters from a modern-day Chicago suburb? Get on Google and look at the satellite and street views of some Chicago suburbs! Print out some houses for your characters to live in. Draw a map. Lay out a house design so your action makes sense.

7. Tell no one, someone, or everyone.

I go back and forth on this one. I either tell everyone I know that I’m working on something, or no one, and do it secretly. This is up to you, but make a decision and stick to it. If you decide to keep it to yourself, keep it! This is most difficult to do if you are married or otherwise committed to a significant other (or have a parent living with you.) You can choose to tell that one person only. That seems to be a good choice, but only if that person is supportive and doesn’t cast judgment on you.

8. Determine your reward.

What are you going to do when you complete your goal? Go out to dinner? Buy new shoes? Go sailing? Whatever it is, find a picture of it, put it in a cheap frame, and keep it nearby during camp. When your internal motivation hits a wall, look at your reward for some external motivation.

9. Assemble a writer’s block first aid kit.

I have two kits: physical and virtual. My physical kit contains a dictionary, a thesaurus, story dice, pipe cleaners, unusual pens and pencils, assorted paper, number dice, lists I’ve kept over the years, a couple of current magazines, creativity card deck, and a stress ball. My virtual kit contains: iPad, iPhone. I use brainstorming apps on my iPhone and use my iPad as a sketchpad, notepad, and timer. Thinkamingo has a toolbox full of apps that help me with my brainstorming process, including: Lists for Writers, Story Dice, Name Dice, and Story Spark. Other apps I use for organizing my writing, sketchbooks, and productivity are A Novel Idea, Penultimate, Simple Pomodoro Timer, and Dropbox.

Ann Adair is the President and Co-founder of Thinkamingo Inc and makes mobile apps with her family. She has participated in NaNoWriMo for years and never crossed the finish line. Following her own advice, Ann plans to write at least 10,000 words in April’s Camp NaNoWriMo.

 

 

Thinkamingo + Maker Faire = Fun!

tbmmf1

I wanted to share with you a little bit about something different we did this past weekend. We had a booth at the Tampa Bay Mini Maker Faire.

We have several interests that intersect at an event like this: robotics, makerspace, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and general creativity.

We did not do this to sell anything. In fact, we set Story Dice to go free all day Saturday resulting in over 12,000 downloads and Top 10 rankings in Education for both iPhone and iPad, and a Top 200 ranking in OVERALL iPad Apps. After all that, we still had a great sales day. We did this to get practice talking about what we do, explaining our apps, interacting with a variety of people, and watch people interact with our apps.

Our activities:

Story Dice Flash FictionActivity #1 – Roll the Story Dice using one of our devices, and create a Flash Fiction on a postcard to take with you. This engaged guests to actually play with the app on a device (iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire), write a short fiction, and have a souvenir that had our company name and logo on it.

 

Group Fiction ProjectActivity #2 – Group Fiction Project called Mini Maker Faire-y Tale. Participants were invited to add a sentence or illustration to an ongoing story throughout the day. This was extremely popular and attracted a lot of attention. Kids and adults were excited about it all day.

 

Group Fiction

This was the first of four completed Group Fiction projects throughout the day. It was a smashing success and I will likely do this at future events.

Ann gives a talk about creativity and brainstorming

 

 

 

Activity #3 – Spark Your Creativity workshop. I gave an informal talk about brainstorming and different ways to get unstuck. I shared a lot of my own secrets and demonstrated our newest app Sketch Spark at the end of the talk.

 

Set up

Specific things we had at the booth: pipe cleaners (we made flamingos with them!), baskets of pens/pencils/markers, postcards for the writing activity, iPad, iPhone, Windows Phone, 2 Kindle Fires, sign stand with a listing of all of our apps and platforms, easel with a company sign, email signup sheet for newsletter, hand sanitizer, media feature book containing articles/reviews/coverage, roll of paper for group fiction project, marine battery in a rolling backpack for recharging devices throughout the day, business cards with holders, lanyards and nametags, flamingo necklace, camera, QR code stickers for Story Dice, and sparkling personalities! We also packed our lunch/snacks/drinks.

story dice
Results: We gained newsletter subscribers. We spread goodwill in our maker community. We acquired photos of us actually doing things with other people. I am ready and willing to give another talk/workshop about Creativity and Brainstorming. We finally got business cards, a large sign and easel for future talks, and started a physical media feature book.

We had a ton of fun and learned a lot. If you have an opportunity to do something like this, go for it!

This post would be incomplete without a shout out to Mark Frauenfelder, editor-in-chief of Make magazine, and the founder of the popular Boing Boing blog. He and his daughter, Jane, featured Story Dice on NPR and Boing Boing because they love playing with it!

November is National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo

What the heck is NaNoWriMo? Well, it’s a crazy good time! National Novel Writing Month is an event held during the 30 days of November where the goal is to write 50,000 words. Yep. That’s a lot of words. All in November.

The Young Writers Program is an educational extension of NaNoWriMo to encourage writers of all ages to write for fun! The goal for students is 1,000-10,000 words. Students of all ages can accomplish 1,000 words in a month. That’s a mere 34 words each day. One bonus of the YWP is that each student that successfully reaches his/her goal receives five (5) free paperback copies of their book! Totally awesome!

Thinkamingo’s first and most popular app, Lists for Writers, was born out of our own personal list of lists that we’d each been keeping for writing projects. This week, it is the first app listed in Cult of Mac’s National Novel Writing Month App Superguide!

It’s safe to say that Lists for Writers is a “must have” app. With over 10,000 users, and more downloads every day, we know that people love it!

Some of our reviews from the App Store:

  • “Five stars isn’t enough! A fantastic app for writers. Whether it be writer’s block or character development, this app will help you with all your writing needs. The rhyming dictionary and plot guides are particularly helpful. One of my favorite apps.” from Appvocado
  • “I am totally in-love with this app.” from Dayana32738
  • “I work off lists, so this is a godsend for me.” from Lulunw

With 69 ratings and 39 reviews in the App Store, Lists for Writers is a solid 4.5 star app with many more reviews like the ones quoted here.

Spooky Story Dice

Spice up your campfire tales! Bewitch your audience with creepy creativity! Roll the dice to get your creative juices flowing! Make up stories with your kids at the dinner table!

9 out of 10 zombies prefer Spooky Story Dice over  brains!

Great for Halloween storytelling and seasonal writing prompts!

Features:

  • Universal App!
  • High-resolution graphics supporting Retina Display
  • Choose number of dice to roll, 1-3.
  • Realistic dice sounds and still images.
  • 74 pictograms in dictionary; 23 are unique to this Spooky Edition!
  • No reading necessary.
  • Optional game instructions included in app.

Available on the iTunes App Store

Our latest app: Name Dice

Name DiceWe are happy to announce our latest release: Name Dice!

This free iOS app makes character naming easy by providing nearly a million unique names at your fingertips!

How does Name Dice work?

Name Dice randomly generates a first and last name pair from lists of hundreds of names.

Basically, Name Dice makes names. It does NOT make you more creative, write your story for you, make sandwiches, refill your glass, clean your room, or knit you a sweater.

If you are stuck on getting a story idea, or ideas for a main character, Name Dice can help you. Maybe you’re a spy and you need a new identity. Maybe you and your friend want to pretend to be someone else when you go out to lunch. Maybe you are having a sleepover and you and your friends are going to pretend to be celebrities and you need help coming up with a good name. Maybe you are a writing a novel about your mom and you want to publish it under another name so she doesn’t find out about it.

Whatever the reason, Name Dice can give you some ideas for just the right name!

Give it a try! It’s free!


True Confession of a Distracted Writer

“One reason I love this app is that it just feeds my imagination! I roll the dice, see the name, and my mind is immediately buzzing with activity creating a life story for the name. If I don’t like the name for whatever reason, I just roll again! Voila!”


How do I save my favorite name?

The easiest way is to take a screenshot by holding down the home button and the power button simultaneously. It’s a good idea to practice this before you need to use it. After you take the screenshot, you can find the photo in your iOS device’s Camera Roll. You can share the photo on Facebook or your blog.

We hope you enjoy this fun little free app! We’d love to connect with you on facebook and twitter and hear stories about your alter egos!

http://www.facebook.com/thinkamingo

http://www.twitter.com/thinkamingo

 

 

Lists for Writers 1.1 is Now Available

Our first update of Lists for Writers is now available in both the iTunes App Store and the Amazon Appstore for Android. The update adds some additional lists that users have suggested:

  • Emotions
  • Land forms – geographic features
  • People – relationships
  • Dialog verbs
  • World cities

The update also now supports iOS version 4.0 or higher. Previously only iOS version 4.3 or higher was supported but we heard from several iPhone owners that are still on 4.2 or 4.1.

Thank you for your feedback and we’re happy to hear any more suggestions from users!

Available on the iTunes App StoreAvailable at Amazon Appstore for AndroidAndroid App on Google Play