Story Sparks: Finding Your Best Story Ideas & Turning Them into Compelling Fiction

Story Sparks:  Finding Your Best Story Ideas & Turning Them into Compelling Fiction
Author(s)
Age Range
13+
Release Date
August 15, 2017
ISBN
978-1608685097
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Find rock-solid story ideas before you start writing

Anyone who has been hamster-wheeling a story idea for years or has hundreds of pages exploring various approaches on their hard drive knows that there must be a better way. There is. Young adult novelist Denise Jaden shows exactly how to create the captivating stories that prevent dispiriting wasted time. Busting the “visitation from the muses” myth, she shows that inspiration is a skill writers can learn by understanding how story ideas work (or don’t), fertilizing the ground for fresh and sound ideas, and moving swiftly through stuck points. Practical and inspiring, Jaden’s approach celebrates the imaginative sparks that make innovations of all kinds possible while pinpointing the precise tools writers need to fan their unique creative flames.

Find rock-solid story ideas before you start writing

Anyone who has been hamster-wheeling a story idea for years or has hundreds of pages exploring various approaches on their hard drive knows that there must be a better way. There is. Young adult novelist Denise Jaden shows exactly how to create the captivating stories that prevent dispiriting wasted time. Busting the “visitation from the muses” myth, she shows that inspiration is a skill writers can learn by understanding how story ideas work (or don’t), fertilizing the ground for fresh and sound ideas, and moving swiftly through stuck points. Practical and inspiring, Jaden’s approach celebrates the imaginative sparks that make innovations of all kinds possible while pinpointing the precise tools writers need to fan their unique creative flames.

Editor reviews

2 reviews
Story Sparks
(Updated: September 17, 2017)
Overall rating
 
4.0
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This is an easy to read reference book on how to take creative ideas and thoughts and turn them into writing. Perfect for those who want to channel their ideas before writing that book. Jaden uses the acronym S.P.A.R.K., for explaining the way story ideas work and how they resonate with us.

Here's how it breaks down: S.P.A.R.K stands for seek, passion, allies, resonances, and kinetic energy. The first chapter goes over each of these and then at the end gives suggestions on how to put these into everyday practice. **I highlighted a lot of these suggestions as I found them helpful for my own writing!

I loved the generating sparks chapter. Jaden shares the fill-in-the-blank longline which is basically a one to two-sentence description of someone's novel. She has a frame for authors to use for their novels. I found this very helpful and easy to use.

There's also a chapter on troubleshooting problems. Jaden breaks down some things that might stand in the way of writing and gives practice suggestions on how to break through them.

In the appendix there are lists of names and story ideas to help spark creativity.

Helpful resource with lots of practice tips and techniques to help writers with creativity. An easy to read resource that is perfect for writers who need that extra push with getting out story ideas. Highly recommend for high school classes that do NaNoWrimo to help with brainstorming story ideas before writing that novel!
Good Points
1. Great ideas on how to use 'ideas' and thoughts into your writing
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