I lead a local Writing Group called the Writing Warriors.
This is a wonderfully collaborative group of amazing people looking to connect
with outer writers and hone their creative process.
In our first meeting,
we discussed the foundation for any story, poem, a piece of art, music, blog post, new business, new invention – just about
anything. The Kernel Idea!
This is the moment your creative brain latches on and the
hamster wheel starts spinning. There is a rush of excitement and even giddiness
at the endless possibilities. Many people take the idea and run with it rushing
to find a piece of paper and start writing.
Here’s the challenge – 25,000 words later many people forget
what it was that got them excited in the first place. They can no longer see the
forest through the trees and the excitement fades away. They have lost their kernel idea.
The word idea can
mean lots of things to lots of people. For a writer,
the idea is what the story is about. This is different than the Kernel Idea.
The Kernel Idea can be anything, a quote, a smile, an interaction, a piece of
dialog, a scene in a movie, the melody of a piece of music, a memory – you get
the point.
When you look at your current WIP, ask yourself – What was
my kernel idea? What was it that sparked my adrenaline-fueled decision that I
could write 100,000 words about this?
For me, the kernel idea for my current WIP Finders came from
the movie The Conjuring. Specifically, the real-life love story of Ed and
Lorraine Warren, the first publicized ghost hunters. That developed into the flurry
of questions and thoughts about how would two people like this meet and go on
to be the first well-known paranormal experts? This is where I started
developing the story, based on my kernel idea.
This is the anchor for not my story but my inspiration. My
jolt of magic that made me sit up and say – oh
yeah that is good!
Once you have identified your Kernel Idea the next step is
to take the story and filter it down to two sentences. Your logline. These two
are directly connected as they keep you focused. Every scene, theme, action, and climax should reflect your logline and your
original inspiration.
I am not saying this is going to be easy because it’s not. It
is a challenge for any creative person, experienced or novice) to take all that
story and swill it down, but well worth it! The development of the logline is
essential to keeping your creative mind focused and centered.
A great resource for examples of amazing, and sometimes, not
so amazing, loglines are movies! Except in movies,
they are called taglines. You usually see them on the movie poster. During our group, we played a little game where I would
read the logline of a well-known movie and the group would guess the movie. It
was a great laugh and a great way to demonstrate the impact two or three
sentences can have when summing up your work.
As an exercise, I challenge you to identify the kernel idea
for your current project or recent publication and also attempted to write out
the logline. Tweet me what you come up with @AmyJRomine or post it to the
#WritersCommunity hashtag on Twitter.
Here is a couple a
resource to get your brain working on your logline.
Also, MUST recommend The Novel Writers Toolkit by the Astounding Bob Mayer who first introduced me to the Kernel Idea in his book
I love to hear your feedback! Leave a comment and let me
know what you think and if the post was helpful! If you want more information, or
assistance shoot me an email at writesromine@gmail.com
or ping me on Twitter @AmyJRomine.
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