I view my mind as having a few “front burners,” where I do my active thinking, and lots of “back burners” — where most of my brainstorming takes place. When it comes to GMing (or any other creative endeavor), those back burners are my best friends.
When I’m in the shower, or driving to work, or dozing off, my mental gears are turning — and generating ideas for my game (or my next writing project, etc.) — without much active effort on my part.
Once the seed of an idea is planted, it almost seems to germinate on its own — and when you’re thinking about your game, throwing ideas on your mental back burners can be very handy.
There are a few key elements to making the best use of your brain’s “idle cycles” to generate ideas for your game:
- Provide plenty of grist for the mill.
- Write your idea seeds down.
- Always carry something to write on.
- Consider your timeframe.
Let’s look at each of these elements in a bit more detail.
Provide plenty of grist for the mill
You need to get the seeds of your ideas from somewhere, and while they’ll sometimes pop into your head with no clear source of inspiration, usually they come from something you’ve read, watched or played.
Just as playing in games — as opposed to only running them — is a good way to improve your GMing, it’s also a great way to get ideas. The same goes for reading and watching movies/TV — even stuff that has nothing to do with your campaign’s genre can give you ideas.
And they don’t have to be big, earth-shattering ideas: Sometimes the coolest things in your game will come out of tiny, unrelated snippets — “idealets” — from other sources. (Several of my contributions to Expeditious Retreat Press’s Seeds line were just that: idea seeds that wound up forming the basis of an entire campaign.)
Write your idea seeds down
Unless you have a flawless memory, you’re going to need to jot down your idea seeds.
Even if you have a very good memory, and can keep track of lots of different ideas at the same time, it can be very useful to write down what you first thought of when the idea came to mind. For me, this is the hardest part to recover later on — the spark.
It can be a few words, a sentence or two or a whole paragraph — but whatever it is, write it down right away.
Always carry something to write on
This one’s pretty obvious, but it’s worth mentioning: You can only scrawl notes about your ideas if you have something to scrawl them on.
There are lots of options available, from the humble pocket pad all the way up to your laptop or PDA. One nifty option is the PocketMod, mentioned previously here on TT.
Personally, I keep a pad (or a stack of index cards) next to my computer and a pocket pad in the car. If I’m going to be away from the car for awhile, I take a little leatherbound pad-folio with me. This way, I’m never far from something to write on.
This also makes it easier to follow up on the idea seed you originally jotted down, which is important when you’ve got something on a back burner for weeks or months at a time.
Consider your timeframe
Do you need to develop this idea for your next session? If so, consider putting it on the back burner for a little while — a day or two, tops — and then kicking it out for development on paper (an active brainstorming session).
I find that if I’m not careful, I’ll tuck away an idea that really needs to be worked on because “I’ll get to it later” — which, of course, doesn’t happen. This ties into Lead With the Cool Stuff, too: Don’t sit on your best ideas for too long.
Are you coming up with the theme of your next campaign, which won’t start for another six months? Then this process — using your mental back burners — is perfect for your situation.
What tricks and techniques do you use to develop your ideas, particularly the ones you’ve filed for future use (but don’t need right away)?
Martin,
Great post! I would actually consider this to be a character (personal, not PC) flaw of mine. I am constantly forgetting cool ideas that I could use, because I didn’t write it down. The only time that I ever jot anything down related to an adventure is when I’m working on the adventure itself (precious little time, at that). If I think of something cool that I can use, but not immediately, I append the adventure document (typically Word) with the idea in a table I created for this purpose.
I think I’ll try some of your suggestions, especially the one on carrying something with me to write on at all times.
Thanks for the suggestions.
I don’t think that’s a character flaw at all — more like a sign of a brain that’s too full of ideas to remember them all. 😉
I’m glad you found this post useful. 🙂
I keep a postit pad beside my bed because I get lots of ideas in the early morning as I’m starting to wake up (and sometimes before I go to bed if I go to bed with a problem on my mind).
The power of this time for me was most illustrated with a work problem. A co-worker and I had been debugging a problem and just weren’t making any progress. The next morning, I woke up and was visualizing the problem (I’m very visual, when I’m in this waking mode, I can actually almost visualize the computer code in front of me) when bang – the root cause presented itself. I quickly made a note. When I got to work, I immediately did some debugging to verify my idea and sure enough, that was the solution.
I have a few notes lying around from game ideas that I haven’t had a chance to use yet, or that I couldn’t bring to a useable state.
I have once or twice came up with something in the car and written it down on a handy sheet of paper (I learned to keep gas mileage records from my dad – though I rarely look at them – so I always have a pad of paper in the car [interesting aside, since I’ve kept those gas mileage logs, and I inheritted the mileage book from our old family van, I have gas price records back to the early 80s or so]).
Frank
(Frank) I keep a postit pad beside my bed because I get lots of ideas in the early morning as I’m starting to wake up (and sometimes before I go to bed if I go to bed with a problem on my mind).
There were a couple of years where I frequently got ideas right before bed, and would hop out of bed several times a night (before going to sleep) to jot them down.
In my case, I was adding to text files of design notes, so a pad next to the bed wouldn’t have helped — but it’s an excellent idea, and one I should have mentioned in my post.
The mental back burner is really our subconscious mind working on its own. As Martin says you can feed it with a seed of an idea and if you consciously or unconsciously tell it to make a full plot from the seed it will.
If you think your mind isn’t working fast enough don’t resign yourself just tell it to work better and it will. The more times you do it the sooner it will respond and with better accuracy. Theoretically and assuming your mind isn’t overloaded with other thoughts it could generate a full fledged plot from a seed given to it some minutes ago. It just takes practice. It’s like talking, you don’t exactly know how you’re able to talk but if you think of something words come to you and to your mouth automatically, what gives you the words is the invisible subconscious.
Ok, I’m sorry, I just love raja yoga.
I also do carry a pad, a small one the size of a wallet. I keep it near my wallet so when I go out I don’t forget it.
(Martin) There were a couple of years where I frequently got ideas right before bed, and would hop out of bed several times a night (before going to sleep) to jot them down.
This also happens to me, and when I’m doing yoga too (you bet, my mind is relaxed and it can perform the duties I gave to her earlier).
I make it a special point to divide my commute mental meandering between work and fun (i.e. usually gaming). Typically, I think about work the first 20 minutes when leaving and the last 20 minutes before arriving. Closer to home, I concentrate on the fun.
It’s amazing how many times that 20 minutes of hard thinking about work solidifies the game idea I did earlier in the drive. I pull out Notepad, write a couple of sentences, and email them to my home email. Often, the time to write the note and mail it is just enough time to do a bit of subconscious solving on the work issue.
Thinking intensely about something for awhile–then thinking intensely about something else for awhile after that–is a good way to prime the subconscious for that first something.
I had a first this year. I solved a nasty design issue in our software–while dreaming. The solution was elegant and perfect. I’ve often dreamed solutions to work and game situations, but never any good solutions until now. 🙂
Scott: You’re welcome! That’s why TT is here. 🙂
S1lence: Have you used the technique you outlined — “focused thinking” to produce a full-fledged idea from an idea seed in a very short time? Just curious, because it sounds interesting.
CJ: I don’t know if I could compartmentalize as well as it sounds like you can — that’s neat!
This was really good Martin. I find that I get most of my cool ideas this way – driving home or going off to sleep or zoning out. Now, I only wish I was as good as you are about keeping writing material around and putting everything down on paper.
The first part — keeping pen and paper around — is actually pretty easy, Pedro. If you want a one-item solution, try getting a little pad-folio — it’s like a fold-over leather cover for a pocket pad, with a loop for a pen and a couple of little pockets.
I got mine at Target for about $7, and it’s perfect. 🙂
The second part — getting in the habit of writing stuff down — can take a bit longer. Once you’ve remembered to do it for a couple of weeks, though, you should be in business.
My “Back burners” are always active, I’ve been using them for a long time now on everything that needs a piece of mind on.
I mostly get my gaming idea when I’m… gaming 🙂
Be it playing a computer game (CRPG or MMORPG), driving, or even coding software at work.
1st rule of always keep a writing tool close by has been implemented since my high-school DMing. Used to go on breaks with a notebook and my trusty pen, through my army service and of course at work.
It sometimes amaze me that I subconsciously think about ideas nearly everywhere. I come home from work, and suddenly an idea that’s been cooking in my head all day bursts out on the paper, flowing and gushing forward with a lot of details.
Excellent post, I think everyone should try to utilise their “back burners” to work and not on just gaming issues 😉
Great article! I have done a lot of research and work on brainstorming, and you hit on a number of excellent points.
I often use the “mental backburner” technique for working on new ideas. Often I have something kicking around in the back of my head for weeks before it goes to paper.
I could not agree more about reading, watching TV, movies, etc. It has been said that there are only a finite number of literary themes, but what makes each show/movie/play different is how the themes are told. By watching movies/TV/plays with an eye for not just what the plot is, but how the story is told, you will find great material and new techniques.
I once ran a Star Wars campaign during the Clone Wars, which was based on the themes of Gone With the Wind (my wife’s favorite movie). I sat and watched it with her one day, and loved the themes about how the movie opens with the South convinced that they cannot loose, to their realization that they will loose the war, to surviving the aftermath. It did not take long to work up a star system which had two planets based on the north and south and played out these themes.
As for writing things down, for years I have always carried some form of pen and paper with me to take notes. I have used every flavor of journal I could find. In the past few years I have become a big fan of the Moleskine journals, they are compact, very durable, and easy to write on. I always carry one dedicated to my RPG notes, and take notes when I have any downtime. I am known to bring the journal into meetings at work, and start taking notes, if the meeting gets too boring.
You really touched on an important theme with this article. A GM really should be working at some level, even if it is on the backburner, all the time. Your campaign evolves in complexity and grows in quality the more mental effort you put in it. Players come each session to contribute to the campaign for a few hours a session, but a GM should be evolving their game every day. The best way to do that is to keep a couple of pots on the backburner.
My brother in law is a big gamer, usually the judge, and has ideas in the shower so often that his wife bought him a whitepad and marker for use in the shower.
I guess she got tired of seeing him run soaking wet from the shower to the nearest pad of paper.
If this is you, take a trip to your local office supply store. It’s amazing what you can find for cheap.
This is fascinating stuff — I love seeing how everyone is responding to this idea, and the ways in which all of our thought processes differ. Color me surprised, though: I figured this post would be one of those quiet, under-the-radar ones. It’s nice to be wrong. 😉
And Rudolf, the story about your brother in law cracks me up — I can totally see doing that, if my “shower thinking” was more like my “dozing off thinking,” for example.