Jerry, thanks for these observations.

Jerry, thanks for these observations. I wonder what could emerge if across all areas of study, we encouraged students to engage in a brainstorming process? For one or two weeks, nothing but free-wheeling exercises of what if and how about. I do this in all the writing classes I teach tied to specific character development prompts and exercises, and I must tell you, it is hugely beneficial. Engage their creativity. Connect with characters. Widen story possibilities. At the end, I have them go through and create top sheets of bullet points, narrative elements they select from their brainstorming list which they feel will have relevance for the story-crafting process going forward. They move from explore mode to wrangle mode, eventually to construct mode.

But the brainstorming is key, I find.