P.L.O.T. - Writing Outside of the Box
Copyright December 2003 All contents are the work of the author unless otherwise credited

Introduction

It’s been said many times that there are no new stories, especially in the romance genre. I strongly disagree, because this is where creativity comes in. One of the best creative skills you can develop is the art of stealing ideas. Yep, you heard me right. I am a confessed thief and I encourage others to be also.

We all have a debt to the writers who have come before us. As the saying goes, we stand on the backs of giants in our efforts to get published. But there is a huge difference between copying or borrowing and outright stealing, and there is a definite art and ethical obligation to stealing. 

When you copy or borrow from another author’s work, you infringe upon the copyright. You plagiarize. If the idea is borrowed, if it still looks like the original, then it still belongs to the original author. However, if you steal from more than one source, it’s more like research and is the first step to making the ideas your own.

Here’s where the art and the ethics come in! If you take inspiration from another, have the integrity, courage and courtesy to develop the idea, to invest in it, to reinvent it, to make it more than it was. In the business world, it's called "best practices benchmarking." It's a formalized method of identifying successful tactics and strategies used by other companies and (and this is an important "and") modifying them to best suit your needs. 

To put it in the simplest of terms, Steal the best and leave the rest. Stealing the really great ideas, twisting them, bending and breaking and reassembling them, then applying your own style and experience and heart is called writing outside the box.

I’d been struggling to create a synopsis for my second book, YOURS IN BLACK LACE, and not getting very far. I was feeling overwhelmed and frustrated when it hit me. (And didn’t I feel stupid for not figuring it out sooner). I’m not a linear thinker. Trying to act like one was making me crazy. It just isn’t possible for me to sit down and create a plot from start to finish so I decided to stop trying.

While searching for some creativity tools, I came across something that changed my writing life. S.C.A.M.P.E.R. is a mnemonic or acronym for a business technique created by Bob Eberle and Alex Osborn. It’s a checklist of questions applied to an isolated challenge that generates alternative solutions. First you identify the problem, then ask the questions and see what new ideas you can come up with.

This article is the result of my trying to figure out how to use the S.C.A.M.P.E.R. method as a writer to first think up and outline a story and later to revise a manuscript. P.L.O.T. stands for Preparation, Lightning, Organization and Transfer. I’ll explain what S.C.A.M.P.E.R. means in the Organizing section.

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