Currently reading A Writer’s Coach: The Complete Guide to Writing Strategies That Work by Jack Hart. It’s more focused on journalism and feature writing … but why shouldn’t one learn from our brethren who are paid to put out writing at regular deadlines? And have systems for it, no less.
Hart quotes Bill Blundell, a former writing coach from the Wall Street Journal on four strategies for developing ideas on a project:
- Extrapolation: will this phenomenon produce other effects? eg. A spike in gas prices might boost sale of bikes.
- Synthesis: can you unify seemingly unrelated trends into a new pattern?
- Localization: how does a development from a greater context have local consequences? eg. Global trend to local response.
- Projection: how does a central development play out in consequences? This can have two types, direct impacts, and counter-moves.
But this piqued my interest because it seems to me this could work in terms of working through a central idea in speculative fiction, or a quick way to sketch out worldbuilding consequences.