I think it's the result of several things. First, we don't usually have as much of an emotional investment in other people's writing and business projects, so we don't have fears, biases, and "favorites." Furthermore, the success or failure of those projects seldom has a direct effect on us and our lives--other than having to listen to the other person share the details of their success or failure. Second, the lack of emotional investment allows us to be truly objective: we're viewing the other person's project from outside the box, their box, and have an entirely different perspective. And third, if we trust the person/people with whom we're brainstorming, we're more relaxed during a session than we are when we're sitting alone in a room, banging our heads against the wall, hoping a good idea will get knocked into our thick skulls.
During my last brainstorming session with this buddy, she came up with the sub-title for my series of business books, as well as a tagline for what I do. How's that for benefitting from brainstorming?
What are YOUR thoughts about brainstorming?
I find brainstorming commercial projects is exactly as you describe it, Linda. With fiction, though, or story telling generally, the benefit is that the suggestions of others take you in directions you'd never have gone yourself so you're left with several story layers worth following, all of which can contribute to the richness of the central one.
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