Giving Up On Story Ideas
Don’t. Really don’t. Ever.My process is to jot a story idea when it comes, think about it for a few days, weeks, or months and all the while jot down more notes until I’m ready to develop it into a pitch, outline, and a few chapters which I can then sell.
(Moleskine® notebooks are my favorite for jotting down these notes; custom Moleskines are pricey but infinitely cooler! I’m still figuring out if I can afford these.)
If I just get one idea and other ideas don’t coalesce about it, I just add that lone idea to my idea file and come back to it later if/when inspiration strikes.
If, however, the one idea spawns other ideas about setting, characters, plot—it all usually builds into an entire story and I know I have a project worth pursuing.
Only two or three times have I gotten one of these self-generating ideas that then hits a blocking issue that I cannot work/think around and come up with a solution—no matter how hard I try. It is extraordinarily frustrating. It’s usually just one or two key things preventing me from having a blockbuster pitch/story/script.
So yesterday I was driving and NOT thinking about this one poor collection of (orphaned) ideas—and BOOM. All of a sudden for no apparent reason, the solution to the blocking issue materialized.
(I pulled over and quickly jotted it down).
Honestly I had written this idea off as hopeless. I have no understanding why my brain spat out the answer like some 4 KHz microprocessor that had been silently chugging away on this problem for the last 5 years. I wonder if I had sweated it out way back when for a few more weeks if I would have come up with this solution or if this many-year hiatus was a necessary part of the process.
Mysterious ways does the mind work.
posted by Eric Nylund at 8:12 PM
12 Comments:
"I have no understanding why my brain spat out the answer like some 4 KHz microprocessor that had been silently chugging away on this problem for the last 5 years."
This quote is so fantastic. I love it.
Story of my life...
See, I have a different sort of problem. I get ideas and stories and characters fully formed, often with the resolution already in mind. Then I wait for a little bit to let the idea gestate, and then I finally exorcise it on the page, then a little while into the work I just lose heart and can't get back to working on it. I just get discouraged and then (and this just happened) forget my resolution and can't come up with anything that works.
Sometimes I also start on something without any plan and it seems to be working fine, but then I get stuck and I try to outline to figure out something that works, but everything I outline seems to sound stupid in my own ears. Anyone else have that problem?
Dangerusdave – try writing down each idea as it comes on a post-it or 3x5 card and just toss them into a pile and not worry or think about them again until you’re ready. That way you can let all of it gestate AND not lose anything! RE: getting stuck part way into an outline or draft. This is a common problem. Happens to me, too. I just keep thinking and researching until I break through. As I said in this post, only 2 or 3 times that I haven’t been able to figure it all out...eventually.
That's so true. I've got ideas rattling around in here that will, unbidden, pop up again after years of ignoring them. Some tweak or radical alteration will have occurred, probably via a dark and terrible process that I am better off not remembering.
And like that, it'll be worth working on again. No more applying head to wall over a plot point or character or random story impasse.
So... Huzzah for the brain! It are good!
Also, the 4 KHz processor metaphor could not be better.
Dangerousdave: I get stuck on outlines regularly, but like Eric said, I just keep working on it till it clicks into place. Mine also always sound bad when I read them too... But everything I write sounds like garbage when I read it, especially that stuff from when I was 17. Not that that discourages me.
We did speak about ideas before, where they come from, and how they obnoxiously come at the most inappropriate times. Like when speeding on the freeway, in the shower, when you're too lazy to get up.
That's where half the willpower of writing comes from. The other half is writing on when you don't feel like doing it anymore. Though when you think about it, having the confidence and willpower to turn off the road and take the time to right that note down, jump out of the shower and stagger to find a pen with ink in it or whatever is more difficult than just sitting still and writing.
As awkward as it may seem, the best ideas usually pop in my mind when I'm ACTUALLY sitting in front of my computer writing.
Of course, these issues vary with different writers, but I always say that just laying in bed and dreaming about how your story might go on is useless. The best way to make something out of a story is by putting words on paper, and not dreaming or doing anything else. :P
Thanks for all the advice. I actually find it funny, Shini, because when I read outlines they sound like crap, but then later on when I've written something and I actually read it, once I've made all the changes that I want to make, I'm actually pretty happy with what I've written. Of course, what I've written could be bad and I just like my bad writing, but...
(I pulled over and quickly jotted it down.)
I have this image of you in a 1948 Pontiac Streamliner on the side of the road writing furiously in a Moleskine while Halo fans drive by going, "Isn't that the guy that wrote about future wars for a franchise centered around an interactive virtual reality? Tres retro."
Just like UNSC trooper, mine ideas open up better when my fingers are rapping at the keyboard already.
It might sound funny or unrealistic but I often have too many ideas such that I don't know what to work with and what to leave out.
I suffer the same problem. My brain is a warzone of ideas. I can't decide on what to work on because the ideas from stories I write keep interfering with each other.
Fantasy Story: Write me!
Scifi Story: No! Write me first!
...rather a similar problem
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