Taming Ideas

I’ve been to a lot of writing conventions and read a number of books on writing. One question that always seems to come up eventually is – Where do you get your ideas?

And usually the answer is a bit sarcastic. Writers claim to get their ideas from inside cereal boxes or from a certain post office box in Schenectady. The reason for the sarcasm is because it’s the wrong question. (And, I suspect, because there isn’t an answer. Does anyone really know how our minds work?)

The right question, they’ll happily tell you, is what do you do with your ideas? The work comes in taking an idea and turning it into a story.

I have lots of ideas. Everyone does. I may have ideas about water-breathing people helping clean up a flooded city, or two clever librarians meeting and falling in love, or a quaint little post-apocalyptic coffee shop – but what do I need to sell any of these ideas to a reader?

I need these ideas, and the world’s they suggest, to to be explored by characters. Good characters with motivations and conflicts. And there should probably be a plot or two involving the characters dealing with the conflicts.

Think of a fictional character that you like. Captain Kirk, Indiana Jones, Sam Seaborn, Superman, George Smiley, Gregory House, Captain Ahab, King Lear, The Little Mermaid, Gilgamesh, Silver John, Doc Savage, anybody. You could easily write an interesting paragraph, maybe two, describing the qualities of your chosen character.

But I doubt anyone who read that paragraph would ask for more. We remember these heroes because of their stories. So I guess the real question is: How do you craft your stories?

And that, at least, we can discuss sensibly.