Rule I – Ideas shouldn’t be intimidating

Linda’s Rules of Writing

An idea is the launching point of the story, but it’s only the start.

We’re onto the letter I in Linda’s Rules of Writing of A to Z Challenge, with Ideas shouldn’t be Intimidating.

When I was new to thinking about writing professionally, ideas and inspiration were intimidating to me.  It felt like the entire success of the book was bearing down on the weight of this idea, and if the idea wasn’t right, the book would crash and burn.

Maybe that’s why people say, “I’ve got this great idea.  You write it and I’ll give you 50-50.”

Over time, I’ve learned that an idea really is just the starting point, or launch point for the story.  The idea doesn’t mean much unless there’s a good writer to execute it.

My ideas now pretty much come from everywhere, and I think a story is made up of not one — but hundreds.  Some of the ideas emerge of the story, and others are random drive by ideas.  I might be reading a newspaper article and something catches my eye.  Even a placard at a museum can create a possibility that I might use.

So, now I get to ask where do you get your ideas from?

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Caption: A to Z Challenge Logo

 

Tracking Ideas and Inspirations for the Chaos Writer

I’m playing catch up this week — I was at Capclave, a sci fi con in Maryland this weekend.  Now I get all the stuff I didn’t do over the weekend.  I swear, I think Saturday and Sunday is when I run all my errands.  I’ll write a post about Capclave later on.  Meanwhile, back at the Capitol …

One of my writing goals for the quarter is structure.  Not structure like story structure, but outside structure, like organizing papers.  I grew up in a very disorganized house where things were stacked and we only cleaned up when we lost something.  The army was the opposite of that, but their organization never made much sense to me, so when I got out, it was like I exploded back in the other direction again.

But my writing is chaos, but when I let it spread to outside mundane things, it creates disorganization and more chaos that ultimately makes more work for me — and makes it harder to write.  So my goal is focused on finding things that work for me.

The first of these structure things is what to do with ideas.  When I started writing, I kept everything in a pocket notebook that I could carry around me.  Sometimes they ended up on scraps of paper.  Soon they began to breed …

Then they got lost.

Eventually, I turned the notebooks up and was amazed at how many notebooks I had with only a handful of ideas that I had never used stored inside.  Some were more than 20 years old!  So I evolved out of not recording anything because I figured I’d remember it if it was a good idea.

But it’s left me scrambling sometimes when it comes to short story ideas.

So right now, I’m experimenting with using a three-ring binder.  One idea per page, and date it to give it an expiration.  If I’m inspired by a newspaper article, I write the inspiration, not save the whole article.  We’ll see how this works out.

How do you store/track your ideas?

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Linda Adams, Soldier Storyteller

WRITING STUFF

Starting November 5, I will doing a month-long session on Forward Motion on “Basic Training of Military Culture.”  The lesson plan for the course is posted here.

Check out my article Balancing Writing and Blogging on Vision: A Resource for Writers.  It deals with the pesky issue of time management so that blogging doesn’t interfere with writing.

And for a little Halloween fun, a very short story about the House of Green Cats on IO9.

VISIT

Natalie Markey talks about her first day in Saudi Arabia as a non-Saudi Arabian.  I remember when I saw my first Saudi Arabian women.  They reacted as if I were a strange alien creature.

 

The Birth of an Idea

Sometimes it doesn’t take much to exercise the creative muscles and get an idea.  The other day, I had walked down to a local restaurant, which was on the corner of a busy intersection.  As I waited for the light to change, I heard sirens scream.  DC drivers are not good about getting out of the way when they hear the sirens.  Some drivers will even make a dash through the intersection because of the DC sense of “me first.”  So I moved away from the curb.  Then suddenly, everyone was moving, trying to get out of the way.  They were like a bunch of ants that you’ve accidentally stepped on, scattering in all directions.  One driver turned towards the corner, towards me — I thought he was going to come up on the sidewalk.  There’s nothing like having a moving car pointed at you.

And then, my muse kicked in, imagining that the fire truck got into an accident in the intersection, with me as a witness.  What would I do?  And then I started playing out a scenario in my head.  I have no idea if it would be what I would really do — the reality of how we react in disaster versus what we imagine are two different things.

Writer always hate being asked where they get their ideas from, because it’s hard to define.  We can have a simple thing like the above — where nothing happened — and we start brainstorming out things that could happen.  The ‘What if.’  Like what if, as the fire truck reached the intersection, an earthquake hit?  What if a car blew up in the intersection?  Sorry, I can’t help myself. I like action.  Give me a explosion over a romance, and I’ll be a happy reader.

Or the idea could come from an experience that’s been gnawing at us for a long time.  Writing gives us the power to voice those experiences in the form of the story.  Ray Bradbury talked about having a childhood experience, and it would suddenly manifest as an idea for a story many years later.  Those are the kinds of ideas that are like wine — they have to sit and age for a while, to give us perspective and distance before they can become good stories.

The ideas, though, are the easy part.  Turning them into story — that’s hard.

 

13 Creative Methods to Come up With Story Ideas

Do you know what the worst part of coming up with ideas is?  It’s not getting the idea to start the story, though that looks hard.  It’s keeping the ideas flowing because a story is made up of many ideas.  So if you want to know “Where do you get your ideas from?” read more on Unleaded Fuel for Writers.