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Serial Sequential Certainty

Whenever I write something, I will get ideas for something else during the writing process. Just recently, during my current WIP first draft (a short-ish story. I have two on the go – one in first draft mode, one in editing mode), I generated an idea for a sequel of sorts, or a novel based around the world. It was done simply by thinking about my main character’s background. I decided he was part of a specific class of people. What would happen if these lone warriors, each with their own set of values and ways of getting things done, were forced to unite to defeat a common foe. The forming of this coalition and the internal conflicts would make an interesting novel.

Suddenly my short story is the background to a wider conflict. This gave my story more depth, and made the world more viable as the setting for a longer piece.

This is not the first time it has happened either. My other WIP, currently in editing mode (still. STILL!) gave rise to a sequel short story idea. This again came when fleshing out my main character’s backstory. I decided a story about one of the men in his past might be interesting to explore – et voila! A story is born!

The Writer’s Mindset

But it’s not just creeping sequelitis that comes from regular writing. I really believe that getting your brain into that practiced writing state can help generate new ideas when you’re away from the page. Writing stays with you, even when you’re not typing or scribbling. And the more you do it the more that state of mind infects the rest of your daily life. I am sure I have more ideas when I’m writing than in my periods when I’m slacking off.

Back to my teenage self. I thought about writing a lot. Hell, I even did some. I can’t say I did more writing then than I did now, but when I did it was not a case of trying to form a routine and get into the process. When I felt inspiration strike me, I wrote. It was part of my psyche, I guess; I had decided I was A Creative, sprung from the womb with an innate talent. I don’t believe in such things anymore. Instead I believe that if I’d put more work in then, my well of ideas would not have run dry. If I’d known what was involved to really become a writer, I would not have got out of practice.

Again this validates my view that writing is a kind of training, not just in refining your craft, but in mindset. That is, after all, the most important training you can give yourself – with the right mindset a person can achieve most things.

Do you ever run dry on ideas? What do you do to get yourself out of the rut, or is the answer always to write?

This is my new notebook. Only mine has funky embossed letters. Because I am special, and my wifey loves me.

First, thanks to all who gave comments, both on the site and elsewhere on the interwebonetosphere. It’s always great to get feedback from everyone!

I’ve decided this new journal will be used to note story ideas – with some strict rules. When I get an idea, I just want to get it down. I can elaborate on it later when it’s not distracting me from my current project. So, it will strictly be one story idea per page – just the date, descriptive title, and a brief synopsis of the idea. That way when I next need an idea for a story, I know exactly where to go!

This satisfies the criteria laid down in my last post:

• Notes do not need to be copied up
• Entries are brief
• The journal has a specific purpose
• It prevents simple story ideas from being lost amongst my other notes on my iPod Touch/computer, which might well be a problem in the future

And that’s that. I shall now write in my first entry, and pop the book in my bag.

That’s right, because I’ve been going through my old files again.  Mainly this was to make me feel like I was actually doing something writerly, to get myself some motivation.  And I found another of my old projects.  And started reading through it. 

I know that last time I advised against this, but there was something about this project that just seemed… well, like its time had come.  There are I think, several factors involved with this project that didn’t make me want to delete it/never write again/throw myself off a building.

Image courtesy of Sparticus at Flickr

Collaboration

 
This is I think the first factor.  This project was originally a kind of collaboration.  Collaborating on a piece does have its pros and cons, Matt has also covered this previously.  While different writing styles can clash and ideas can lead to places that you might not want to go, it does give you some kind of motivation to get that next section done. 

This project I discovered was something like that.  At the time, it was something I was writing with, or rather on behalf of, a friend of mine, who isn’t a writer.  He had some ideas for a film, and I had some similar ideas and somehow we fleshed them out and I got them down on paper.  I do run my ideas by him occasionally, since he epitomizes the general demographic of moviegoers. 

So I guess part of it was at the time, I didn’t really take the project too seriously.  It was something fun that I didn’t have to worry too much about, just something to keep the motor running. 

Finding Its Time and Place

 
Sometimes you write something and it’s ahead of its time.  My last “new” project was like this.  I had the character mapped out but didn’t have the story for him, so I put him back in the ideas bank to gestate.  And sometimes ideas can be like this.  That’s why you should keep all your notes and older projects.  Granted, a lot of them will end up in the trash, as I said in my last post on this subject, as they may never find their time.  But sometimes a project will just click into place, it’s right for the mindset that you have at that time. 

And that’s what happened here.  I’d been to see The Last Airbender, and yes, it was truly appalling.  From a production standpoint.  The script was dire, truly amateurish, and there was no pacing, no momentum and it was very weakly structured.  It had just so happened that this was the same weekend when I’d been looking at this file and it prompted me to try and rework it. 

Slice and Dice

Yup.  The thing about old ideas is that there is a lot of stuff in there that will not be suitable.  Rather than try and work it in, just cut it.  I had two major plot lines and they were far too big for one story (yeah, because that never happens with my writing!)  And far from being reluctant to cut the crap, I actually felt liberated.  I didn’t have to have all this extra stuff in there.  This whole subplot about these other characters wasn’t needed.  So off it went.  This can be very useful, because developing this skill, this ability, to painlessly cut stuff that weighs a project down is essential. 

Keep a hold of that stuff though, put it in the ideas bank, because who knows, a few years down the line, it might fit in somewhere else. 

In Conclusion

 
I’m not saying this project is going to go anywhere.  I cant really decide on a format for it, but I’m sketching out the whole story outline, which is something I’ve never really done before (it’s the essential opposite of winging it, like I normally do), which I guess is another valuable skill to learn.  Winging it can be more exciting, not knowing exactly where a project is going, but unless you’re very good at it (I like to think that I am) then you can save yourself a lot of time by mapping out the story.  It’s fun, because this is the first project that I’ve written that I actually know definitively where it ends, and what happens there, and even how I get there. 

Just going to have to run it by my demographic to see how he likes it…

OK, well now that that advice has been readily ignored, allow me to explain.

I was idly going through my files recently, and made the horrific mistake of looking at some old projects. And when I say this, I don’t mean some half written notes or random ideas, I mean I was looking at two projects which I have dedicated a hell of a lot of time to. Not just in terms of physically writing, but also into ‘thought time’, creating ideas, plotting out storylines, dialogue, character depth and so on. One was an idea about a TV show I had, and the other was another book.

Lets leave the TV show for now, and focus more on the book, because this is something I dedicated more time to. Now the idea I had concerned a lot of smaller stories, taken from a particular person’s point of view, that all interwove and overlapped. Due to the nature of the backstory I’d built up, I could – in theory – write this project for the rest of my life.

Unfortunately, I revisited it, didn’t I?

And I was appalled. This writing was terrible. Simply terrible. The characters were two dimensional (hell, not even that), the storyline had no cohesion, the dialogue was risible and then I got to the bit I’d almost forgotten about. The horrifically written lesbian sex scene. Jeez, am I not over that already? I actually found myself ashamed to have written this.

But before this turns into a major moaning session, lets turn to how this can help you write. OK, so revisiting old work can be demoralizing. But it can also be very helpful.  This is what I found when I read this piece.  I think more than anything it was just how clumsy it was. Obviously, since it had a lesbian sex scene in it. Any writing that falls back on that is doomed.

But after my initial shock, and despair, and strong desire to never write anything ever again, I looked at the situation pragmatically. ‘OK, so this writing sucks. How do we make it better?’

It can be a very useful writing exercise. Keeping a few of those old projects floating around just to remind you of how much your writing has progressed. Because my main project – my book – has undergone the same kind of evolution. I have, in the past, looked at sections of that and thought how bad they were, but I pushed through and improved them. This is what you can do with the older, less developed work.  I should probably also add that this ‘older work’ isn’t from when I was a teenager either, but from only four years ago. That’s right, this is probably my newest idea, and yet it doesn’t stand up.

But there I am back to the moaning again. How to use this? It’s all in the editing. A piece of writing may be clumsy, it may have few merits, but its all part of the process, isn’t it? As painful as it might be, all of us – as writers – face that point where we may need to scrap large sections of work – maybe even whole projects. I know I’ve had to do it in my book. I had to scrap a three chapter section, which I quite liked, due mainly to the fact that it no longer fit and made the whole thing too long. So I applied the same logic to this ‘old’ idea. Let’s get serious now. I had to ask myself these very important questions:

1. What is the overall aim and purpose of this piece?
2. How does it fit into the larger structure? Is the overall structure working?
3. Is there a definite aim? Am I  procrastinating too much?

This last one is probably the most important one of all. As I’ve said in previous posts, I don’t mind a story that takes its time, as long as its interesting to read, but there is a massive difference between building up to a solid momentum and simply procrastinating for the hell of it.

So what did I tell myself? I have to get on point and stay there. Cut the superfluous characters, the pointless tensions which add nothing to it, solidify the setting, do some research and for god’s sake, get rid of the lesbian sex scene!

Yes, in order to grow as a writer, you do sometimes need to look back at where you’ve come from, in order to drive you forward to where you’re going to.

How do I do it? Well, part of it is, as I said before, reading a lot, which is good for inspiration. A lot of the time I can be reading a book and I’ll be hit by many ideas. This does NOT mean I rip them off! Some ideas I will add to some current piece of work, which may take it in some new direction, or I may formulate a new story. It doesn’t matter about the genre, or the form (though I’ve never been a particularly good poet), but I’ll store it in the background there. Or I’ll note them down. Noting things down is also an excellent idea. It may seem obvious, but if you keep a dedicated notebook for ideas, then you can leave things in there for months, and upon returning to your hastily scribbled notes, trying to decipher what you originally meant can lead to yet more ideas!

Of course the best way of generating ideas is immersing yourself in media. Read lots, listen to a lot of music, watch movies, watch TV (though stay away from soap opera’s and “reality”), just allow your brain to absorb everything you see hear, feel, smell, taste…

And don’t be afraid of writing, well, crap! Among the many half baked ideas I’ve had along the way I have a story about a guy who can move through mirrors, something about this cultist church floating on the ocean, and a story about a massive department store that you can never leave, mainly due to the ‘light bombs’ that surround the exits.

None of it is any good, but moving through the daft stuff will lead you down paths to the good stuff. So yes, write away, write anything you think of, and out of the tangle will come ideas you would never have thought of just trying to think of ideas. Read, watch, absorb, plunder and plagiarise.

But if anyone steals my mirror man idea, expect lawsuits…

For me, I like to get a mindmap of the idea done as soon as I can. I am somewhat paranoid about forgetting bits, and like to get as much juice out of an idea as I can straight away. Part of that is the assumption that if I have just had an idea, it is likely that I am in an idea-generating mood, if there is such a thing. So, I want to take advantage of it!

This is my current activity when I get an idea. Of course, I’m not always at a computer, or it’s not always convenient to open my mindmapping software. So, if there is another way of at least capturing the idea, I will do that. A note on a scrap piece of paper is even okay as long as I can do something with it later (such as type it up or mind-map it or some other electronic method of recording it). If it is quick to do, I might email it to myself for later.

Why the preoccupation with electronic stuff? Well I tend to loose bits of paper if they hang around for too long for a start. Copying and pasting is good on computers too. And, a notebook has no search, so if I want to find a note later, it’s easier on computer. But I know a lot of people prefer to take their initial notes on paper, especially in the initial idea-generating phase. This is usually for the same reason that I like using mind-mapping software – it’s easy, flows, and is much more freeform.

What do you do when you get a new idea? What methods of capture do you use? Or, do you ‘capture’ it at all? Maybe you prefer to dwell on an idea over time, and let it form before you write anything down? Please share below.