I read an interview the other day (I wish I could remember where!) with a writer who was describing how her story ideas evolved. She likened it to a tiny seed that she nurtured with water, fresh soil, etc. until it blossomed into a full story that she could then put down on paper. Wow. Really? Is that how it is supposed to work? Because if so, then Houston, I’ve got a problem.
I don’t doubt the writer’s sincerity one bit. In fact, although I can’t remember the source at the moment, I do remember that she was a very successful writer. So if she said that’s how it happens for her, then I believe it. I am very new to the fiction writing game but her description makes me think there might be something wrong with me. My stories don’t blossom. They seem to punch at me from the inside until I barf them out like a cat hacks on a hairball. It’s not pretty, it sounds fairly retched coming out, but in the end it tends to be a productive exercise.
I get ideas at random, and usually, inopportune times – when I am in a business meeting, when I am at a family dinner or like tonight for instance, when I am trying to sleep. Something sparks an idea, a couple synapses fire and the idea starts to burn my brain. No matter how many times I toss and turn, I can’t drift off until I get up, grab the laptop and write it down.
The idea I had tonight was a real hacker too. 90 minutes of keyboard tapping later and I have changed the course of my future. Instead of working on the historical thriller novel I have been planning for months, I completely shifted gears and generated the outline of a three-book YA fantasy series. YA? When the heck did I ever plant YA seeds in my idea garden? Oh that’s right…I didn’t. I don’t have an idea garden and I probably never will unless I clean up all these hairballs.
So please tell me, how do your story ideas develop? Are you a gardener or a hacker, or something else entirely? How do you get control of your ideas or do you just go with the flow?
I hack and I garden and I build things and then find out that they don’t work very well. I do a lot of fizzling. I’ll start with a surge and, if I’m lucky, hit a stride, but I have trouble finishing a story. I haven’t been a big planner or plotter of stories, and so I am working on that; I seem to have an aversion to planning a course for a story, and I expect my characters and their scenarios to develop “organically” through my writing–and they might, but I’m not sure that that’s a good way to write a story. It’s pretty messy, and a good story is tight, not messy. When I “go with the flow”, I often end up drifting in a patch of water where there’s no current. So a lot of what I write, although I may fully believe it’s a “story” at the time, ends up being compost, where I’ll let ideas rot and break down to give rise to something else, or it ends up being a sketch of something that needs to be refined through another attempt at telling. By applying a more conscious approach to plot, I hope to bring more efficiency to my writing process. But it scares me, too; I can be a bit of a literary snot, and I associate conscious plotting with a hack-style of writing (not the “cough cough” hack that you’ve described, but the negative judgment “hack writer”); I don’t think it’s a valid association, and so I am trying to unlearn it.
Hi Charles – thank you for the excellent reply! To keep the feline theme going here, I think really there is more than one way to skin a cat…or more than one way to plot a story. Paraphrasing Stephen King – he says he likes to put his characters in situations and they “write themselves” out of it. And clearly he knows what he’s doing, right? I think I tend to side with you…conscious plotting really seems like it would put a damper on the creative process. It seems like it is more “real” if we just get on the roller coaster and enjoy the ride (taking notes all the while of course). Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that it is your writing – your creativity, your blood, sweat and tears. And since that is the case, we all need to do what works best for us! Thank you again for the great discussion. I hope some other people see this too and we can get some additional points of view!
I think it’s a combination for me. I have some interesting seeds planted in my head and then when they are ready, they gush out. I am still new to the whole publishing thing as well, and it has been wonderful talking to other writers. I don’t feel alone or crazy anymore. It seems to me that everyone has a different way of doing things. For example, Greever you talked about outlining your YA idea, and I envy that. I would love to be able to outline a book. I gush out chapters and have to try to piece them together and fill in where I need to. Half the time I don’t know what is going to happen. I hate it, but that is how it is. I tried outlining and it just doesn’t work for me. Thanks for the question. It is fun to learn how other authors work 🙂
Thanks M.E. – I agree that talking to everybody else does help me learn more about myself and that perhaps I am not as bizarre as I once thought! It sounds like we all work a little differently, but that is probably just an indication that there are many different paths to the same destination (i.e. a completed work). And I need to clarify that I used the word “outline” very loosely. More like a general collection of scribbles, drawings and questions that I plan to answer as part of the story. 😉 Thank you very much for joining the conversation!
There’s no one right way to generate ideas, so whatever your process, embrace it, stretch it, challenge it … and see where it takes you! Creativity is such a nonlinear thing, it defies boxing into a formula. But for me there are key ingredients: a passionate spark to stoke the fires, some organization to help shape and form the idea, building it to a larger bonfire that can burn brightly through the night, and then finally a whole lot of time working, reworking, reforming, and working again until it shines like the sun.
Tonight I’m reading quickly through a draft, doing some pruning and shaping.
Don’t worry about whether you’re doing it right … you’re doing it. So you are! 🙂
Wonderful words of wisdom Susan! You are so right – let’s get crazy up in here and see what happens on those pages, eh? ; ) So basically what we all seem to be saying is: it doesn’t really matter how you do it, just shut up and do it! 🙂 Thanks for your great input!
I remember an interview with George R.R Martin where he said there are two types of writers. What he called Architects – who laid out the whole plot from first page to last before starting. And what he called gardeners – who just start with the seed of an idea ‘water’ that seed with their blood as they go along and wait to see what grows from it. … I think I’m definately more of the latter _ tend to start with an idea and a few characters and have a rough idea of how its going to end, but the journey is a mystery. I don’t think you can say one way is better than the other, only that one way works better for you.
Thanks for the comments David! I am definitely the latter as well. I have some general ideas, sketches in my notebook and snippets of dialog or content, but generally the writing itself is a little more free form the first time around. I try not to even go back and critique until I am done. And you are definitely correct – whatever works for you is what works! Thanks for stopping by!