Where Do You Get Your Ideas? If you write it they (words) will come...

 What’s the most frequently asked questions of writers by would-be writers? Ready? Here it is. Where do you get your ideas? I’ve been on a lot of writer panels at book festivals and conferences and when writers are talking craft, it’s the one that comes up again and again.

I get it. You sit down to write and nothing comes to mind and you sit and sit and stare out the window and decide the house needs to be cleaned (which can be a plus in terms of housekeeping but not helpful with writing). You can’t get started. You just don’t seem to have anything to write about. You become discouraged.

You’ll hear smart answers from writers about where they get their ideas—like “I go to the idea store” or “I’m a member of the idea of the month club and they send me an idea each month”. That kind of thing. And the reason for these ridiculous answers is, as I’ve said many times, writers have no idea where their ideas come from.

So let’s just get that out there. WE DO NOT KNOW.

So how can we help you who think you have no ideas? One way is to tell you we are all in the same scary boat. At first it might seem impossible it is going to take us anywhere at all. We are going to sink to the bottom of the sea. We are doomed.

Here is my advice. Put marks on a page. The only way to get it moving is to get it moving. Easy for you to say, you say. Right. Easy to say. Hard to do. You have to allow yourself and expect that some of what you write will be pure crap (that you will make less and less crappy as you revise until it is not crap).

I learn what I’m writing by writing. It’s the only way I know how to do it. I might begin with an idea or a character or simply a line of prose. There are many ways to begin. Just get some words on the page and then try to build on those words. Push forward. Write ten or fifteen pages. Keep writing if it seems you might have something that you can keep pushing forward. If you can’t, maybe set it aside and try writing something else. HOWEVER, be aware this is a first draft and so by nature probably, for most of us, pretty bad with a few shining moments.

If you write it, they will come. MORE WORDS and MORE WORDS… Maybe it will be a character or maybe you’ll have an interaction between characters or some cool setting detail or an interesting story idea. Something will click in those pages. Keep writing and pushing forward using whatever is clicking to keep you going.

You figure out what your story is, who your characters are, what the setting is, as you go along.

And then, when it’s time, you revise, and that’s when it all starts to come together. Most often, when would-be writers want to know about ideas, what they really mean is where does the writer get the STORY that will be told? For most writers, the story has to be built brick by brick, whether the writer does this in outline or rough draft.

The only way I know how to write my story is to write my story. Write it and more words will come.

How to Write a Novel: Part 1: How to get started

 I'm going to write a series of posts on how to write a novel from beginning to the final revision and try to give some tips on how to keep going. I'll try to keep the entries fairly short. Hope at least some of these tips will be helpful. Brian

There are three secrets to writing a novel. Unfortunately nobody knows what they are.” ― W. Somerset Maugham

Martial Art of Writing

• Similarities to martial arts and writing: both require skills and art. Training is similar.

• Break-down movements to understand what you’re trying to do. Then practice. Then put movements together. Then practice. Repetition will build muscle memory. Same in writing. You will learn habits (through reading a lot and writing a lot) that will help you write without thinking about how you’re doing what you’re doing.

• You have to get to a place where you are writing without thinking about writing. You’re just trying to live within the scene. You’ll have revision to be more analytical.

 YOU NEED BOTH

• TELL A STORY/ USE LANGUAGE WELL. Be a story teller and a good writer and you’ll write novels and stories people want to read. These do work together, of course, but you need to understand that the skills come from different places in your mind. You have to see with different eyes.(Need specifics for this to be clear but step 1 is realizing these two essential skills come from different places)

• Language—tone, pacing, dialogue, character building, especially through dialogue.

• Story: plot, structure: various layers of plot and structure. These can be sentence level sometimes but are definitely: scene, chapter, complete novel. Character development as linked to story

• Theme is important: you need to figure out what you’re writing about but it’s not something you have to know right away.

And also

• Language and story are partners.

• Language usage can create emotions by the choice of words and by creating word images (like the camera does in film) for the reader. They see what’s happening and become involved with it. Characters become real.

• Story-plot and structure-hacks the mind of the reader to pull them along with action that keeps them turning the page but also involves them in the bigger story that makes for a satisfying read. Your reader needs to have a strong narrative and feel a sense of progression toward the end.

Excellent short short example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iFWyihDvCE

 

Why is this short-short good?

• Boy kicks dog...conflict established...

• Audience sympathetic for puppy—engaged because of this sympathy and how the boy is treating him.

• The puppy keeps trying in DIFFERENT ways. The boy keeps resisting. Engages the reader with a question. Will the boy give in?

• We’re still pissed and irritated by boy (I’m a dog lover)

• BUT we want the boy to be won over by the puppy. We want it for the puppy but we also sort of want it for the boy, hope that it might make him less of a punk.

• Then we see the boy. The twist/surprise/changes the story that makes us see everything we’ve already seen in a different way.

• As the British says, Brilliant.

ALAS, FIRST DRAFTS SUCK. BE READY FOR IT. I ADVISE, LOW EXPECTATIONS. Keep writing your way through good and bad days.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mVZtujY2G0
  

• Failing—being willing to fail—is essential to whatever success you eventually come to with your work

PROCESS (FOR ME) BEGINNING

• Character in a situation...and the situation must have potential for CONFLICT

• A boy and a girl from warring families fall in love. (this may have been done once or twice)

• A boy’s father dies and he suspects it’s murder— worse that his uncle is involved and maybe his mother.

A girl wakesonashipthatseemstobeonthesea but realizes that she is dead. (Zevin, Elsewhere)

TO OUTLINE OR NOT TO OUTLINE: Are you a discovery writer or an outliner or a little of both? Most people are probably a little of both. 

John Irving is the ultimate outliner. Brandon Sanderson is also a big outliner. Stephen King is a discovery writer.  There is no one way to work. You have to find out what works for you. Experiment. 

• A character in a situation is how I usually begin. This may include a setting idea along with story. This will get you started but you need more to keep going. If all I have is a cool situation, it’s hard to move past the opening.

• I do one page of outlining to have a very general idea of what might happen in the novel. At least this way I can move beyond just the first twenty/ thirty pages.

• Then I do a POINTS ON THE MAP—four or five points—from beginning to end that will help me move from point to point. Next step, I’ll try one sentence summary of some scenes in-between the points. All of the above will change in revision

• I do outlining as I go along.

• Sometimes I will try to just write what I want to do in a scene and write some dialogue as a way to get started on a difficult scene

• I try to follow my own advice and keep writing and not let myself be stopped by the messy and ugly first draft.

  
  

  
  

Exercise

• Do an outline-–a points on a map outline for a story you’re working on (at least five points). Or if you don’t have a story, do an outline for one of the following:

• A girl volunteering in an assisted living community notices that people die when they’re befriended by one of the women who lives there.

• A policeman owns ten cats and comes home one night and they’re all gone.

• A boy and his girlfriend (who cheated on him) meet at a party.

• A father and his son, who have never gotten along, have to learn to live together after the boy’s mother/father’s wife dies. One scene that shows them trying to cope together—maybe after the funeral.

• A boy suddenly realizes he has some kind of supernatural ability. Maybe he can read minds. He talks to his parents about it. They reveal a secret.

                              

Story

In Austin, Texas, it gets hot in the summer. You can fry an egg on the pavement. You can cook a whole five-course meal. If you stand in one place too long, you start smoking. Hot.

How do you get that heat in writing? Everything has to be working in your writing and that includes the oft maligned element, story.

Story isn’t easy. People realize it’s hard to write well, to use language well. It’s hard to develop character, create an interesting setting, etc.. But story doesn’t really get its due. It lives in the worst fictional neighborhood and isn’t invited to the fictional elements’ parties. Its job is undesirable. It’s the garbage collector of fiction.

Story is, in fact, seriously undervalued, particularly in MFA programs (at least that was my experience and seems to be the experience of many others). A lot of writers who write beautifully fail miserably because they have no story to tell or what faint story they do have to tell isn’t told well. They expect us to read their work because they write pretty sentences.

I’m here to tell you—pretty sentences aren’t enough( even though I love beautiful writing). You need all the elements of fiction, including story, to be working. I need them anyway—I need all the help I can get.