Category: ideas

            Okay, so here’s a simple tip. One you’ve probably heard before.  One you’ve probably ignored until it’s too late.

            Always carry a notebook.

            Now, I know what some of you are thinking.  A notebook.  How quaint.  How 19th century.  What a delightful little writery affectation.  I’m too young and vibrant to forget things.  I’ve trained my mind to function like a steel trap!

            Yeah. 

            You’ll forget stuff.

            Back when I was in college, I was trying to write and drifting back and forth between a werewolf detective novel and another one I’ve mentioned here called The Trinity, about rival immortals.  And I also had this idea dancing in my head.  A scene with a few snippets of dialogue.  Something about it called to me.  Tickled me.  Gnawed at me.  It was one of those things I kept playing with, spinning it different ways, trying to find just how and where it would fit in a story.  Or maybe a story that fit around it.

            So one night I was talking with a friend down at the dorm security desk and somehow ended up talking to a foreign exchange student. For, like, two hours.  There at the desk. I don’t remember much about her except she had an amazing accent,very clever (hey, we talked for two hours), and was kinda stunning in that casual way some women pull off really well.

            And about halfway through this conversation, I suddenly realized where that little scene fragment fit. Something she said flipped it around and I suddenly knew justhow this would work in a story. How it would be the seed of an entire powerful, amazing book.

            But… I was having a fascinating conversation with an attractive foreign exchange student.  I didn’t want to break that off.  Besides—there was absolutely no wayI’d forget an idea this good.

            Reader… I forgot it.

            To this day, my most solid memory of that night is the sheer joy of knowing I’d figured out how to perfectly use that idea.  I don’t remember how.  Or the exchange student.  But I remember how thrilled I was, knowing I’d finally get to use that idea.

            I just don’t remember how.

            Write it down.  On a notepad. On your computer. On your arm. On your phone (there’s usually a notepad app, and there are some great ones out there you can grab cheap).  Doesn’t matter if it’s an idea, an editing note, a clarification—always write it down somewhere.

            But don’t tell yourself you’ll remember it.

            So, a few weeks ago I got to witness an all-too common event.  The person whining about how “they stole my idea!”  Who they were isn’t important.  Sad truth is, it was a nonsense claim, one we’ve all seen more than a few times.

            Here’s an ugly truth that all half-decent writers know.  Ideas are cheap.  They’re cheap, borderline worthless, because they’re common.  Ridiculously common.  I can say with absolute certainty that I have more ideas for books than I am ever going to be able to write.  Seriously, even if I live to be a hundred, I’m pretty full up.  And know what? I’m going to have more ideas tomorrow. And the day after that.

            Not only that, but a lot of time my ideas will line up with the ideas other people have.  This is called parallel creation, and it happens a lot.  Especially when you consider how many folks come up with ideas they never do anything with.

            Here’s an absolutely true story.  Throughout 2008 and 2009, I placed in a few screenplay contests with a script I wrote called Reality Check.  It was about the crew of a retro-style spaceship who slowly come to realize they’re actually characters in a 1950s serial. Eventually, they figure out how to escape into the real world—which turns out to be a far more terrifying and dangerous place than they’re prepared to deal with. Especially when one of their mortal enemies follows them through.

            If this sounds vaguely familiar, it should.  It’s got a lot of the same elements as John Scalzi’s Redshirts, a ridiculously fun book that came out about two years after I won my last contest with Reality Check (if memory serves, I got a free copy of Final Draft for that one). 

            Now, I’m sure some people would go nuts and start shrieking about plagiarism and lawsuits.  Heck, I was dragged into a court case a few years back which was pretty clearly just weak parallel creation, but someone decided to sue over it anyway.  And lost.

            Simple truth is, Scalzi and I have never met (I think we were rushed past each other once at NYCC, but I’m not even sure of that). To the best of my knowledge he’s never been a judge or reader for a screenwriting contest.  I have absolutely no reason to think he ever saw my story.  We’re just two guys about the same age with similar educations, backgrounds, and interests who happened to look at something the same way and both decided to do something with it.  I wrote a screenplay, he wrote a novel.  That’s parallel creation.

            There’s also a funny rule of thumb I heard a while back that I think is, alas, horribly true.  The level of worry someone has about their idea being stolen is usually an inverse ratio to how good that idea actually is.  In other words, people tend to get really paranoid about their bad clichés and tropes being stolen.  That court case I mentioned before?  It was based off some ridiculously common clichés.  I mean, embarrassingly common.  I actually laughed out loud when the lawyer told me they were part of the core basis of the lawsuit.

            Y’see, Timmy, we all have ideas.  And the simple truth is, there’s somebody out there with the same influences, the same education, the same resources as me who’s having the same idea.  Maybe even ten or twenty people.

            Now, let me bring up a related point to keep in mind about ideas. In fact, here’s another story.  Genders, genres, and other facts have been changed (or maybe not) to protect the semi-innocent…

            I was at a convention a while back and one of the other attending authors offered me a copy of her book.  My to-read list is so huge I generally don’t accept such offers, but she was insistent so I said sure.  And then it slowly worked its way through my to-read pile until it was at the top.

            Said book was a fantasy novel that was aiming for a Game of Thrones-type feel.  It was very big on swordfighting.  Sword vs. sword, sword vs. axe,  sword vs. two swords, sword vs. sword and a dagger… 

            It just went on and on like this.  Every fifth or sixth page had a sword fight. Or a flashback to a sword fight.  Or someone talking about what they were going to do to someone else in an upcoming sword fight.

            And every battle ended bloody.  No mercy in this world.  Everyone either loses a head or an arm or gets impaled.  Sometimes all three.  Blood and guts sprayed everywhere and got on everyone.  House of a 1000 Corpses looked clean and sanitized compared to this book.

            Needless to say… it wasn’t that good.  There were several places where the book bordered on awful.  I read about fifty pages and skimmed the rest.  More sword fights.  More blood.  A few beatings.  The non-stop actionwasn’t the only issue, alas, but it was the one that matters for today.

            Y’see, some of these battles were actually kind of clever.  They did things I hadn’t seen before in books or on screen. The way they approached a character or their training.  Some of the ways the fights went.  How some of them were described.

            But it’s not enough just to be original.  My book needs to be coherent, both in plot and in structure.  It needs to have flow.  These are the things that tie my ideas together and turn them into a story.

            I’ve mentioned before that ideas are rarely more than plot points, and a pile of plot points is not the same thing as a plot.  No matter how clever my idea is, it’s not going to automatically make my story into a good story.  Especially if… well, I don’t have a story.  And an idea without a story is…

            Well, it’s borderline worthless.

            Next time, I’d like to put a few thoughts on the block.
            Until then… go write.

            Whoa!  Two weeks in a row.  Haven’t managed that in a while…

            One of my favorite television shows is winding up, and while I absolutely love it overall, I’ve been looking back on it with a bit more of a critical eye.  Specifically one season where it felt like the show went off the rails.

            No, it’s not important which show.

            The thing is, it struck me that at one point the basic idea of the show changed, but the show itself didn’t.  It kept telling the same kind of stories—stories that didn’t fit this new idea.  And that’s where it fumbled.  A similar show I was watching had the same problem—its stories didn’t fit its basic premise.

            This isn’t an uncommon problem.  I’ve seen it in books, too.  Heck, as my editor just pointed out, I got my feet a bit wet in it with one of my recent drafts (which kind of sparked this).

            So, let’s talk about ideas.

            I’ve talked in the past about limited and unlimited concepts. I think about 99.99% of all stories fall into one of these categories.  Which one I’m using should have an effect on how I structure my story.

            A limitedconcept is one that comes with a clear, specific goal. Yakko wants to get home. Dot wants to get the girl.  Wakko wants to save the farm.  Phoebe wants to stop the bad guy.  My character has an objective, the story is about them achieving it.  A to B.

            At its heart, this is probably the simplest kind of story, and one of the most common.  A self-contained book is a limited concept.  So are most movies.  There may be more steps involved than just A to B, but really it boils down to discover goal, accomplish goal.

            The flipside of this is an unlimited concept. This is where my characters have less of a goal and more of a general mission, if that makes sense. Wakko is trying to raise his kids as a single dad in the big city.  Yakko solves complex medical cases.  Dot and her team of specialists protect the country—and sometimes the world—from supernatural and alien threats.

            An unlimited concept is a bit more complex because it’s a much broader idea.  Most ongoing television shows (the thought-out ones, anyway) are unlimited concepts.  So are most book series.  The reason for this is because an unlimited concept, by its nature, can go on and on for a long time without feeling stretched out.  They don’t have a clear end point.

            Now, we’ve all seen what happens when these things get swapped. A writer may have a very solid limited concept that they decide—or are told—to do as an unlimited one.  It doesn’t matter if you have a very solid three-season story about people trying to get off this weird island, the network says it needs to run for four seasons.  Sorry, we meant five.  Okay, make it six.

            This is when things start to fall apart.  The story starts to feel padded because we all recognize that it’s… well, padded.  Forward movement has stopped, because forward movement would mean hitting the end of the story.

            Everybody loves to talk about prequels, but every prequel inherently has to be a limited concept.  A is where we begin, B is the story we already know. There’s only so much that happens between them.  Every prequel automatically starts with a limited amount of time to tell a story in.  As a writer, I can’t keep putting off B.  Eventually we have to get there, because if we don’t, it’s going to become clear I’m putting off B for no reason except to put off B.  This is a big problem a lot of prequels have.

            Let me give you an example.

            In case you forgot, Smallville was the story of high school student Clark Kent growing up in the titular town, developing the powers and learning the lessons that will eventually make him the greatest hero ever.  The producers joked early on that when Clark learned to fly, the series would be over. After all, at that point he’d be Superman.  We began with Clark already strong, fast, and invulnerable.  Heat vision and X-ray vision showed up before season two was halfway done, then super-hearing (all usually just in time to counter a specific problem).  And then…

            Well, Smallvilledid really well in the ratings.  So it kept getting renewed.  The network and the producers didn’t want the show to end, so they had to keep coming up with reasons for Clark to not become Superman.  Because Superman was point B.  Once we’re there, the show’s over.  So Clark developed every Kryptonian power there was and then spent eight more years not learning to fly and notbeing Superman.  Heck, the last four seasons pretty much took place entirely in Metropolis.  And while a good chunk of it was still interesting… a lot of it just felt like stretching things out.

            The other issue with a limited concept is when the characters just start to ignore their goal.  Like when the whole point of my story is to save the farm, but I’ve just spent six chapters on Wakko going to an art gallery opening and buying something by a hot new—wait a minute!  He’s trying to save the farm but he’s dropping money on outsider art?  What the hell?

            Once I’ve set a goal for my character—and it should be a big one—this needs to be their focus.  They can head in another direction for a little bit, but their attention really needs to stay on that end point of B.  Veering too far off course and getting distracted will just have my readers rolling their eyes.  I can’t say Dot only has until tomorrow to stop Armageddon and then have her take an afternoon at the spa and dinner out with the cute guy from marketing because, hey, life is short, right?

            That fantastic show I mentioned up top—the one that’s ending—it had this problem.  It started as an unlimited concept, a very procedural-type show.  But halfway through season three, the show shifted (very beautifully and organically) into a limited concept.  Thing is… it kept doing procedural, one off stories all through season four.  There’s a bomb ticking away somewhere, ready to take out half the city, but our heroes keep stopping in their search to hand out speeding tickets and chase down drug dealers.  It became teeth-grindingly frustrating as the protagonists continued to get bogged down in minor side stories while that huge B goal loomed over them.

            Another problem I see a lot with limited concept stories is when people try to go pastB. Because in an A to B story… B is the end. We’re done.  Anything after this is just… well, excess.  Trying to force the story on past B to C just becomes awkward.  Once the crew of the Federation starship Voyager makes it home to the Alpha Quadrant, the show’s over.  Sure, we could’ve had another season of everyone being debriefed, getting accustomed to life back on Earth, maybe getting assigned to new ships or new missions… but that’s not what Voyager was about.

            A great example of this you may have heard of is the Moonlighting Curse, named after the old show with Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd.  The idea is, basically, once my two main characters sleep together, my show is doomed.  And I think there is some truth to this… in certain cases.

            Y’see, Timmy, a lot of television and book series will have a plot built around an unlimited concept (two zany, mismatched partners solve crimes).  The story, however, is a limited concept about these two characters—will they fall in love, or at least fall into bed?  And when that happens, when they’ve hit point B, their story is over.  It doesn’t matter if the plot is unlimited—there’s nowhere else for the characters to go except past B, and that’s fumbly, unexplored, and usually uninteresting territory (when compared to that original A to B).

          Whenever I get an idea, I try to take a good look at it.  Is it limited or unlimited?  What am I thinking of doing with it?  Does my idea match up with the story I’m hoping to tell?

            Because if it doesn’t… something’s going to need to change.

            Next time, I’d like to alter the mood a bit and talk about rejection.

            Until then… go write.