Out Of Gas
The blank page looms before you, the prompt taunts you, and you’re feeling completely and totally out of ideas. You want to write a story, but where do you start? How do you start? When all the ideas have been had and there’s nothing new under the sun, how do you create anything at all, much less something awesome?
Well, let me tell you how I do it1.
The hardest part for me is choosing what kind of story I want to tell. You see, I’m indecisive. I like things! Things are neat! And choosing between things is incredibly difficult. But if I can narrow down the field even a little, then I feel like I’ve made a start. Usually, I try to tell the kinds of stories that I like to read - after all, if I’m not going to enjoy the end result I likely won’t enjoy producing the story at all. I try to approach things from broad genres, and set a kind of goal. I will say “this is going to be an absurdist fantasy, because I want to make people laugh” or “I’m going to do sci-fi. Something near future fancy technology to play with” or “it’s time to write horror and scare people”. Like so.
Once I have an overall sort of tone and broad genre to look at (all subject to many wiffles and waffles, because indecision is an ongoing process, after all) I will come up with a central concept. This is the thing that everything else grows around, the seed. Sometimes the seed is a person, or an image. More often for me, the seed is an concept. I tend to do a lot of concreting of abstract things, because that’s the sort of thing that moves my imagination. This is the part that usually takes the longest for me, because there’s such a world of possibilities even within a slightly narrowed field2.
The fun part is what happens once I have a seed idea to play with. Then, I let it grow. EVERYTHING else follows from that, everything else is a consequence of the seed. It’s a game of extrapolations, of consequence and action. “If this, then that, and if that then this other thing, and that strongly implies that this should be true…”. As the seed of the story blossoms there are more and more implications to the idea, and the more implications the more context.
Out of the context, characters are born. In the midst of all this idea-generation, I ask myself “well, what kind of person would be interesting to see in this context? What kind of person would do something unexpected in this context? What kind of person is a natural consequence OF this context?” And there’s my character, starting to come to life.
There are two nice things about this angle of approach: the first is that it’s easier than it sounds. I swear! There’s a sort of snowball effect, and once I have a little bit of momentum the whole thing avalanches into awesome and I have a lot of ideas to play with4.
The second nice thing is that I’m getting characters and setting in a package deal. Though I haven’t got a plot yet, the character’s actions combined with the seed concept will help to provide some verbs and make action happen. Characters want to do things, after all, and once they’re plunked down in a living and breathing context the things they do often surprise and delight.
This is, I admit, kind of an ass backward way of approaching things. And it’s not always the approach I take. But when I’m stuck sputtering in a creative ditch, this method has proven useful the most often for getting me back on the road and writing. It has very few critical points of decision for me to flail and flip-flop over, and the most important part (the generation of the seed idea) can be done by other people5 or drawn from a hat. Hell, there are even generators out there to get you started.
When you’re feeling stuck and want to write, what methods do you find most helpful? Do you have a system like this? Let’s trade different approaches for coming up with plots, characters, settings, and getting the ball rolling at all!
~~~
1. For the record, no, my process does NOT involve being jacked into the matrix, having access to alternate dimensions, or copious amounts of shrooms. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
2. I keep a store of these ideas around, for when I’m feeling pressed for time and can’t get this stuff to go3. Some of them are ideas volunteered by friends (hi, friends!), some of them are wacky things I come up with on my own and just set aside for later. Here are a few examples: “self storage for storing selves”, “exorcism by centrifuge”, “really permanent objects”, “identity as a transferrable commodity”, “memory as a place one can physically visit.”
3. I freely admit that coming up with seed ideas takes a little practice. It helps if you try identifying the seed ideas of different stories you enjoy. As an example, Stephen King’s 11/22/63 is built entirely around the concept of time travel being possible and a very real thing. The characters, the situation, the action, the consequences of the time travel - all of that is extrapolated out from that idea, taken to its logical (or absurd) conclusions.
4. I firmly and wholeheartedly believe that creating and writing should be fun. It isn’t always a laugh riot, and I get angsty at times when I’m trying to get things flowing or I get caught up in sad things I write about, but the actual process of making something new and toying with ideas, thoughts, language, and plots is in and of itself enjoyable. And for what it's worth, the stories I have the most fun writing are often the ones other people like the best.
5. “Hello, person who isn’t me! Suggest something random and weird, please.” “Your dining room table is trying to eat you.” “That’ll do, thanks.”6
6. If you don’t know anyone with whom you can have conversations like this, then look no further! I am always happy to be a source of potentially inspirational random ideas. Seriously, hit me up and I’ll try to help out. No guarantees can be made about the quality of these concepts, but I can certainly help with quantity.
Well, let me tell you how I do it1.
The hardest part for me is choosing what kind of story I want to tell. You see, I’m indecisive. I like things! Things are neat! And choosing between things is incredibly difficult. But if I can narrow down the field even a little, then I feel like I’ve made a start. Usually, I try to tell the kinds of stories that I like to read - after all, if I’m not going to enjoy the end result I likely won’t enjoy producing the story at all. I try to approach things from broad genres, and set a kind of goal. I will say “this is going to be an absurdist fantasy, because I want to make people laugh” or “I’m going to do sci-fi. Something near future fancy technology to play with” or “it’s time to write horror and scare people”. Like so.
Once I have an overall sort of tone and broad genre to look at (all subject to many wiffles and waffles, because indecision is an ongoing process, after all) I will come up with a central concept. This is the thing that everything else grows around, the seed. Sometimes the seed is a person, or an image. More often for me, the seed is an concept. I tend to do a lot of concreting of abstract things, because that’s the sort of thing that moves my imagination. This is the part that usually takes the longest for me, because there’s such a world of possibilities even within a slightly narrowed field2.
The fun part is what happens once I have a seed idea to play with. Then, I let it grow. EVERYTHING else follows from that, everything else is a consequence of the seed. It’s a game of extrapolations, of consequence and action. “If this, then that, and if that then this other thing, and that strongly implies that this should be true…”. As the seed of the story blossoms there are more and more implications to the idea, and the more implications the more context.
Out of the context, characters are born. In the midst of all this idea-generation, I ask myself “well, what kind of person would be interesting to see in this context? What kind of person would do something unexpected in this context? What kind of person is a natural consequence OF this context?” And there’s my character, starting to come to life.
There are two nice things about this angle of approach: the first is that it’s easier than it sounds. I swear! There’s a sort of snowball effect, and once I have a little bit of momentum the whole thing avalanches into awesome and I have a lot of ideas to play with4.
The second nice thing is that I’m getting characters and setting in a package deal. Though I haven’t got a plot yet, the character’s actions combined with the seed concept will help to provide some verbs and make action happen. Characters want to do things, after all, and once they’re plunked down in a living and breathing context the things they do often surprise and delight.
This is, I admit, kind of an ass backward way of approaching things. And it’s not always the approach I take. But when I’m stuck sputtering in a creative ditch, this method has proven useful the most often for getting me back on the road and writing. It has very few critical points of decision for me to flail and flip-flop over, and the most important part (the generation of the seed idea) can be done by other people5 or drawn from a hat. Hell, there are even generators out there to get you started.
When you’re feeling stuck and want to write, what methods do you find most helpful? Do you have a system like this? Let’s trade different approaches for coming up with plots, characters, settings, and getting the ball rolling at all!
~~~
1. For the record, no, my process does NOT involve being jacked into the matrix, having access to alternate dimensions, or copious amounts of shrooms. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
2. I keep a store of these ideas around, for when I’m feeling pressed for time and can’t get this stuff to go3. Some of them are ideas volunteered by friends (hi, friends!), some of them are wacky things I come up with on my own and just set aside for later. Here are a few examples: “self storage for storing selves”, “exorcism by centrifuge”, “really permanent objects”, “identity as a transferrable commodity”, “memory as a place one can physically visit.”
3. I freely admit that coming up with seed ideas takes a little practice. It helps if you try identifying the seed ideas of different stories you enjoy. As an example, Stephen King’s 11/22/63 is built entirely around the concept of time travel being possible and a very real thing. The characters, the situation, the action, the consequences of the time travel - all of that is extrapolated out from that idea, taken to its logical (or absurd) conclusions.
4. I firmly and wholeheartedly believe that creating and writing should be fun. It isn’t always a laugh riot, and I get angsty at times when I’m trying to get things flowing or I get caught up in sad things I write about, but the actual process of making something new and toying with ideas, thoughts, language, and plots is in and of itself enjoyable. And for what it's worth, the stories I have the most fun writing are often the ones other people like the best.
5. “Hello, person who isn’t me! Suggest something random and weird, please.” “Your dining room table is trying to eat you.” “That’ll do, thanks.”6
6. If you don’t know anyone with whom you can have conversations like this, then look no further! I am always happy to be a source of potentially inspirational random ideas. Seriously, hit me up and I’ll try to help out. No guarantees can be made about the quality of these concepts, but I can certainly help with quantity.