The Importance of Square One
Here’s a scary fact of life for fiction writers: Not all story ideas are good story ideas. Not all of them, even when they glow in the dark at the first spark of inspiration, can be made to work on all the levels necessary within a novel or a screenplay, or simply work at a level that is high enough.
It is asking a lot of a story that’s written randomly to not read as if it was, in fact, written randomly. Or read as if it were written by an author who doesn’t yet possess the requisite story instinct, in the form of knowledge about the principles and criteria that apply. Great stories don’t write themselves. (And right there, dear readers, is where my editor at Writers Digest Books found the title of the book from which these excerpts are lifted.)
High-potential ideas can be recognized from standards of criteria.
Too many new writers commit to ideas that aren’t really stories at all. It may be a good short story idea, or even an idea for a scene from a novel or movie. Like, “What if someone stole your mother’s ashes from your car on the morning of her memorial service?”
That idea was once pitched to me in a workshop, and the feedback was tough to hear and just as tough to give. If your idea is more suited to an episode of The Twilight Zone than it is a multifaceted, criteria-crushing candidate for a novel—it might make for a good scene, but it’s not yet layered enough for an actual story—you need to learn to recognize that difference. You’d need to nurture that particular idea upward, searching for a larger tapestry that might build on the limited scope of that idea.
Do this, and you will instantly find yourself rubbing elbows in the top ten percentile ranks of authors who understand this to be true. Until the idea meets the criteria for a powerful story, which is an issue of both knowledge and instinct, it should remain a work-in-progress.
Here’s the best writing tip I’ve ever heard.
It came from a keynote address at a writing conference. The speaker was a senior New York literary agent with a who’s-who client list, who said this:
When a story idea strikes you … run.
Not run toward it. Run from it.
Make it chase you. If the idea is fundamentally weaker than it seems at first blush—because certainly, sometimes things strike us in ways we can’t defend or understand—time itself, seasoned by an understanding of applicable criteria and through the filter of your instincts, will be your ally in ultimately seeing it for what it is, and what it isn’t.
Nobody is standing at the gate giving you a user’s manual and a life preserver for your story idea. It’s all on you. Rather, the better approach is to juxtapose your ideas against known criteria. Make sure you go out on a few dates with your story idea before you propose marriage, and make sure you have criteria to apply, informing a sense of knowing what needs to happen, before you do.
These excerpts are taken from my new craft book, “Great Stories Don’t Write Themselves.” Feel free to share with your writer friends, directly or via social media.
Scroll down to find the previous posts in this series. If you reading this via email, click HERE to go to Storyfix.com, to do just that.
One Response
Regarding an idea for a story, it’s worth asking…Why do people read fiction?
Because their own life just isn’t that interesting…it’s gotten mundane. It doesn’t offer what they dream about.
So does YOUR story idea offer something that IS interesting, something one would dream about?
Does your idea compel someone to wonder, “what would THAT be like?”
Is your story about something you find exciting, but nobody else does? For example, there was a guy who lived a rough life, his wife left him, he brought up two kids who became drug addicts and mooched off him until he died. You may find that interesting…
But I find that dreary, sad. You can see that in the real world almost anywhere. Go to AA meetings and listen to their stories or those addicted to drugs trying to shake them. It’s dreary, it’s sad, and it’s nothing I want to read–it’s something I would like to FIX.
Would you find it interesting if you knew heroin comes from poppies? Where’s the number one source of poppies in the world? That would be Afghanistan.
“Afghanistan’s opium poppy harvest produces more than 90% of illicit heroin globally and more than 95% of the European supply. More land is used for opium in Afghanistan than is used for coca cultivation in Latin America.” The source is Wikipedia.
Isn’t it interesting there’s a “war” in Afghanistan that has been going on since (okay even earlier) 2001? One would think that with all that war, you couldn’t produce 90% of the illicit heroin globally and not get CAUGHT.
Curiosity and suspicion are the same animal!
So there’s a bunch of ideas stirred into a pot that on the face of it is interesting enough.
With all the heroin in America, do you think it could be tracked to where 90% of it’s grown?
Are we just that BAD at tracking, or is there a coverup?
People can’t get addicted to heroin if it’s not available. It don’t grow on trees and appears to grow in Afghanistan.
Get an idea…let it percolate. If you forget about it, then it’s worth forgetting about. If it eats at you…maybe there’s something there. But it just can’t be your interest–no matter how much you toil over it.
Others have to find it compelling to pick up your book and read the cover, then the jacket and the back (you must hook them during that time–or your fish is GONE).