By the way, we have a new project coming soon! A podcast! Maureen and I are recording it now and will be releasing it later this spring. We’re so excited! We’ll be announcing it here on the blog and on our newsletter, so sign up at the link at the bottom of this page if you haven’t, so you can stay in touch.
The Story Kitchen Podcast
Before I was a writer, I worked in the video game industry (and in fact Maureen and I met teaching in a games program at a university!)
One of the things I learned from working in games is an attitude of playfulness towards my creative work. To me, this is related to the ideas of rapid prototyping and the “fail fast” mantra. It kind of forces you to not take your work too seriously.
How I apply that to writing is, as Maureen wrote last week, just try it! But for me, I don’t necessarily need to *write it* to try it. I do a lot of, I guess you could say, daydreaming. I think about the story, I ask myself questions about it (usually questions like, what if this happens? Who’s the protagonist? Why do I like this idea?) I’ll watch or read media that reminds me of the idea I have, either in tone or theme or plot points. And sometimes I just take a walk and talk about the idea out loud to myself.
At some point, of course, I go to the page and write. At this stage I try not to let my editor inside my writing room. (You know, the one who says things like, “This is a stupid idea. What is this even about? This makes no sense.” No time for that, keep her out of the room!)
I write down whatever little bits I have. I really like timed writing for this — I set a timer for five minutes, or ten minutes, and just write while thinking about the idea. At the end of that time, if I feel like it, I keep going. If not, I save the file (or the notebook — I’m a big fan of writing out ideas at this early stage in longhand) and save it for later.
I’m a big advocate of writing down random bits of ideas, by the way! You never know when that random bit will spark off another random bit! Keep a notebook around so you can scribble these stray thoughts and observations.
Sometimes an idea is so interesting and so exciting to me that it kind of takes over for a while. When that happens, I try to chase it. If it’s a short story, I try to get a draft down in one sitting. Or at least, get to an idea of what the ending is. (Endings are the hardest part for me.) If the idea starts looking like a novel-sized idea, I do what Maureen does, I just start writing for a while, and then I look back at what I’m writing, and start asking myself questions about it:
- Who’s the protagonist, what does she want? What’s the worst thing that could happen to her?
- What’s the theme of this? (It’s totally okay if you don’t know that — themes often emerge much later.)
- Why am I interested in this story? What about it is exciting? What kinds of scenes would I be excited to write?
- What are some exciting things that could happen in this story?
- How could this story end?
Give yourself permission to play in the story world for while! Play with your characters, get to know them. Play with the setting, start getting a feeling for its mood, its tone, its geography. Keep writing as you go. Chase those stray moments of glee, indulge your curiosity.
And have fun!
P.S. Do you want to try playing with a story idea in a guided way? I’m running a short story clinic in June, Story from Beginning to End, in which we’ll write a story in one weekend! Check out link for more details.