Tag Archives: ideas

Technique

There’s no such thing as a muse

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I’m Jordan and I’m a writer who doesn’t have a muse. And I’m okay with that.

It seems like most writers, and other “creatives,” have a muse—an imaginary personification of their creative capacity. When “the muse strikes,” it’s time to write. When the muse kicks off for the day/week/year, we’re out of luck. It seems like the only time I hear about a muse is when it’s not doing its job:

  • “My muse snaps her gum at me and rolls her eyes at my plot ideas.”
  • “My muse goes after every shiny new idea that crosses my mind like a raccoon with gambling debts. Also, he’s in charge of my similes.”
  • “My muse’s got nothin.”

Having a muse does alleviate some pressure to create (something I think I learned from Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED speech?). It can be draining and stressful to have to come up with everything yourself. If you’re stuck for an idea, dwelling on that fact can make you feel even less creative and more pressure to come up with something.

Maybe it’s pride, but I actually like coming up with ideas myself, or brainstorming with others. I like to think of myself as creative—and good enough and smart enough (and gosh darn it, people like me) to come up with solutions to my problems and ideas I can’t wait to write about. For the most part, I rarely disappoint myself—though it can be a little bit of a struggle when I’m burned out or just taking time off.

I think the biggest problem I have with muses is this idea that we’re abdicating the responsibility and the ability to create ourselves. Clearly not everyone with a muse does this, but some people use the muse less as a tool to encourage creative freedom and more as a slave driver.

As I said a few years ago in comments on a friend’s blog,

I think true genius is one that can still function as a normal human being while mastering his or her art. Those “geniuses” who ditch other people for their labs or their tablets because their fickle muse strikes them momentarily are at the mercy of capricious bouts of insight.

[The person she quoted] seems to be buying into the “genius is the ability to write pure, unmitigated, beautiful truths to power as they flow ceaselessly from my pen—while the muse lasts” school of thought.

For probably 99% of people, however, genius is the stroke of artistry that manifests itself while you’re trudging along—whether that trudging is through the other 70,000 words of your manuscript or through 70,000 diapers. “Genius” and talent, even taken together, rarely go anywhere without hard work, discipline and dedication.

What do you think? Do you have a muse? Is s/he a slacker, or does s/he work as hard as you?

Photo by Happy A

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Technique

Q is for Questions

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Questions can be a great way to get ready to write. We looked at some character questions last week. This time, I want to look at my favorite idea/plot generating questions.

  • What if . . . ?
  • How could X happen?
  • What would it take
  • How can this be more? Do I have any other ideas this would combine with well?
  • What’s the worst thing that could happen?
  • What does this character want?
  • What kind of person would want/not want this?
  • What else is going on in his/her life?
  • Who is the least likely suspect?
  • Who would be the worst/most painful person to do this to the protagonist?
  • Why would s/he do such a thing?
  • How can I get A to do/want/say Q?
  • What other part of the story can I tie this to?
  • Who else is in play here?
  • How can this character have a subplot that parallels the main plot?
  • What else can go wrong?
  • How can I make something go right, but at such a wrong time that it just makes everything worse?
  • Who else is out to get them? Why?
  • What else is going on in this setting? How can that tie in?
  • Can I make things worse?

Sometimes, I find myself just answering these questions subconsciously as I plot and write, but usually I can trace my thought process back through the questions I asked myself to get there.

What do you think? What kind of questions do you ask yourself when plotting?

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Technique

O is for being Open to new ideas

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No one is perfect—no, not even me, or my critique partners. My CPs are infinitely helpful, and I’ve been blessed with a number of excellent ones over the years. But I’ve definitely seen my fare share of really, truly bad advice. Maybe even a little too much bad advice. I’ve gotten into the bad habit of rejecting suggestions initially.

Sometimes, they really are wrong for my work. But not always. As I discovered a few years ago, sometimes it’s best to:

Weigh it out

This phrasing comes from Josi Kilpack. She points out that no matter how off-base a comment may seem, there may be a kernel of truth in it. Somewhere. And who knows, maybe—just maybe—they were right after all.

I should add here that fortunately I’ve been a victim of this one, too. My favorite example here is when a critique partner suggested I add a scene near the beginning of the book. I hemmed and hawed over this privately—until the scene started playing out in my mind. It was so entertaining—and just like she said, solved so many problems—that I just had to write it, just to see what it’d look like. (And when I still liked the finished product, I stuck it in there.)

I have to stay open to new ideas—you never know when and how your work can get better!

Don’t have critique partners? We have a Story Department here from time to time, just to help develop ideas on all levels. It’s fun—and you can take my word for it.

What’s your favorite way to come up with new ideas?

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Technique

Where little ideas come from

On the topic of “little ideas” again, I was looking to add some dialogue to increase tension in an argument scene, and I remembered a conflict from the first half of the book that had kind of faded in the second. A ha!, I thought. I can tie this back in here, and it will look so natural—you’d never know it was new stuff grafted on! I was very excited for another “little idea.”

As I read books, even great books, I often wonder which parts were planned all along, and which ones the author had to go back and add—characters or events to explain motivation or justify later actions, plot devices and twists, foreshadowing, even jokes that refer back to previous events in the story (which came first, the joke or the event?). (Yes, I do perform a lot of unnecessary mental gymnastics while I read. It keeps me young.)

And then I wonder, “Where do little ideas come from?” (I know, I know, when two big ideas love each other very much . . . save it, thank you.) I came up with three sources: planning, “fixing” (grafting it on later) or happy coincidence.

Planning is when you’ve known you were going to do this all along. So far, I always know who the killer is in a mystery, so I can plan some of the little hints in his/her behavior that act as clues, and I can foreshadow that big reveal in little ways. Even little ideas may be planned. Often, planning comes from fixing/grafting or happy coincidence during the plotting stage of writing, so you’re all ready when fingers hit the keyboard.

Fixing or grafting is when you’re writing merrily along and suddenly you realize, Hey, wait a minute. What the character’s doing here doesn’t make sense. I need to go back and add something before this to justify this story turn/plant this clue/SAVE HIS LIFE!!!

Happy coincidence is when you’re writing merrily along and suddenly you realize, Hey, wait a minute. This would be the perfect place to hearken back to X event/Y clue/Z character in my story. Oh, how neat and tidy! I am oh so very clever! (I love these ones.)

I think we all probably tap into these as we write. I’m afraid happy coincidence is the one I use most, though that may not be the case—and those are often the type of little ideas I’m most worried about losing.

What do you think? Are there other sources for little strokes of genius? Which do you use the most?

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Technique

Running out of ideas

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Are you ever afraid you’ll run out of ideas? I am. Writing fiction takes up a lot of ideas.

Mostly, I’m not afraid of running out of the high-level, story-starting ideas. Those ideas come from everywhere—watching television, reading the newspaper, reading other novels, brainstorming on other projects, etc. Generally, it takes me two of those big ideas combined to get really excited about a story. And once I’m really excited, I can’t wait to start writing.

But I’m afraid of running out of the little ideas. Things that solve problems on a scene level: tricks to get characters out of (or into!) scrapes, gadgets and technology, historical and cultural facts, and so forth. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been incredibly lucky to come up with the number of ideas (and solutions rooted in my research) that I’ve had in the first place—what if I run out?

Sometimes, I want to save these ideas. “Yeah, I could use this here,” I tell myself. “It might help this scene, but what if I need that exact kind of plot device/gadget/tidbit more in a year or two or five? I mean, I guess I could use it then, too, but won’t that make my writing . . . redundant?”

I’m trying to learn to trust myself—if I have an idea that works for this story that punches it up, I probably shouldn’t wait to see if maybe this story will work okay without it and I can use it later. It’s not “wasting” an idea if you actually put it to use—and who knows if you’ll ever have occasion to use something like that again. And even if you do, chances are that you’ll have to customize it to your characters and their story, so it would probably look very different.

What do you think? Where do you get your “little” ideas and solutions? Do you think something like that might be recognizable? Do you know of any writers who repeat the same plot devices too much?

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