Where do ideas come from?
So far this year, I've written stories based on the following:
- a song
- a tweet
- a news story
- a story I wrote years ago, and
- my NaNoWriMo 2011 story.
The stories inspired by the song and the tweet arrived almost fully formed, I wrote each of them down in one go.
The story based on my old story took a little work but the basics were there right away.
The news story and my NaNo draft were the inspiration for stories which don't have much in common with their seed anymore. I brainstormed, started the stories and stopped to revise their premises and began again. Getting from initial idea to realising the stories' full potential took a bit of work. The news story doesn't have much in common with my fictionalised version anymore. It's okay, I never set out to write an alternative version to what was in the papers, anyway.
Ideas can come from anywhere if you keep your eyes and your imagination open.
Here's the biggest insight I gained during this year's NaNoWriMo: My writing process has changed.
I used to be happy with writing a story with nothing planned but the bare bones. The fleshing out was part of the actual writing.
Not anymore. This year, I found that the winging it approach doesn't quite work the way it used to work for me any longer. What I wrote this year wasn't so much the first draft of a novel as a 50,000-word long brainstorming session. In order to make it a story, I have to start again - editing and revising aren't going to turn this baby into a novel.
On the plus side: Now I know what the story is.
September 14th 2011 20:27
In an ideal world, what kind of story would you write?
Be as specific as possible, include genre, length, the type of reactions the story will provoke in your readers as well as as many details of the story itself you can think of. Don't hold back, this is a fantasy and you can have anything you want.
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