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Ideas are not stories
Sat, 05/16/2009 - 21:25 — Rhetor
I have a lot more ideas for stories than I have stories.
The ideas come all the time, and they're all "interesting" in the sense that they present a new twist on an old idea, or exploration of a new one. I keep a running list of them. From an intellectual or gee-whiz perspective, they're good.
The reason a lot of them don't turn into stories is that I fail to envision a set of events proceeding from those ideas that really moves me. I can think of characters and a plot, maybe even a theme, but I don't get driven to write the thing (or not more than a few hundred words) because it doesn't engage my passions.
Often I have a lot more success with single, evocative images that strike me so strongly that I can't let them go. Often I don't know what the "idea" behind the image is, but I feel that I have to write that scene and then see where it leads.
Or, on the other hand, I start with a particular emotional reaction I'm trying to get, and I work backwards -- "How would I get a reader to feel that about this?" Highly manipulative, that last one, but sometims it works wonders.
I've had half of a first draft of a particular story sitting on my hard drive for nearly a year. I had a clear idea, and a clear set of characters, and I got a few thousand words into it and lost steam. Then, yesterday, I realized the real emotional, painful thing that was behind the story (and *snort* I'd actually begun writing a scene about that very thing, but had deleted it as an irrelevant digression). So now I'm going to start again.
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Comments
I would think you get plenty
I would think you get plenty of ideas in the classroom, inspired from what your students say. A year in the classroom is a novel right there.
Also, since you write ideas down, have you ever considered combining any of the them?
rachel wrote: I would think
I would think you get plenty of ideas in the classroom, inspired from what your students say. A year in the classroom is a novel right there.
Also, since you write ideas down, have you ever considered combining any of the them?
Hi Rachel.
The one story I did try to write based on my students was pretty nasty. Still working on it.
I do occasionally try to combine them...
Rhetor wrote: I have a lot
I have a lot more ideas for stories than I have stories.
The ideas come all the time, and they're all "interesting" in the sense that they present a new twist on an old idea, or exploration of a new one. I keep a running list of them. From an intellectual or gee-whiz perspective, they're good.
The reason a lot of them don't turn into stories is that I fail to envision a set of events proceeding from those ideas that really moves me. I can think of characters and a plot, maybe even a theme, but I don't get driven to write the thing (or not more than a few hundred words) because it doesn't engage my passions.
...
I understand. Ideas get added to my plot-bunny file faster than I can take them out and do something meaningful with them. Or I get an idea that's interesting, but can't figure out how to expand it into a full story and have the story be interesting beyond the first scene.
As other writers have done, I think I'm about to start an "Odd and Ends" sort of story where I can write the 1 scene and then dump it, releasing the bunny into the wild. Perhaps someone else will see it and give it a good home. You might consider something like that too
Kevin
kb0 wrote: As other writers
As other writers have done, I think I'm about to start an "Odd and Ends" sort of story where I can write the 1 scene and then dump it, releasing the bunny into the wild. Perhaps someone else will see it and give it a good home. You might consider something like that too
Kevin
Good idea, Kevin. Thanks!