From unruly ideas to focused novel
You've got one -- a bright, shiny new idea. You love it, you're excited about it. Then another equally bright and shiny idea comes to you. Then another. And yet another.
How do you pick just one?
Book ideas aren't like children -- you can't love them all equally, at least not at the same time. Whether you realize it at first glance, there's one that you love just a wee bit more than the others. To determine which one that is, ask yourself a hard and realistic question:
Which one can you live with, won't grow bored with, won't run screaming from during the months and possibly years that it will take you to finish writing the book?
THAT idea is the nugget of your book.
Now don't discard your other ideas. Write them down and file them away where you can get to them later. Over the years my "notes file" has grown to about 200 pages. I've mined those ideas, scenes and dialogue snippets for five Raine Benares books. I'll be going to it for plot ideas for the sixth book and beyond to two new series. And COPY from this file, never CUT -- this way your file remains intact. Just because you think you want to use an idea for a book doesn't mean it'll actually make it in the final version. I know this first hand.
Then you start working with that idea, molding it and spinning plots and characters from it. But guess what? What comes out isn't what was in your head; in fact, it's nowhere near as good. Perhaps the idea sucks.
No, it doesn't. A blob of clay doesn't look like a fired and finished work of art, but that's where that work of art comes from -- a shapeless blob. And now for a dose of reality: master potters don't get to be masters from producing one pot. The same is true for writers. You work, you write, you learn from your mistakes, and you write again. And eventually, what's on your screen just might be better than what's in your head.
How do you pick just one?
Book ideas aren't like children -- you can't love them all equally, at least not at the same time. Whether you realize it at first glance, there's one that you love just a wee bit more than the others. To determine which one that is, ask yourself a hard and realistic question:
Which one can you live with, won't grow bored with, won't run screaming from during the months and possibly years that it will take you to finish writing the book?
THAT idea is the nugget of your book.
Now don't discard your other ideas. Write them down and file them away where you can get to them later. Over the years my "notes file" has grown to about 200 pages. I've mined those ideas, scenes and dialogue snippets for five Raine Benares books. I'll be going to it for plot ideas for the sixth book and beyond to two new series. And COPY from this file, never CUT -- this way your file remains intact. Just because you think you want to use an idea for a book doesn't mean it'll actually make it in the final version. I know this first hand.
Then you start working with that idea, molding it and spinning plots and characters from it. But guess what? What comes out isn't what was in your head; in fact, it's nowhere near as good. Perhaps the idea sucks.
No, it doesn't. A blob of clay doesn't look like a fired and finished work of art, but that's where that work of art comes from -- a shapeless blob. And now for a dose of reality: master potters don't get to be masters from producing one pot. The same is true for writers. You work, you write, you learn from your mistakes, and you write again. And eventually, what's on your screen just might be better than what's in your head.
posted by Lisa Shearin at
6:17 AM
7 Comments:
Actually, I can love about five stories the same at the same time. Over the past three decades I've accumulated about thirty and am only now polishing up the fourth. At least half of those stories are hardly luke-warm by marketing standards.
So, the last time I had to choose, I went to the top five and chose based on which one I thought stood the best chance in this market. Of course, the market's constantly changing. (((sigh))) However, there are some genres which tend to hang tight, regardless, like Fantasy.
The thing is I have a very visual imagination and all my stories are with me all the time. So, I can love those five. I can work on one I don't love as much as those five even, because those stories are still with me and I can visit them whenever I want.
Does that make a lick of sense at all?
Anyway, once I get to the Weed & Polish stage, I can only focus on one story about ninety percent of the time or I go nuts. Pretty soon, my contemporary nanny is blasting Tribbles out of trees at the park with her multi-vector attack rifle, or something. Not good.
As to ideas, I've always said, anyone can have an idea for a story. Ideas are easy. It's taking the idea and turning it into a story that makes a writer.
Amen, Robert.
Lisa
Some ideas are like song jingles that WILL NOT go away until you give up and spend some time figuring out what the rest of the story is. Those stories tend to get written.
I like your pottery analogy, by the way. I took pottery in collage, and I discovered that a lot of the shaping of a piece is done after you've got it off the wheel, let it partly dry, then stuck it back on your wheel upside-down and given the whole thing a good trim to remove pesky rough edges. :)
I think trimming a pot sort of like the re-writing stage. Sure, your pot is pot shaped when you first take it off the wheel, but that doesn't mean you're ready to shove it in the kiln. (It'd explode if you put it in wet, anyway.)
Lisa, thanks for the comments about how a first draft can be like a blob of clay-- I have one right now that's just coming out all wrong-- and I have to keep telling myself to keep going, to finish the draft and then go back and shape it into something that makes sense. Your comments helped.
Patti
So glad I could help, Patti! That's what I'm here for. ; )
Lisa
I like the pot analogy, too. Unless you're like Mozart, there's a lot of refinement needed after the first draft. {Smile}
Anne Elizabeth Baldwin
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