Once I've let the idea stew on its own for a little while, and I've mentally explored what I think is cool about it (independent of whether it could turn into a good story), I step back and ask myself what sort of story-piece is it? Is it a setting or a conflict or a great beginning or character, etc, so forth.
It's kind of like... let's say you picked something really awesome at the farmer's market and you wanted to cook a great meal with it. You need to ask yourself, is it the protein (like a great cut of organic beef), or maybe a condiment, a cheese, a fancy spice, etc. To build a great, well rounded meal around that cut of beef, you're going to need to add the right vegetables and the right spices and the right cooking technique, and a wine that compliments it. The process is completely different if you start with, say, a quart of fresh blueberries or goat cheese.
The story is the full three course meal, but your meal prep might go a lot faster (and be more balanced and enjoyable) if you understand from the start that you're building a meal around a protein. You have a better idea what you're missing, what cooking techniques might best suit it, what flavors go best with it, what staples/genre tropes you might want to pull from your pantry. If you have steak, you don't probably don't need a can of tuna, but some rice might help.
So if your initial idea is, say, the image of a woman walking out of jail after a ten year sentence, no one's there to pick her up, and it starts raining, you seem to have a protagonist and an opening and an initial goal and some potential themes suggested by the setting/protagonist (maybe redemption or revenge). And by naming those story-components you do have, you get a better idea of what you're missing (say, an antagonist, a story goal, a setting, what genre you're working in, plot.)
Since the organic strip steak of this meal, the anchoring idea of this story is that recently paroled woman standing in the rain, you can start selecting your missing components based on what best compliments that core idea. What obstacles best challenge this heroine and her flaws (or conversely, what flaws could you give this heroine to make the obstacles you came up with even more disastrous). What conflicts are suggested by her felon status? What motivation might best drive her toward your snazzy, flash-of-inspiration goal of "steal her ex-husband's dog in the middle of the night". And is the dog stealing going to be more of an inciting incident, or the ultimate goal she achieves after 300 pages of wacky hijinks?
There's nothing wrong with just letting it grow organically, obviously, but the more you understand about what slots are filled by what you have, the easier it might be to identify what it is you need to have a healthy, tasty, balanced story. If you come up with a great scene, you might ask yourself, is this an opening scene, a turning point in the middle, is it the climax? For some people, stepping back and looking at their story from this dry, structural, craft POV can zap the magic, so sometimes it's best to do this sort of analysis after you've run through your initial burst of "wouldn't it be cool if X?" Your mileage may, naturally, vary.
It's kind of like... let's say you picked something really awesome at the farmer's market and you wanted to cook a great meal with it. You need to ask yourself, is it the protein (like a great cut of organic beef), or maybe a condiment, a cheese, a fancy spice, etc. To build a great, well rounded meal around that cut of beef, you're going to need to add the right vegetables and the right spices and the right cooking technique, and a wine that compliments it. The process is completely different if you start with, say, a quart of fresh blueberries or goat cheese.
The story is the full three course meal, but your meal prep might go a lot faster (and be more balanced and enjoyable) if you understand from the start that you're building a meal around a protein. You have a better idea what you're missing, what cooking techniques might best suit it, what flavors go best with it, what staples/genre tropes you might want to pull from your pantry. If you have steak, you don't probably don't need a can of tuna, but some rice might help.
So if your initial idea is, say, the image of a woman walking out of jail after a ten year sentence, no one's there to pick her up, and it starts raining, you seem to have a protagonist and an opening and an initial goal and some potential themes suggested by the setting/protagonist (maybe redemption or revenge). And by naming those story-components you do have, you get a better idea of what you're missing (say, an antagonist, a story goal, a setting, what genre you're working in, plot.)
Since the organic strip steak of this meal, the anchoring idea of this story is that recently paroled woman standing in the rain, you can start selecting your missing components based on what best compliments that core idea. What obstacles best challenge this heroine and her flaws (or conversely, what flaws could you give this heroine to make the obstacles you came up with even more disastrous). What conflicts are suggested by her felon status? What motivation might best drive her toward your snazzy, flash-of-inspiration goal of "steal her ex-husband's dog in the middle of the night". And is the dog stealing going to be more of an inciting incident, or the ultimate goal she achieves after 300 pages of wacky hijinks?
There's nothing wrong with just letting it grow organically, obviously, but the more you understand about what slots are filled by what you have, the easier it might be to identify what it is you need to have a healthy, tasty, balanced story. If you come up with a great scene, you might ask yourself, is this an opening scene, a turning point in the middle, is it the climax? For some people, stepping back and looking at their story from this dry, structural, craft POV can zap the magic, so sometimes it's best to do this sort of analysis after you've run through your initial burst of "wouldn't it be cool if X?" Your mileage may, naturally, vary.
