Developing Story Ideas: Fostering Intuition?

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Dale Emery

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As you're developing ideas into stories, what do you do to encourage and engage and stimulate your intuition?

As I said in my thread on story-development techniques, I'm okay (and getting better) at finding ideas that could maybe possibly one day kinda sorta become a story idea. I'm less good right now at developing those into stories.

My intuition is (perhaps like everyone's) hit-or-miss. I suspect that some of you have specific ways if fostering your intuition, and I'm hoping to learn some things I can try.

Thanks!
Dale
 

ChaosTitan

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Interesting question, Dale. I don't know that (for me) intuition is something I can develop. It's something that is there, always.

To clarify your original post, how are you applying intuition to writing?
 

Linda Adams

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I come up with the hook, the thing that makes it stand out from others. Since the books are hopefully intended as a series, the hook was intended to be strong enough to carry through multiple books and stories could spring from it. Once I had the hook, I was about to come up with something like four books in the series (how these will play out in a story is another thing entirely).

For the second one, I realized that many of the urban fantasies are like detective novels--or at least they're very similar. I didn't want to do a detective novel, so I developed the hook by asking myself what occupation I could pair magic with to be different? The answer to that became the hook.

This seems to be the most successful way for me to come up with eventual stories. It gives me something to anchor the story around and make sure that element is in there.
 

Dale Emery

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To clarify your original post, how are you applying intuition to writing?

Haphazard cycles of focusing and defocusing.

I spend chunks of my waking hours thinking about the story idea, usually going over and over stuff I've already thought of. Then, if I can manage it, I'll put it out of my mind and let the associative parts of my brain knead it for a while.

Sometimes I'll think about a problem before I go to sleep, so that my intuition can work on it overnight.

For example, a while ago I had an idea of a horrible, supernatural thing that could happen to a 12-year-old boy. That was my undeveloped initial idea. After pondering on the idea for a few intense days, I let it go (more or less). A few days later I realized that the guy who did the awful thing was his older brother. Some months later (after more cycles of focusing and defocusing) I had an aha about the brother's good intentions.

Dale
 

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After I get that Light bulb of an idea in my head, I ask the normal questions. Usually a character is involved. At that point that character creates more--friends, family, enemies, etc. My intuition from there is my characters' intuition. What would he do, what would she do? If I did this as my MC, what would I do as my antag? I drop myself into each and every character and react to the things that all the other characters are doing--taking into account that character's personality, of course. Events react to what the characters do, or characters react to events. That usually carries me pretty far into developement.
 

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This may sound wierd, but I use dreams. I was stuck on my first novel because I couldn't think of a way that would make the main plot action, the smuggling of a nuclear weapon into the US, interesting or fresh. I laid in bed one night for about an hour thinking about it, and then went to sleep. That night I had a dream about a new biological triggering device and woke up with all the info I needed to get the story going again. Since then I have used this trick a couple more times and it has worked well. I do a lot of heavy thinking before going to bed and the answers come from my subconsious, which apparently has a lot of spare time to think things out.
 

steveg144

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As you're developing ideas into stories, what do you do to encourage and engage and stimulate your intuition?

Dale, I find two tools that are must-have for evolving a germ of an idea: my pickup truck, and my digital microrecorder. Once a particular idea has forced its way to the top of the queue, and it becomes my current "working" project, I find that a lot of the work gets done driving back and forth to work. Ideas, approaches, dialog, etc etc, come to me when I'm barreling down the highway at 70MPH. Since scribbling ideas onto PostIt(tm) notes at 70MPH is A Very Bad Idea (trust me on this one), I've found the microrecorder to be a godsend. Hit the REC button, spill my thoughts onto it, hit the STOP button, repeat as ideas evolve and occur. When I get home I playback and clean off the microrecorder. Some days, it's not unusual for me to have a half dozen items to be scraped off and put into my notebook.

Other people find their shower serves the same purpose as my pickup truck, though I wouldn't recommend they drag a microrecorder into the shower with them. :D
 

Phaeal

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Intuition is what attracts me to certain idea bits in the first place. Reading and listening to people and looking around you and otherwise staying open to the world is what gives intuition things to grab at.

Intuition, unleashed from the critical mind by free-writing, is also what will put idea bits together and decide when the initially rickety structure is strong enough to bear the weight of a first draft.

Intuition also knows when to welcome new ideas into a draft underway.

Intuition is the sudden, out of nowhere sense that THIS is important, THIS is right.
 

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I use dreams, too. I have very vivid, very odd dreams that I almost always remember. My dream journal is full of snippets and ideas that eventually work their way into my writing. Sometimes they're just visual images, sometimes they're full scenes.

I also free write when I'm having trouble, to help untangle the mental knots. I always do this longhand, and just start babbling onto the page about character or plot writing down anything and everything that comes to mind. Usually within a page or five I have new ideas, and often new questions, too.
 

Dale Emery

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Other people find their shower serves the same purpose as my pickup truck, though I wouldn't recommend they drag a microrecorder into the shower with them. :D

I've heard of people hanging "dive slates" in their showers.

I have a nice digital recorder, and two notebooks that are always with me in my "writer's pants". Which model pickup truck do you recommend for incubating ideas? ;-)

Dale
 

Dale Emery

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Intuition is what attracts me to certain idea bits in the first place. Reading and listening to people and looking around you and otherwise staying open to the world is what gives intuition things to grab at.

Yes, one of my favorite exercises (that I learned from Jerry Weinberg) is "Over lunch today, notice five things. Write a sentence or a paragraph about each."

I keep forgetting to do that one.

Dale
 

Dale Emery

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Hmmm... It seems that I already know what to do (mindmapping, freewriting, guiding dreams, openness to observing, making notes, stepping into the characters, focusing and defocusing, taking a weekly shower). And I already know these things work for me.

But I don't do them as often as would be fruitful. Hmmm.

Dale
 

icerose

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Before I start extensively writing on a story idea, I generally have most of the story already written in my head. After that it's a matter of getting it on paper.
 

Shadow_Ferret

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I'm not sure what intuition has to do with writing. To me that has something to do with unlearned knowledge, you intuit something. Like: most children intuitively know that fire will burn them.

As far as developing story ideas, when an idea pops into my head I start writing. Nothing more complicated than that.
 

Kalyke

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This is how I got the idea for my WIP (finally figured out what that meant). I studied a specific sort of interesting person (won't be specific). I found the problems of living in the skin of these specific people. I extrapolated various situations that could happen with the possible gas milage that a novel would need. I don't believe all ideas can sustain a full length book. I had come up with something appropriate to a novel length book. Once I had a decent Idea which I knew I could move for 300 pages, I outlined the beginning. How would I intro the person, how would I intro the problem. With each section, I pulled the plot threads out-- like building an expansion bridge over a river-- forwarding the plot. Since the characters were developing, in the meanwhile, their changed personalities told me how they would react and so on, and what they would do. I am now in a part where the characters have decided to run by themselves for a while. As the author, I keep them pushed back into the roles which they can't really move far from -- okay now this is the fascinating part, I have found, they push on their own, to grow out of their predestined roles. This is really a character driven book, literally.

This story is the second of 3. The first is at about 77 pages, this one is at 150, the 3rd is at 0, (oh, they will be short novels, less thn 250 pages each) but with each page, I get more of an idea on how to proceed on the other 2. I know the entire story of the first, for example. I know what happened to the main character, as I do in this 2nd novel. I also, strangely enough, have more of an idea about how to finish a book I started and threw aside about 5 years ago.

I'm trying to get into a mode where I can actually do maybe 5 pages per day. Often though it is like developing muscles you've got to feel the burn and then take a day off to allow the new muscle fiber to grow.

Oh-- also the Bob Dylan song "Hard Rain" -- I know my song well before I sing it.

I know the stories, and recite them, over and over in my head, looking for flaws. I also read the MS again and again for stuff that doesn't work. I feel that if you can tell a story in a shortened version (like a campfire story) and it sounds good all the way through, having the perfect "scary" ending, then you are good. As I said though, I build my span as I go, so I have to keep adding onto the story. The way that I corral myself in, is that right while I am writing the beginning of the book, I write the end. Knowing the ending really gives me a clue of how the characters must travel on the road I create. It is kind of sad, especially if the characters are "doomed" but this is a creation for an audience who need to read it forward, while I have the luxury to write it backward.
 
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