A sort-of writing-related question about ideas.

The Bawlin Sox said:

So here’s the question: what can one do to improve ideas-generation?

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Basically the more I used the ideas I had, the more ideas popped into my head. Beyond that, I question everything, I'm curious about everything, I try to learn everything I possibly can about every tiny thing. I collect knowledge even when it seems trite at the time.

I also ask what if? a lot. I'll look at news headlines and think "Wouldn't it be cool if this happened instead?" I make up little stories in my head about odd things or people I see. A line in a book I'm reading can trigger a dozen new ideas.

And the more ideas I have, the more ideas I have. They breed--like dust bunnies.

The Bawlin Sox said:

It’s perhaps more of an intellectual question.

It seems to me there’s a continuum of ideas-generation, where at one end of the scale you can have a person literally overflowing with story ideas, and at the other end, people about whom you might say that if they had an idea it would be lonely.

Presently, I probably fit somewhere in the middle of that continuum.

I think it goes without saying that a story is made up of a succession of connected ideas.

So here’s the question: what can one do to improve ideas-generation?

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I'm confused, actually. Since you claim to be at the middle of the continuum, then you aren't asking on how to generate more ideas, but how to generate better ones?

And... I don't think your definition of a story goes without saying. It makes no sense to me. Perhaps the way it is worded? Perhaps we have different meanings for the word 'idea'? I usually have AN idea, that generates a story...

Well, I don't know. A lot of things in stories are routine cliches. Trying to make them seem fresh is the hard part. How to improve idea generation? Experience new things. Do the unexpected. Learn something new.

The Bawlin Sox said:

It’s perhaps more of an intellectual question.

It seems to me there’s a continuum of ideas-generation, where at one end of the scale you can have a person literally overflowing with story ideas, and at the other end, people about whom you might say that if they had an idea it would be lonely.

Presently, I probably fit somewhere in the middle of that continuum.

I think it goes without saying that a story is made up of a succession of connected ideas.

So here’s the question: what can one do to improve ideas-generation?

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Practice!

I often wondered where writers got their ideas. Then I started using writing prompts to do my daily writing. (Some good ones are at Writer's Digest) I write 500-1000 words on each writing prompt everyday my health/work/children allow. Sometimes I would write exactly what the prompt asked, and other times I go off on tangents.

I found that the more I wrote about random ideas, the more I saw ideas everywhere. It's like when you decide to buy a certain car, and all the sudden you see them everywhere.

You just have to train yourself to see them.

The Bawlin Sox said:

I think it goes without saying that a story is made up of a succession of connected ideas.

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I know this confused other people, but I do agree with it. I think a story consists of a lot of different ideas, though not necessarily connected to each other. Granted, that may have to do with how I write. I can be in the middle of writing something and then see a newspaper article that gives me an idea to go in a different direction. Or just to do something different than what I was thinking of doing.

The Bawlin Sox said:

So here’s the question: what can one do to improve ideas-generation?

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I think the first key is to not set your expectations too high and expect the idea to instantly appear from what you find. A freelancer I met would clip articles that interested him and put them into a folder. Then, when he needed to do an article, he'd go through the folder until something caught it his eye. I did the same thing with the story I'm working on. Maybe a month ago, I found an interesting article on hyenas in the newspaper. I tore it out and stuck it in the notebook I had with me. Didn't have a clue what to do with other than I thought the topic was interesting. Earlier this week, I shipped off an article to a magazine and was thinking that now I needed to do some flash fiction. I happened to have the same notebook with me, and there were two articles I'd clipped in it. I read the first one, and the hit the second one, with the hyenas--and misread a single sentence. That became the idea for the story.

I've gotten ideas off articles and photos in the newspaper, museum cards, researching topics for other projects, or even going into a library sale and finding a book. Sometimes even a topic for a theme in a magazine is enough to give me an idea to go with. To get started, you could probably clip interesting articles and stick them in a folder.

The Bawlin Sox said:

I think it goes without saying that a story is made up of a succession of connected ideas.

?

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If true, and I'm not sure this is for all writers. For me, the idea I use to begin a story should itself generate the next, connected idea without any help from me. If it doesn't, the story won't work.

But I don't really start with an idea. I find ideas to be generally useless, and the danger is that connected ideas really aren't connected at all, or at least don't follow the logical story continuum.

I write by placing what I hope is an inetresting characetr in an interesting situation. The story begings with an action. Everything thereafter is reaction, action, reaction, action, reaction, etc., and I don't need to generate ideas for what these actions and reactions are. The events themselves generate the story.

When something happens, most often an action by the antagonist, there's a logical reaction to it, usually by the protagonist. This is followed by a logical action by the antagonist, which is itself a reaction to whatever the protagonist did.

What happens next is already built into what has already happened. This means all I need to generate is the interesting character, and the interesting situation. All I do is tell the story generated by the opening.

For me ideas tend to generate in two ways.
1: They appear in my head without warning
2: I make them myself

With the second one, I will pick a random word/object from somewhere, write it down, and then brainstorm around it. It doesn't always work, but sometimes it does, and the more I think about that word and the connections I made with it, the more an idea will start to form.

For me ideas tend to generate in two ways.
1: They appear in my head without warning
2: I make them myself

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I agree. But when I actually sit down to turn that idea into a story, the more I write, the more my muse gives me so that I am able to have a cohesive series of ideas.

Jamesaritchie said:

But I don't really start with an idea. I find ideas to be generally useless, and the danger is that connected ideas really aren't connected at all, or at least don't follow the logical story continuum.

I write by placing what I hope is an inetresting characetr in an interesting situation.

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And how is an interesting character in an interesting situation NOT an idea?

Celia Cyanide said:

And how is an interesting character in an interesting situation NOT an idea?

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How is it an idea? Anyone can place an interesting character in an interesting situation, though often not well. It's what comes after this that gets most writers in trouble.

An interesting charateris just a three dimensional person placed on the page. An interesting situation usually just means someone is trying to kill, steal from this character, or place this this character is some sort of jeopardy. It takes no imagination to get far, and almost every novel begins along tehse line.

It may be an idea in the technical sense, the situation is, I hope, unique and well-execudted, but it's just as situation, and sure as heck has nothing to do with the kind of ideas I think the poster is looking for, or the kind of idea that has anything to do with eureka moments.

And it's the trying to find a series of connected ideas that's the point here. I don't do this. For me, the story is already there. I just write it down.

I don't really think you can force ideas to jump into your mind. You can encourage them, though.

Things I find helpful:

1. Reading
2. Looking at pictures, on 'Deviantart' or the like
3. Listening to music
4. Writing random scenes and seeing what emerges.

In the past I've felt like a 'bad writer' because I didn't have a fountain of ideas between my ears. But sometimes you just go through 'dry seasons', you know?

Acid.

Jamesaritchie said:

How is it an idea? Anyone can place an interesting character in an interesting situation, though often not well. It's what comes after this that gets most writers in trouble.

An interesting charateris just a three dimensional person placed on the page. An interesting situation usually just means someone is trying to kill, steal from this character, or place this this character is some sort of jeopardy. It takes no imagination to get far, and almost every novel begins along tehse line.

It may be an idea in the technical sense, the situation is, I hope, unique and well-execudted, but it's just as situation, and sure as heck has nothing to do with the kind of ideas I think the poster is looking for, or the kind of idea that has anything to do with eureka moments.

And it's the trying to find a series of connected ideas that's the point here. I don't do this. For me, the story is already there. I just write it down.

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I think that we (as in different people) have different understandings of what the word 'idea' encompasses.

I came up with a good idea the other day.

It was one of my life-experiences that I thought would be really cool if I just gave it this neat little twist, and had it happen to a different kind of person, and then gave it a different ending.

Seriously. But most of my ideas are generated by choosing a theme such as "Wild Women" and then just brainstorming on that theme until a character and a situation present themselves. Like, my current WIP has a housewife who does break-ins to cure her boredom. My next one will probably be about a seamstress who gets involved with both a cop AND the man who's number one on that cop's "to arrest" list. After that, I'm thinking about doing one about a computer geek who gets pulled into busting up dogfighting rings. All on the concept of "Wild Women", the idea being that every woman is wild, on the inside...some just more than others.