ideas you'll never write....

this is just kinda a fun topic. don't put in anything in here you think you might actually some day go back and write if you run dry on the good stuff, lol.

i actually wrote a few scenes of this one, i just thought it was too kitzchy and goofy to resist. for the same reasons i began, i also stopped. lucky for me, you, and humanity in general. but did anyone give me an award? hell no.

the title was 'elvis and the holy grail vs. hitler.'

still reading? sucker. the premise was time travelling gov't agents go back in time to rescue elvis right before he dies in the crap-house. remember, nixon made the king a gov't agent. the agents, the female predictably falling in love with elvis (he *was* the MAN, after all), bring him back into the future, get him back into shape, and sends him off to another world, where hitler, in possession of the holy grail (remember he was a religious artefact collector) is whipping up an alien army to conquer earth.

armed with his kung fu and gov't issued guard dog, a bassett hound, elvis has to destroy hitler once and for all and save the human race. it ends in an elvis concert where all the great of rock 'n roll are brought back. well, actually, it ends as elvis purposefully self-destructs in the earth's atmosphere so no one can ever abuse the power of the grail again.

i'm almost ashamed to say i had thought quite a bit about this story for a couple of weeks. but then i found the awful bruce campbell movie 'bubba ho-tep' on the shelves and thought, damn, you gotta be kidding me? (elderly elvis vs. egyptian mummy.)

oh, i got more, believe me.

Preyer

"the premise was time travelling gov't agents go back in time to rescue elvis right before he dies in the crap-house."

If you did that Elvis would be governor of Tennessee right now! That might not be a bad thing.

:smokin

Preyer,

I had an idea about a squeamish vampire who needed blood to sustain himself but was too chicken to go out and get it in the conventional vampire way. He had to resort to accident scenes, robbing blood banks and all other manor of procuring the needed substance. Throw in a bumbling side-kick and you've got yourself a horror/comedy of some sort.
Well, it never went anywhere, so I throw it out there for anybody to grab hold of. You'll need some kind of a plot,
the squeamish characteristic is secondary but I think it could go somewhere.

Triceratops

I have sort of a trick with ideas that another writer told me about a long time ago. When I get an idea I usually spend a month doing my absolute best to forget it. I don't write it down, I try to not even think about it at all.

I do forget a great many ideas. To me, this means the idea wasn't worth writing about. If, on the other hand, the idea is still buzzing around inside my head after a month, if I can't forget about it no matter how hard I try, I take that as a sign that it's a good idea worthy of a story, so I sit down and write it.

So in a sense, the only ideas I'll never write are the ones I can't remember, the ones that simply refuse to get out of my head after a month.

I don't try to forget ideas. I work them all in my mind as far as they will go. Most however do not have the persistence to just stay there so they tend to go away into a more or less forgotten limbo.

That is OK, because very often two, ten, or twenty of those ideas will coalesce into an idea that does persist: Or I will be thinking about a persistent idea and one or more of those ideas hanging in limbo are perfect for it.

The time spent thinking about an idea, even if you know it will never amount to anything in and of itself, is never wasted.

The time spent thinking about an idea, even if you know it will never amount to anything in and of itself, is never wasted.

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Probably. But when I'm thinking about an idea I know isn;t going anywhere it means I'm not thinking about an idea that is going somewhere.

Sometimes I work off an idea, and every great once in a while a story comes to me full-blown. I don't have to think about it, there's no idea, it's just a finished story that pops into my head. It doesn't happen often, a gift from my muse, I guess, but I love those stories.

Far more often than not, however, I don't even have an idea in mind when I sit down to start a story. The old Ray Bradbury trick of keeping a list of nouns that can be used as titles works very well.

I sit down with nothing in mind, go through my list of nouns and verbs, put a couple together into a title I like, write it down, then write the first sentence below that, and I'm off.

Even if I do have an idea in mind, I can't write a word until I get a title I like. But most of my stories aren't written off ideas. The title itself generates a first sentence, that generates a second sentence, on and on, until the story is finished. I thnk it's my favorite way of writing.

I have sort of a trick with ideas that another writer told me about a long time ago. When I get an idea I usually spend a month doing my absolute best to forget it. I don't write it down, I try to not even think about it at all.

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A stronger man than I. I write down most everything that pops into my head, even if I don't write it out, or use it at any point in the forseeable future.

And to answer the OP, I've got a revenge fantasy starring a cowboy chimp that's probably not going anywhere for a while.

A stronger man than I. I write down most everything that pops into my head, even if I don't write it out, or use it at any point in the forseeable future.

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I did this when I first started writing, and found myself with notebooks full of ideas I'd never use, and many that just weren't any good.

When another pro writer suggested the "try your best to forget it" idea, I did try it, and it worked wonderfully.

But as I explain in the post addressed to me, I also get pretty analytical in my approach to writing stories. With new magazines, I usually go thrugh that routine, and I've found storie sthat sell are most often stories only I can write.

Experience has taught me to write such stories almost automatically, so the important aspects of a story come from a different place than the idea itself. For me, the idea is nothing but a tiny seed crystal, and is the least important part of the whole process.

I don't write down anything. Not a scrap of paper. I keep them all in my head... dangerous, of course. But I figure if I'd ever become crazy or suffer from memory loss or something, I wouldn't be able to write anyway.

one that isn't actually too bad, i think, was one that i approached with the idea of consciously using themes and allegories. it bored me silly and i just stopped after a few pages. basically it entailed an average guy and his brother literally taking over their neighbourhood, at first through 'historical societies' and 'neighbourhood watches' to enfore their whims, then is escalates into flat-out intimidation and smatterings of violence.

just one of those stories you think the concept is there, but don't feel strongly enough about to actually sit down and bang out as were it a chore.

Maestro, you just gave me an idea I'll probably never write. It's about a character who loses their memory, and later starts writing a novel, which turns out to contain elements of their real life.

From that start it could go down one of two roads, neither of which are stories I'd actually like, which is why I don't think I'll ever write it.

Jules, but what if they're not figment of his real life memories, but memories of his imagination? And he's writing a memoir....

*wiggling brows*

(oh, writers do that all the time... my bad)

when the bored inhabitants of sunnyvale retirement home concoct a candy bar that increases brain power, the evil corporation decides they want a piece of the action. but when the after-effects become clear, temporary complete idiocy and highly addictive, they say no. of course, evil corporation steals the recipe and begins making the candy bars, which are a huge success. it's up to the grannies and grampas to take back their formula and stop the destruction their candy bar has caused.

yeah, i'll get right on this one.

when the bored inhabitants of sunnyvale retirement home concoct a candy bar that increases brain power, the evil corporation decides they want a piece of the action. but when the after-effects become clear, temporary complete idiocy and highly addictive, they say no. of course, evil corporation steals the recipe and begins making the candy bars, which are a huge success. it's up to the grannies and grampas to take back their formula and stop the destruction their candy bar has caused.

yeah, i'll get right on this one.

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I don't know. Sounds just like a Disney movie, to me. As a comedy for the Disney crowd, it might be pretty good.

so, as far as bad ideas to, this is still good enough for disney? lol.

they could make a movie of it and have an actual candy bar tie-in. give them out for free with purchase of a large pop and souvenir popcorn bucket, or versie visa.

i should have gone into marketing. i could have worked for such great companies as intellicorp or controlladata, Inc., or some such company that carries an appropriately vague name. i could even start up a company like that, and just start sending bigger companies bills. and when they ask who i am and what my business does, i'll throw in a bunch of buzzwords and they'll be like, oh, you do that? well, okay, here's a check.

hey, there's another bad idea right there, eh? just start sending bills out to big corporations, put down some ridiculous reason why you're billing them, and see what happens. if nothing else, it'd be good for an article for the local rag.

I once outlined a novel that started with someone beng knocked back for "Unemployment" benefits, getting together with a bunch of other guys with similar experiences and deciding to secede and set themselves up as their own country.

The plot became more and more outlandish. I pitched it around the family table and had everyone screaming in laughter. Except for Dad who said it was ridiculous and too far fetched.

The trouble was, I'd actually compiled the whole thing from real life events.

But then again, maybe I will go back some time and write it some day.

hey, there's another bad idea right there, eh? just start sending bills out to big corporations, put down some ridiculous reason why you're billing them, and see what happens. if nothing else, it'd be good for an article for the local rag.

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Scratch out the "ridiculous reason" and substitute "plausible reason" and it has been done.

Read books on con games, con artists, frauds, etc.

The perpetrators are usually tripped up by greed. A school received a bill they knew they did not incur. Wrote a letter saying there was a mistake. Instead of backing off the fool sent a dunning letter. When the school investigated the lid blew off.

One guy regularly sent letters to restaurants detailing the destruction of his wife's blue dress through some accident with, I think gravy. When a man who owned the franchise on two restaurants of the same kind found two exact letters of the same kind in each he headed for the fraud squad.

jim, that was an episode of 'the family guy' once. a great show, that one.

wa, i'd read a great book on con men a few years back. having one on my wife's side of the family exposed me firsthand to what they can be like. he stole my father-in-law's identity, opened up a couple of businesses, took out loans, got credit cards, etc., all in my f-in-law's name.

we contacted the FBI, who said they don't handle identity theft. what?! they told us to contact the CIA. so we did. they said they usually don't get involved in ID theft cases that don't go over $200,000. what?! they said they'd 'look into it, though.' and, don'tcha know, not a single law enforcement agency wanted anything to do with it. this @#%$ screwed my f-i-l out of over a hundred grand, ruined his credit probably for life, has caused untold stress on the poor guy, and this family member has already been to prison twice for conning people. we had compiled evidence against the guy reaching up to our hips (a necessity because not a one of the 'law enforcement agents' are capable or willing to investigate their way out of a bathroom stall) and, after harassing the police to do their fcuking jobs for once, finally got a detective to pay us some lip service. he was about to give up with the con man called the detective up and told him to mind his own goddamned business. so, then the detective got involved. all it took was for the bad guy to threaten him.