Ideas

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screenscope

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I like that, screenscope. It does sound like a fun process, and I can see how it might work for me. Also, I guess there's no reason why it would have to be limited to news stories.

It works on absolutely anything. I tried it once on a food packaging claim (lousy idea) and speculated on the possibly dire consequences if I disobeyed a 'Do not walk on the grass' sign (lousier idea), but I see them as creative stretches to warm up the imagination.
 

K_Remington

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A ton of my ideas come from music. I'm constantly on the hunt for new songs. If I find one that's particularly moving, I'll stick in my earbuds, crank up the volume, set to loop, and close my eyes. Scenes and images come spilling in. Converting them to words is the hard part, but great fun.
 

DanielSTJ

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Books, news, music, etc.

They're everywhere. The key, and this is for you to hone, is highlighting them amidst everything else to serve YOUR OWN purposes. Use at will.

:D
 

rosegold

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I get them from everywhere. Books, music, history, people, etc. Sometimes a character/scene will pop up in my head out of nowhere and refuse to go away.
 

Justobuddies

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So far I've used the first one as a writing exercise in voice, so I managed a few pages of nothing but dialogue with no tags, someday I'm sure I'll go back and finish it or flesh it out to something intelligible because it's a super fun idea.

The mayo one is just in my dusty shelf of lists, so it's a free idea for anyone willing to write that novel. :Thumbs:
 

Harlequin

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you asked how complete ideas are--very incomplete for me.

I need an opening scene which i'm interested in unpacking, and an emotional state I want to work towards, plus some themed stuff along the way; the rest comes as it comes, usually in the writing.
 

Maze Runner

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you asked how complete ideas are--very incomplete for me.

I need an opening scene which i'm interested in unpacking, and an emotional state I want to work towards, plus some themed stuff along the way; the rest comes as it comes, usually in the writing.

The bolded really interests me. I think it's occured to me at some point. Can you elaborate at all? I'm guessing that most would allow that to happen as it will, but I could be wrong about that. Maybe at their essence, and so far as what they leave us witih, this is what stories are, so why not identify that emotion up front, and work within that range? Am I close? Interesting.
 

Harlequin

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Heya Maze,

I will try! I'm not a good explainer in general, though.

I found this article from HP Lovecraft early on with some tips on how he approaches writing, and he has this section on early ideas:

"...usually I start with a mood or idea or image which I wish to express, and revolve it in my mind until I can think of a good way of embodying it in some chain of dramatic occurrences capable of being recorded in concrete terms. I tend to run through a mental list of the basic conditions or situations best adapted to such a mood or idea or image, and then begin to speculate on logical and naturally motivated explanations of the given mood or idea or image in terms of the basic condition or situation chosen."

He's rather long-winded but it really resonated with me (and rather like parenting advice, I think it's generally a good idea to go with writing advice that "resonates" with you.)

So with Anchor, I started with the core conflict: two women who share one life, and one of the women is suicidal, which will end both their lives. MC1 starts confident -> becomes conflicted -> ends despairing. MC2 starts suicidal -> becomes conflicted -> ends resilient. The actual events didn't really matter to me. I don't care, at this stage in the process, what causes one to be despairing, or one to be conflicted; any of that I'm happy to change. The main thing is that those emotional state occur.

For MC2 in particular, I had her ending scene written well in advance of most of the book. That feeling you get, when you've been put through an emotional wringer and you're a quivering pile of metaphorical jelly but still standing--JUST--is what I was going for, so that's what I wrote her end-scene to depict. I had a couple of other core emotional scenes (the first antagonistic clash between MC1 and MC2, things like that) but actual plot points or events, I constantly changed, rewrote, or rearranged as needed to serve the ending scene and to create the end emotional states that I wanted.


I'm doing some revisions now and while writing them out, I worked out a better way I could do the plot that would be stronger and more logical. It would require scrapping some of the emotional "pillars" though so I think the story would be less impactful; I've gone, in this case, for a weaker plot in exchange for what is hopefully a stronger emotional arc. (And this is where plot-driven novels would diverge from character driven, I suspect.)


Sorry to use my own stuff but I find it easier to explain with a practical example.
 

Maze Runner

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Harlequin, thank you very much. Times when I'm reading a novel or watching a movie and am touched in a way that feels universal, like it had much less to do with what was actually going on in the scene than what the scene represented wih regards to the shared human experience. I think that's what people relate to, even though they're unlikely to have been in that exact situation. It seems to , me that's what will stay with people. It's kind of like law students studying a case to see what principle can be extracted from it. Is this something everyone knows but me? Hahaha, wouldn't surprise me a bit. Thanks for this, I've got a lot to think about here.
 
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