Writing Ideas!

[Keymik]

Greetings Escapists! I'll cut this short. I want to become a writer but to become a writer I actually have to write something first. This is where you come in! See while I might have alot of ideas to write down I want to write something that I haven't been storing in my awesome story department of my brain.

Basicly I want you to tell what you'd like to see in some stories, note that I'm just gonna start out with short stories, or what you think I should avoid or just something you think is cool. Maybe you'd like to see a character with deep parental issues trying to be a parent or something! ANYTHING!

Please leave me with your thoughts and inputs so I can get to writing right away.
I'll even post a link to the finished stories when they're done if anyone is interested.

Thank you for your time ^^

 

[SomeLameStuff]

Oh look! Competition! >=D

Here's two ideas: Pokemon and the Lost Roman Legion.

Now go write something about them! =P

 

[Vault101]

snip

)I'm no expert...so the only helpful thing I can think of is to list the things I think don't like..take them as you will

-cliches: not all of them..but a fair portion of them

-female charachters: dont get your inspiration from maintream action movies..and by that I mean somone asking for writing advice her once basically said "I dont know what to do with female charachters....like I dont no how to not have them fall in love in between the action parts" at the time I admit I was an ass about it but...dont be like that

-fantasy: I'm generally not a fantassy fan but...just dont do the tolkein thing..please

-logic/consistancy: if you create a world have it make sense and stick by the rules you create..pretty basic stuff

-idiot ball/misunderstandings- this kind of shit is really frustrating..having charachter do stupid/asshole things to drive the plot forward

-charachters: "I'm too heroic/perfect/pretty/handsome/" is NOT A VAILD FLAW *cough*nathan drake*

-charachters 2: they should LEARN or develop or somthing

also Id recommend checking out this guys blog, he;s written a few really good books on the tpoic of writing which Id recommend, you can get them cheap digitally
http://terribleminds.com/

 

[SonicWaffle]

Greetings Escapists! I'll cut this short. I want to become a writer but to become a writer I actually have to write something first. This is where you come in! See while I might have alot of ideas to write down I want to write something that I haven't been storing in my awesome story department of my brain.

Write your own ideas. Develop all the things bouncing around your head into stories. If you just take things other people suggest and write them up you're not really developing your own talent or creativity - there's a difference between being inspired by something and assembling a patchwork of things other people have said they would like to see in a story.

Just my 2p, of course.

 

[Epic Bear Man]

Rewrite The Happening so it's actually a decent movie. Good luck.

And as SonicWaffle said, really you should be inspired. It could be anything from a previous story you really like (fan-fiction), or a new idea you've created all on your own. Either one should just be written, and just keep on writing. Creative writing is like a muscle; you need to keep constantly working it to churn out new and good ideas.

If you have difficulty building characters and plotlines, there's an assortment of good books and webpages that will help you out.

Oh, and there's also this fun website to use: http://oneword.com/

You get 60 seconds to write a short story/paragraph based around a word that they give you (i.e. cow). It's a great fun and quick way to help get those creative juices flowing.

 

[Thaluikhain]

IMHO, getting ideas is easy, getting them to come together as a story is hard.

One thing I'd like to see is your stock standard fantasy world a few hundred years later. What happens when people stop fighting the orcs for a few centuries, the elves and dwarves are locked in a space race? The world presumably doesn't end when the heroes stop the evil guy in a medievalish period.

OTOH, there's a lot of science that could be the basis of stories that we just don't see. For me, the classic one is that more or less all creatures have similar senses. Or, if there's any difference, it's that the monsters are "like human, only better". You never have strange human powers that aliens don't have.

Now, cats (like most placental mammals) can't distinguish between red and green (this is why hunters wear bright orange, it's bright to fellow shooters (and other primates), but not their prey). Their vertical resolution isn't as good as humans either. So, if you're fighting catfolk, you can make your landmines bright red so you don't set them off yourself, but they can still be camouflaged for the cats. Also, attacking them from above would help.

Also, certain animals (monotremes and one species of dolphin) can sense their prey by the electronic signals of their nervous systems. Not quite the same as hearing their heartbeat, but similar. This wouldn't be affected by changes in water temperature the way sonar is.

So, if you had two rivers joining, and the water was at different temperature, sonar wouldn't penetrate the join well, but the electric sense would. You could have platypus mermaids ambushing dolphins mermaids there, for example.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

Ant zombie apocalypse! Either GIANT ones or point of new from a regular worker/solider ant.

 

[Chromatic Aberration]

IMHO, getting ideas is easy, getting them to come together as a story is hard.

Aye, that's pretty much where all the problems come in; you not only need an idea but you need to make it internally consistent and at the same time provide an interesting narrative or characters that go along with it. I have about twenty to thirty ideas for some settings and concepts lying around. And guess what? I've just completely written down a grand total of two stories and am stuck at the third for months now.... So yes, it's that difficult!

That said, I personally like to use calculated deconstructions or inversions as my starting point. Just take some cliche or some usual thing you always knew existed, completely invert it and then start from there. However, don't just merely use it like that, though: fill it with life, go into the direction you started from and make it realistic and interesting in it's substance - otherwise it's more often just another cliche by itself. So the cliche you are starting out from should be properly known to your audience and yet not be as tackled and deconstructed as it should have been and you need to find an interesting and consistent way to treat it. It's also always nice to merge different deconstructions into one narrative to explore a certain theme; it gives your story more coherence and provides and interesting aspect of depth along with it, so you can as well start from something like this.

 

[Thaluikhain]

That said, I personally like to use calculated deconstructions or inversions as my starting point. Just take some cliche or some usual thing you always knew existed, completely invert it and then start from there. However, don't just merely use it like that, though: fill it with life, go into the direction you started from and make it realistic and interesting in it's substance - otherwise it's more often just another cliche by itself. So the cliche you are starting out from should be properly known to your audience and yet not be as tackled and deconstructed as it should have been.

That's a decent way of doing it.

Well, excepting if it's not a cliche because you invert it in the exact same way that everyone else is. All of those "I'm not a cliche Tolkien-wannabe, I'm a cliche anti-Tolkien wannabe"

 

[Sonofadiddly]

I had this dream the other night that could totally turn into a sci-fi fantasy hybrid novel. In the dream I was in the space military only I was going undercover as a space archaeologist and was waking up from cryogenic sleep with two other real space archaeologists. My mission was to go with them to unearth some fabled artifact and then steal it for the military, but just then the SPACE ANTAGONIST showed up (because he also wants the artifact probably) and attacked our ship and boarded and was like "HAY GUYS" and I was all "OH NO" and he said "How do you know who I am?" and I was like "Oh crap I've blown my cover!" Then I woke up.

I expect the first draft to be done by May.

 

[Chromatic Aberration]

Well, excepting if it's not a cliche because you invert it in the exact same way that everyone else is. All of those "I'm not a cliche Tolkien-wannabe, I'm a cliche anti-Tolkien wannabe"

That was essentially what I was getting at with this.

Other than that, I actually recalled a very good example of such an idea in a book I heard of (i.e. I haven't read it) in some TV/radio show I can't recall: Indigo by Clements J. Setz [http://www.amazon.de/Indigo-Roman-Clemens-J-Setz/dp/351842324X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362677050&sr=8-1]. The gist of the book is the existence of children with a strange condition that makes everyone in their vicinity feel immediately ill to the point of vomiting. While it's a deliberate comment on the idea of Indigo children - it's also a deconstruction of the usual role of children as cuteballs whose protection should be highest priority to every society. In this case the children are not cute but disgusting to the point of nausea and it's the adults who must be protected from them; that the children are still as much protection-worthy as the ordinary ones and not crazily superpowered[footnote]Which, as you and me both know, is a far too common trope now i.e. another example of an inversion becoming it's own cliché[/footnote] adds to the actual gravity of the inherent conflict by being more realistic, believable and tragic. It's what you can base a great story on that tackles a lot of facets about parenthood or the "equally caring" social state.

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

I don't want to be rude, but doesn't this seem...lazy? Like, are you just starting out writing, or have you been doing this for awhile? Or is this just like a project thing to really determine your skills as a writer? It just seems odd to me...I've been writing novels since second grade, so I find it unsettling to take writing recommendations from others since I've been coming up with ideas on my own for years. Anyway, just curious...sorry for wasting time by not giving any ideas XD

 

[ninjaRiv]

STOP!

Stop right there, man. Stop. Stop. Stop it.

It's good to get feedback from an audience. It's good to learn from others. It's good to use new ideas. But your characters and your story are your own. Don't ask people what you should write, just do it. Fucking do it, man. Experience life but make sure you write about it. Get the fuck out there! Read books, watch stuff. But write about it! Fucking write.

Here, a helpful resource
http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2012/01/03/25-things-writers-should-stop-doing/

The whole site is great but I think that article applies to you. I'm not having a go, by the way. I did the same thing for ages but found that my best stuff came from me and me alone, by taking my experiences and creating shit. Trying to copy things, take other peoples views on characters, etc can be harmful.

By the way, writing is hard.

 

[Dr. Cakey]

If you can come up with a system for extracting ideas from my brain - so that an extracted idea is no longer in my brain - I would be willing to donate them to you free of charge. Hell, I might even pay you. Story ideas are distractions that eliminate my focus from whatever idea I'm actually trying to work on.

 

[norashepard]

Before I got published, the thing that helped me learn to write the most was trying inventive things with characters. Do you know of a character trait that usually wouldn't work with a specific archetype? DO THAT. And I find that if you think of a decent setting and place those characters in it, any plot really writes itself. In fact, starting out, I recommend only to plan the absolute bare bones plot (beginning, ending) because so much will change in the middle as you write and think of more ideas.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

-logic/consistancy: if you create a world have it make sense and stick by the rules you create..pretty basic stuff

I second this. In fantasy you can do almost anything you want, because your audience tends to be more willing to suspend their disbelief than they would if the story took place in a more contemporary setting. Just be sure to remain consistent with whatever rules you establish.

Also when it comes to creating characters, specifically the protagonist, don't make them too perfect. How interesting a character's struggles are is directly proportional to how much the odds are stacked against them. The struggles of a character who has no chance of failing are not going to be very interesting.

 

[synobal]

Oh look! Competition! >=D

Here's two ideas: Pokemon and the Lost Roman Legion.

Now go write something about them! =P

Isn't that what started Jim butcher writing the Codex Alera?

 

[someonehairy-ish]

You could transplant the plot of a classic work of fiction into a different setting. That's always a fun exercise. Try to keep in mind how the setting is going to inform your characters. They can't behave exactly like they did before, and if they do, it will have different consequences and reactions.

So:

Othello, but in a sci-fi future, with a trans-human cyborg instead of the titular black guy.

Is one I just came up with on the spot. I quite like it, so I'm going to use it. But you could do the same thing easily enough. You could do War Of The Worlds transplanted into a folkloric fantasy setting, with demonic or magical invaders replacing aliens. You couuuuuld... I'll let you think of that.

EDIT: This is only a useful exercise if you allow the story and characters to transform into something very different to what they were in the original work of fiction. There is no point just rewriting a story and then changing all the nouns into different ones (ie, every instance of 'Venice' becomes 'Starship Bggerfner', or 'sword' becoming 'gun', or whatever.)

-charachters

Errm. Vault, it's characters. I catch myself doing that all the time, just thought I'd point it out to you so you can hopefully also notice when you do it. This is one of the few instances in the English language where the more obvious spelling actually is the right one -.-

 

[SomeLameStuff]

Oh look! Competition! >=D

Here's two ideas: Pokemon and the Lost Roman Legion.

Now go write something about them! =P

Isn't that what started Jim butcher writing the Codex Alera?

Yes, yes it is =P