On Ideas, And What To Do With Them

Today, I'm going to talk about how to take that idea you've been meaning to write for the longest time, and turn it into a book. Or at least the beginning of what might someday become a book.

But first, a few thoughts...

There is this notion in the minds of many people of ideas as precious things to be safe-guarded, protected, kept hidden, and safe behind lock and key lest someone steal them from you. These people couldn't be more wrong.

On Ideas – Part I

Here's a list of ideas for a book:

• A school for wizards.

• A man faces a trial for a crime he didn’t commit.

• A town struggling to survive after a flood.

• A small device that answers any question you ask.

• Talking animals. 

You might recognize some of them. They all, in part at least, make an aspect of a famous novel. For some of you, a "school for wizards" may bring back memories of Harry Potter, or (if you're old enough) of Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea. The number of stories that have been written about ‘a man faces a trial for a crime he didn’t commit’ is countless. A ‘small device that answers any question you ask’ could easily describe Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, and so could  ‘talking animals.’

But would you say that any of the ideas listed above are what those books are about? Would you say that if you've come up with the idea of "a school for wizards" before JK Rowling, and wrote it down into novel shape, you would be sitting where she is now, swimming in millions and getting into twitter fights with random strangers on the internet? No, of course not.

That's because ideas are cheap. They are almost worthless. I'm particularly fond of this John Steinback quote:

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

The way I think about it, an idea can be anything. It can be a character (a rogueish looking girl who likes both killing people and wearing dresses), or an object (a key that opens all locks), or even a full-fledged scene.

It can be a theme (love conquers all), a feeling (that strange sense of wonder you get when listening to tales told in the dark), or an event (a war between two nation-states.)

None of these things are particularly interesting. None of these things, by themselves, make a book, or a tv show, or a movie. That's because books, tv-shows, movies, aren't about one singular idea that is just better than most others out there. They are about multiple ideas combined and connected in an interesting way so as to form a whole larger than the sum of its parts.

Let's take Harry Potter as an example. HP is about, among other things:

• A school for wizards. (setting)

• An orphan boy with a scar on his forehead. (character)

• A magical world hiding just around the corner of our everyday life. (notion)

• A villain who was born out of a loveless marriage, and who really, really likes snakes. (character)

• A trio of friends who get into a lot of trouble. (character / relationship)

Etc, etc, etc.

None of the things on that list are particularly original. Give it a try. Cover all but one of the items on the list with your hand, squint hard, and think: "Where else have I read about this?" I'm sure you'll be able to come up with more than one example for each (except maybe for the villain who likes snakes bit.)

Now, lift your hand from the screen. Look at the list again. There it is, clear as day: Harry Potter, one of the best-selling series of all times.

On Ideas – Part II

Maybe using Harry Potter isn't necessarily the best way to prove my point. Some of you might read "an orphan boy with a scar in his forehead" and think, of course, Harry Potter, what else? So I'll give you a different list. These are ideas that have been circling around my head during the last few years:

• A building where time does not pass. (setting)

• Stained glass windows. (object)

• A father and a son, taking a road trip together under the cold winter snow and sharing stories with each other. (premise)

• Two boys, sitting together in the attic of a building, looking out a window at the view of the city outside. (moment/scene)

• A man who has lost his heart, a girl trying to recover his father's heart. (premise/relationship)

Here are a few more, just to be safe:

• It's summer vacation at a beach town. (setting)

• A boy to whom rain follows wherever he goes. (premise)

• A boy, a different one, and a girl kiss under the rain, at a party, and then the lights go out. (moment/scene)

• A story that is mostly told in phone calls between different characters. (structural idea)

They look completely random, don't they? But they aren't. The first is a list of the main elements of one of the two novels I'm writing right now. The second is a list of the main elements of a script I wrote about a year ago.

I just gave you all my ideas. There you go, they are free for you to take. Take all my rabbits. I don't mind. They probably won't mean a lot to you and, even if they do, they will mean completely different things to you than to me. You could even use them all. I promise you will end up writing something completely different from what I wrote.

By now, you might be wondering why I just wasted five minutes of your precious time on a half-formed rant about ideas and why they are cheap. I'm sorry, for whatever it's worth. I promise I'm trying to get somewhere with this. Everything you read until now was, in my somewhat neurotic opinion, a necessary introduction to the main topic of today's edition.

How do I turn a list of random ideas into a book?

Now that we've settled the notion of books not being about one single idea, but about the combination of multiple ideas connected in interesting ways to form a whole larger than the sum of its parts...

I'm going to explain my own method on how to use a list of random ideas such as the ones mentioned above and turn them into a book. Or, at least, enough meat I can use as a launching point to start writing a book.

But first, a caveat: this is extremely personal. This is what I do, what I've figured works best for me. By no means am I saying that this will be the answer to all your problems, that if you follow these instructions step by step, you'll write the next great American novel.

Still here? Awesome.

My process is simple and mechanical. It has 5 simple steps:

Step 1: Grab a pack of notecards. Any form or shape or size does the trick, though I prefer the 4x6 Ruled Line ones. Don't forget to bring a pen or pencil, too.

Step 2: Sit down in your room, office, bench under a tree, whatever. Grab your first notecard, and write down the ideas on your list, one idea per notecard. For example –– If you're list looks something like this:

• It's summer vacation at a beach town. (setting)

• A boy to whom rain follows wherever he goes. (premise)

• A boy, a different one, and a girl kiss under the rain, at a party, and then the lights go out. (scene)

• A story that is mostly told in phone calls between different characters. (structural idea)

Each of those bullets would go into their individual notecard.

Step 3: Spread out the cards with ideas on them before you. Look at them. Using them as guidance, start writing whatever comes to mind in more notecards, and group all notecards of similar nature together. You decide what similar nature means, of course.

It can be scenes, characters, settings, premises, etc. (Again, one idea per notecard.) If you've been thinking about this book of yours for a while (years, for instance) ideas will begin pouring out like water from a tightly wound hose suddenly let loose. If you're just doing this exercise 'cause you've got 3 items on your original list and were thinking, 'hell, I just want to give this exercise a go' that's good too. Be patient, and trust your subconscious mind to do work it's best suited for.

Step 4: Repeat Steps 1 through 3 as many times as you deem necessary, or at least until you've got a thick stack of notecards (Anywhere between 50 and 200 should do.)

If you're beginning to worry that – wait, I thought this would be a fantasy novel and now it's turning out to be a crime thriller! Relax. Just remember this Benjamin Percy quote:

Toss out the worst elements of genre and literary fiction — and merge the best. We might then create a new taxonomy, so that when you walk into a bookstore, the stock is divided into ‘Stories that suck’ and ‘Stories that will make your mind and heart explode with their goodness.'

(Notecards I used to create the initial outline for a script I wrote last year.)

All done? Awesome. Now, onto the final step...

Step 5: Grab your notecards and put them in a drawer. Let them rest there. Go away for a while. An hour, a day, a week. Now come back, and find yourself a nice big table or floor. Any large surface will do.

Splay your notecards, your ideas on the surface, and start organizing them. Organize them how? It's up to you. Linearly works best for me, but it could be thematically, or by type, or all three. Follow your intuition.

As you do this, you'll start to see a story take shape before you in the form of a weird diagram made up of lots and lots of small paper rectangles. If you see any holes in your diagram, or a new idea comes to you, grab another notecard. Write that idea down. Punch that hole. Walk around the room. Look at the diagram from multiple directions.

And that's it! That's what I do, at least. I tend to repeat this whole process a few times until I'm satisfied.

Wherever you fall in the Architect vs Gardener continuum of prose writing, this should give you enough of a leg to get started on your book. If you fall on the Gardener end of the spectrum, you’ve got your seeds, so go write! 

Myself, I tend to be more of an architect/outliner, so I usually take my diagram and transcribe it into my computer and try to build an outline. For that, I use a method that I will probably write about on some other edition, so stay tuned.

I'll leave you with two more thoughts:

• The secret about the method I just outlined, is that it helps not just with novels, but with whatever else you want/need to write. Short stories, film scripts, academic papers, essays, you name it. Whenever you want to expand your thoughts on a topic, give this a try.

and, last but not least...

• Don't protect your ideas. Let them be free, free to interact with the world at large. Use other people as bouncing boards. Let them tell you what they think about when they hear you speak of your ideas. Then, ignore everything they said and go along on your merry way.

and as a bonus, just remember:

It’s not important to protect an idea. It’s important to protect the time it takes to make it real. – Radical Focus, by Christina Wodtke

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