The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: ideas

  • The Evolution of an Idea: Murph’s Law

    People often ask writers where they get their ideas. There are a lot of answers to that question. I think everyone does it a bit differently. A month ago, I published the story “Murph’s Law” on this site. You can find it here. A couple of readers wrote me and asked where it came from.

    On May 28th, 2013, I awoke with an opening line in my head. “When I pissed on Bobby Smith’s grave, I didn’t mean anything by it.” I logged in to Evernote on my phone and recorded it. For those of you who don’t know Evernote, it is a program that allows you to take notes, voice recordings, or pictures and access them from either your phone or your computer. It’s a wonderful program that I don’t use as much as I should.

    A good opening line is a baited hook for a pantser (someone who writes without any plan). I liked it, but I didn’t know what it could catch. I toyed with a couple ideas, including the vengeful spirit of Bobby Smith who wasn’t keen about getting pissed on. I tried a version of the “Resurrection Mary” story. I wrote a few opening paragraphs. It didn’t do enough for me. (more…)

  • Dreams: The Free-loading Bitches Who Won’t Help Me Write

    For whatever reason, my dreams refuse to be helpful.

    I know there are some authors who claim they get brilliant ideas from dreams. I don’t necessarily hate those people, but I haven’t met them in person either, so I’m not prepared to say we’d be friends.

    I’ve also read at least one article that recommended sleeping as a way to work through your plotting problems. The idea was that you should think about your story, specifically focusing on those areas that were causing you trouble, as you were lying in bed at night. Presumably, you’d eventually fall asleep (after you finally got over the agony of being stuck on a scene that clearly just wanted to be an asshole), and your brain would continue to search for solutions while your body got the rest it needed.

    Then, at some point, either by dream or some early morning/late night revelation, you’d experience a breakthrough. You would have the answers you so desperately needed, and you and your story would live happily ever after, or at least experience some mild feelings of contentment until the next time it decided to dig in its heels and act like a fuckhead.

    That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? To be able to lay your head down on the pillow and then wake up in the morning with fresh ideas and a clear outline of your plot. It would be like some awesome version of the tooth fairy. One whose visit didn’t require a painful, bloody sacrifice followed by the inevitable letdown when you realize her cheap ass is on a one-quarter-per-tooth kind of budget.

    I’d love to be wired that way. But I’m not. My dreams are lazy, free-loading bitches who contribute almost nothing to my fiction.

    (more…)

  • It’s Easier to Dream

    So, one morning I turned on PBS for the child, sat on the couch, and fell asleep. I’d love to give you a time of year or a month or anything, but this is happens so often that I could probably start every day of my life with the same line.

    When I startle awake, I remember one scene in particular: two heavy aircraft (air limo sort of nonsense, really) on a tight curve, racing around a building. As on pilot rams and cripples the other aircraft in an attempt to pull ahead of his bitter rival, he finds out there’s a baby in the crashing aircraft. He rushes to land, desperate to get the baby out, but the cops are already there when he gets down.

    If this sounds familiar, is should — it was the story seed that would become my NaNoWriMo 2012 novel.

    (more…)

  • Leather-Bound Beauties (I’m Talking About Journals, You Pervs)

    I recently watched a video of Stephen King talking to a group of university students. It was a question and answer type of thing, and at one point, the subject of keeping a notebook of ideas came up.

    If I’m remembering this correctly (and in the spirit of full disclosure, it’s completely possible I’m not), King said he didn’t have one. He took a survival-of-the-fittest approach when it came to his ideas. If something occurred to him that sounded like a decent story idea, he’d let it rattle around in his head for a while, along with whatever else was in there at the time.

    If the idea was persistent enough and kept presenting itself, he’d eventually get around to writing it. It was his way of letting the cream rise to the top.

    At this point, I’m going to state the obvious: I am not Stephen King . . . yet. (But I’m comin’ for you, old man. You best be keepin’ a lookout.)

    (more…)

  • A Little (Orange) Notebook

    I’ve never been worried about running out of ideas, though I do worry about losing them. Like a lot of writers, I keep a little notebook for jotting down ideas. (And like most other things I own, I frequently lose this notebook.)

    Honestly, this notebook tells me more about my own state of mind when I had an idea, versus the idea itself. Mos ideas in there are just little notes; they might form a character later or a single scene in a larger work. The ideas usually stem from something that happened to me, or something I saw, and lets face it — if real life were all that fascinating and exciting all the time, we wouldn’t be so in love with fiction.

    (more…)

  • The Idea Dump

    That’s me swooping in to pick up an idea for a story. Image source.

    I have a folder. This folder is sitting on the hard drive of my new computer and it’s origin lies somewhere in the depths of either the early days of my first laptop or the last days of my desktop.

    It’s the Idea Dump.

    It has a couple of companion spiral notebooks and far too many offspring comprised of bits of paper that float around my office, in my briefcase, in the car, my office, on the mantle above the fireplace or the shelve on either side of it. 90% of these notes are of the “what if” variety or they’re a snatch of conversation or a phrase that caught my ear on the radio or at a restaurant or on TV.

    (more…)

  • Write it down!

    Everyone has an idea for a story. To dream up ideas is a part of being human. Writing down an idea is what changes you from being a dreamer to being a writer. When an idea is unwritten it is half-real like a dream. Writing it down is the act of creation. Writing is making something out of nothing.

    Once you have your idea on paper it might need to be worked on. It might need to be changed and developed or revised. All those things are secondary because the most important and first step has been taken. You have written something down.

    So take the plunge, write down your idea! Becoming a writer is easier than you think.

    (more…)

  • I Have an Idea…

    Ideas are easy. It’s the execution that’s often hard. I’ve found that, the more I write, the more ideas I have. I think that’s probably true with most any writer—or really any creative person, no matter what their medium.

    Right now I’m on book three of the Monster Haven series. Initially, it was supposed to end at three, but my editor poked at me a little, and I realized I’d been building up to a much bigger arc. When book three ends, things shift into high gear. My editor even pointed to a scene way back in the middle of book one where I’d done some foreshadowing without even realizing it.

    So, including the book I’m working on right now, that’s four more books in the series. In addition, I have a second series, a spinoff of the first, that encompasses three more books. Now we’re up to seven books I have yet to write.

    Then what? (more…)

  • The Least of my Worries

    One night as I lay in bed, staring at the dark ceiling, trying to get my mind to quiet enough so that I could sleep, my body went cold and my mind seized up. I was struck with the terrifying thought: what if one day I sat down to write my next story, and I was completely out of ideas?

    My biggest fear as a writer had always been that one day my idea stockpile would run completely and utterly dry. That maybe one day I’d get published, and my publishers would expect another book, and there would be nothing left in me. (more…)

  • What’s the Big Idea? (Week Ending September 22)

    When people imagine writers working on their craft, some may have an outdated image of the writer hunched over a typewriter, staring longingly out the office window, waiting for inspiration. That just doesn’t happen anymore.

    Some writers may take a languid approach to the craft, but they are few and far between. Most of our writers at the Confabulator Cafe are working hard to get some writing done between the other constraints of their lives: a job, family, exercise, and mundane chores like laundry and grocery shopping.

    So, it probably comes as no surprise that our writers are always trying to find time to write. When they do have time, they don’t have time to stare out a window. They write. Sometimes on three or four things at a time. That’s a lot of creative energy.

    Thankfully, creativity appears to be a renewable resource that — despite what comes out of Hollywood — doesn’t seem to run out. At least, that’s what we hope.

    This week, we’ve asked the writers at the Cafe to discuss what they are currently working on and give their advice on how to refill the gas tank of creativity. We’ve asked them if they ever worry about running out of ideas, and what they do to keep that from happening.

    We hope you enjoy their comments. Please feel free to leave your own each day, and come back all week to read more writing advice from our contributors.

    Until Next Week,

    The Cafe Management