Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.
What are your triggers for writing? (For instance, what gets you hyped or starts the story in your head).
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I have at least ten ideas for a story nearly every day, but not all of those make it to the page.
Some of them only take a mental moment's exploration for me to realize that there's not enough "there" there to develop into a full-blown story. They are at best bon mots that I might toss off on social media or in a social gathering.
Others I might explore more fully, but then find that they fizzle. That little spark that had me excited, energized, or curious enough to start just sort of dissipates and it drifts off in the breeze.
Some are so tenacious that they take root even when I don't have the time or freedom to sit down and play with them right away--they just keep butting up against my subconscious like an orca threatening to capsize my kayak until I give in and write the darn things.
Generally, I'd say, a story needs three at least two of three things to really get started with me:
- a bright enough spark
- a window of exploration soon enough that the idea gets pinned to the board before it can fly away
- deep enough roots to grow under the surface even if left un-nourished
- or being "the thing" that I need to write just then, the idea that scratches an itch I might have trouble defining for myself.
One of these isn't enough without at least one of the others. There are too many ideas to develop them all, so the competition for my keyboard and head-space can be fierce.
For example, the Menopausal Superheroes concept came to me in a flash. A nice bright spark that made me laugh aloud and start looking for time I could devote to it. I held it out there as a bribe to myself, the "something fun" I could play with after I finished the heavier-going more literary novel I was working on at the time.
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The romance novels I'm working on now didn't come in a flash like that, but they were "the thing" I needed to write once I'd finished my Menopausal Superheroes novels--new project energy and the excitement of something I'd never written before. The idea had deep enough roots that it didn't matter that I didn't start the first one for months after I first had the thought. They'd been there growing in my subconscious substrata just waiting for me to find or make the time for them.
How about you? What decides which ideas get developed and explored for you? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.
My last book was a reworking of something I'd written over a decade ago. Ideas can stick around a long time!
ReplyDeleteThey really can! I have more than one writer friend who made good on an idea they had when young years and years later.
DeleteLike you, I get multiple ideas. A lot of them end up as short stories, one has spawned a seven part series. There's no way of knowing.
ReplyDeleteSometimes you have to dive in to find out.
DeleteI wonder if you could collect these snippets into something. Like those little thought books. They’re usually art and a few lines of inspiration, humor, and so on.
ReplyDeleteThat could be fun! Mostly they sit in journals or digital depositories until I do or don't get to them.
DeleteI like writing the little snippets of ideas down in a notebook that way their there when I need them.
ReplyDeleteI do similar, just the "idea collection notebook" is digital.
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