Post by Brian Keene on Nov 11, 2022 18:15:26 GMT
If you folks are interested, I'll post some of my older writing advice pieces here on the forum. If you're not interested, then I'll stop.
* * *
The Idea Fairy
"Where do you get your ideas?"
Ask any popular writer, and they'll tell you that's one of the questions they hear most frequently. Stephen King used to respond to the question by telling people he bought his ideas wholesale. Robert Bloch said he had the heart of a young boy...and he kept it in a jar on his desk.
I get mine from the Idea Fairy.
Anything you write -- be it a novel, a short story, a comic book script, or a screenplay -- starts with an idea. That sounds simple, right? And yet, so many aspiring authors get stuck on this initial point. "I want to be a writer, but I've got no ideas to write about."
Yes, you do. If you're alive, then you have things to write about.
Writing -- any form of writing -- is about communication. Doesn't matter if it's art or advertising copy or literature or the list of ingredients on the back of a box of cake mix. The purpose of writing is to communicate and convey information. The best way to do that in fiction is to draw the reader in -- give them something they can identify with, so that they will invest themselves in your story, and thus, that communication will be stronger.
Now, let's say you're writing a science fiction epic that takes place 5,000 years from now or a historical adventure set during the Stone Age. No, the reader probably can't identify with the technological advances humanity will have 5,000 years from now. No, they probably can't identify with being stepped on by a wooly mammoth. But they can identify with your characters as those characters interact with those technological advances and get stepped on by wooly mammoths. They can identify with your characters regardless of the reader's race, gender, sexuality, nationality, social and economic status, or political and religious beliefs. Yes, those things can make us different, and lead to different life experiences, but we're all still human, and we all still have common denominators. We all know what it feels like to love, and to hate. We know how babies and puppies smell. We know what gasoline and shit smells like, as well. We know excitement. And fear. How it feels to win and to lose. How it feels to belong...and to be cast out.
Those commonalities -- those shared experiences -- will often inform your ideas.
An example. In 1999, I began writing a novel that would eventually be published (in 2003) as THE RISING. That novel has since gone on to be an international bestseller and is credited with our modern era's resurgence in the popularity of the zombie genre. The novel's "elevator pitch", in a nutshell...
(Okay, a quick interruption and aside. It's called an elevator pitch because you've found yourself on on elevator with a big-name editor or Hollywood filmmaker, and this is the only time you'll be able to get past their gatekeepers, and the elevator ride takes ten seconds, so pitch your idea during that ride).
The elevator pitch for THE RISING is "A divorced father searches for his son across a post-apocalyptic America overrun by zombies."
That's the idea of the novel, right there. But I didn't set out thinking, "I'm going to write a bestseller" or "I need all the ingredients to make a novel that will stay in print long after I'm dead" or "I'll bet zombies are going to be big again I should get in on that before everyone else does."
No, what happened was I got a visit from the Idea Fairy.
By 1998 my oldest son (who is now 27) was living in New Jersey with his mother and her new husband. I was living in Pennsylvania. Our custody agreement was pretty horrible. I only got to see him once a month at that point, and to do so, I had to make the four-hour drive, one-way, to New Jersey. That winter, I was making that four-hour drive in the midst of a blizzard. They'd shut the highways down, and the National Guard were out helping with snow removal. I was stopped by two guardsmen on the turnpike, and advised to get off the road, and I assured them that I would. Once they'd returned to their Humvee and gone on their way, I headed back out onto the road and kept driving.
And that's when the Idea Fairy arrived.
"Well, soldiers armed with automatic weapons haven't stopped me from seeing my son," I thought. "What would? The zombie apocalypse? No, that wouldn't stop me either... but it would be a cool idea for a story."
The idea started simply enough -- a divorced dad, searching for his son in the zombie apocalypse. But hooking the reader, giving them that thing they can identify with -- that's a deeper process. Look at it in terms of building a house. The basic idea is the frame of the house. Now we're going to add the walls and roof and all the plumbing and wiring. In my case, that plumbing and wiring was the emotional turmoil I was experiencing in real life. If you're a parent, you can empathize with that. Doesn't matter if you're black or white, Christian or Muslim, Conservative or Progressive. You can empathize with how much it must have hurt -- how emotionally harrowing it must have been -- to only see your child once a month. If you're not a parent, then at least you're somebody's child. Think about it from the child's perspective. It's a gut-wrenching, terrible thing to process.
All of that went into THE RISING, and all of that led to the novel's success. It's not a good novel, at least from a technical perspective. It's a first novel, full of first novel flaws. But it struck a chord with tens of thousands of readers, because they could identify with the idea... and the characters.
If it sounds like I'm talking about characterization in addition to ideas, well, I am. That's because, in my opinion, the two often go hand in hand.
BREAKING BAD is an immensely popular television show. Its idea is simple: "a dying high school chemistry teacher turns to crime to provide for his family after he's gone". That's the idea. The idea hooks us, as viewers. But it is the characterization that keeps us invested in the show. That keeps us tuning in, and binge-watching. It's the idea of, "Did Walter White turn bad after his diagnosis, or was he always bad, and his diagnosis freed his true self?" Throughout the series, he does increasingly terrible things, and yet we root for him and empathize with him, because of the characterization, and the way he's written, and how that all ties in with the show's idea.
My other son just turned ten last week. He's working on a new story right now. It's about a fourth-grader solving the mystery of why his teacher was replaced with a substitute for two weeks. He tells me it will be revealed that the teacher was a robot who had to go in for repairs.
I'm fifty, and writing my 200th (or so) short story. It's about a guy who is terminally ill, and lied on his life insurance application, and now needs to give himself a heart attack before the cancer kills him, so that his family will still get the payout.
In both of our cases, we're drawing from life. We're drawing from experience. Our ideas are pulled from what we know and what we see going on around us.
He's writing a science fiction story. I'm writing a noir piece. But the ideas for both of them would work in any other genre, as well, because the ideas are about human experience.
His idea isn't really, "My teacher is a robot". His idea is "My teacher was out for two weeks, and I don't know why, and that's upsetting to me, because she is a constant in my daily life." That's the root idea -- the one his fellow fourth grade readers will identify with. The fact that she's a robot is the icing on the cake that forms that idea.
My idea isn't really, "I need to give myself a heart attack through a vigorous exercise regime because I lied on my life insurance policy." My idea is really, "I'm fifty, and starting to have health problems, and both of my best friends died the past few years at fifty, and what the fuck happens to my kid if I die, too?" The noir story is simply the fancy dress I've adorned that nude idea in.
The number one piece of advice given to writers is "Write what you know." That doesn't mean if you work in a customer service call center that all of your stories should take place in a customer service call center. It simply means you write about what you know -- what life has taught you.
Sit back, reflect and think about your life. Think about all that you've experienced and felt and seen. Maybe you never got to climb Mount Everest or run with the bulls. Maybe you've never been outside your hometown. Maybe you don't know what it's like to be a Queen or homeless or a steelworker. But you know what it's like to be human. You know what it's like to love and to fear. You know joy and grief. Could there be an Idea Fairy lurking in those experiences? My guess would be yes.
Or maybe you already have an idea. Maybe you're saying, "This doesn't apply to me, Keene, because I've already got an idea for my 800,000 word fantasy trilogy that's going to blow away George R. R. Martin and J.R.R. Tolkien." Well, if so, then good for you, Skippy. That's a great start. But you're no doubt aware that there are hundreds of other fantasy trilogies already published, and all of them attempted to do the same thing. How will yours be different? How will yours stand out? Why should readers invest in your fantasy trilogy instead of Robert Jordan or Terry Brooks or Patrick Rothfuss? Can you give them a reason? Can you imbue your characters with something that will not only appeal to fantasy fans, but reach readers beyond the genre, as well?
Can you make them human?
Because if you can make them human, then you can make a connection with your readers. And if you make a connection with your readers, they'll invest in your idea.
* * *
The Idea Fairy
"Where do you get your ideas?"
Ask any popular writer, and they'll tell you that's one of the questions they hear most frequently. Stephen King used to respond to the question by telling people he bought his ideas wholesale. Robert Bloch said he had the heart of a young boy...and he kept it in a jar on his desk.
I get mine from the Idea Fairy.
Anything you write -- be it a novel, a short story, a comic book script, or a screenplay -- starts with an idea. That sounds simple, right? And yet, so many aspiring authors get stuck on this initial point. "I want to be a writer, but I've got no ideas to write about."
Yes, you do. If you're alive, then you have things to write about.
Writing -- any form of writing -- is about communication. Doesn't matter if it's art or advertising copy or literature or the list of ingredients on the back of a box of cake mix. The purpose of writing is to communicate and convey information. The best way to do that in fiction is to draw the reader in -- give them something they can identify with, so that they will invest themselves in your story, and thus, that communication will be stronger.
Now, let's say you're writing a science fiction epic that takes place 5,000 years from now or a historical adventure set during the Stone Age. No, the reader probably can't identify with the technological advances humanity will have 5,000 years from now. No, they probably can't identify with being stepped on by a wooly mammoth. But they can identify with your characters as those characters interact with those technological advances and get stepped on by wooly mammoths. They can identify with your characters regardless of the reader's race, gender, sexuality, nationality, social and economic status, or political and religious beliefs. Yes, those things can make us different, and lead to different life experiences, but we're all still human, and we all still have common denominators. We all know what it feels like to love, and to hate. We know how babies and puppies smell. We know what gasoline and shit smells like, as well. We know excitement. And fear. How it feels to win and to lose. How it feels to belong...and to be cast out.
Those commonalities -- those shared experiences -- will often inform your ideas.
An example. In 1999, I began writing a novel that would eventually be published (in 2003) as THE RISING. That novel has since gone on to be an international bestseller and is credited with our modern era's resurgence in the popularity of the zombie genre. The novel's "elevator pitch", in a nutshell...
(Okay, a quick interruption and aside. It's called an elevator pitch because you've found yourself on on elevator with a big-name editor or Hollywood filmmaker, and this is the only time you'll be able to get past their gatekeepers, and the elevator ride takes ten seconds, so pitch your idea during that ride).
The elevator pitch for THE RISING is "A divorced father searches for his son across a post-apocalyptic America overrun by zombies."
That's the idea of the novel, right there. But I didn't set out thinking, "I'm going to write a bestseller" or "I need all the ingredients to make a novel that will stay in print long after I'm dead" or "I'll bet zombies are going to be big again I should get in on that before everyone else does."
No, what happened was I got a visit from the Idea Fairy.
By 1998 my oldest son (who is now 27) was living in New Jersey with his mother and her new husband. I was living in Pennsylvania. Our custody agreement was pretty horrible. I only got to see him once a month at that point, and to do so, I had to make the four-hour drive, one-way, to New Jersey. That winter, I was making that four-hour drive in the midst of a blizzard. They'd shut the highways down, and the National Guard were out helping with snow removal. I was stopped by two guardsmen on the turnpike, and advised to get off the road, and I assured them that I would. Once they'd returned to their Humvee and gone on their way, I headed back out onto the road and kept driving.
And that's when the Idea Fairy arrived.
"Well, soldiers armed with automatic weapons haven't stopped me from seeing my son," I thought. "What would? The zombie apocalypse? No, that wouldn't stop me either... but it would be a cool idea for a story."
The idea started simply enough -- a divorced dad, searching for his son in the zombie apocalypse. But hooking the reader, giving them that thing they can identify with -- that's a deeper process. Look at it in terms of building a house. The basic idea is the frame of the house. Now we're going to add the walls and roof and all the plumbing and wiring. In my case, that plumbing and wiring was the emotional turmoil I was experiencing in real life. If you're a parent, you can empathize with that. Doesn't matter if you're black or white, Christian or Muslim, Conservative or Progressive. You can empathize with how much it must have hurt -- how emotionally harrowing it must have been -- to only see your child once a month. If you're not a parent, then at least you're somebody's child. Think about it from the child's perspective. It's a gut-wrenching, terrible thing to process.
All of that went into THE RISING, and all of that led to the novel's success. It's not a good novel, at least from a technical perspective. It's a first novel, full of first novel flaws. But it struck a chord with tens of thousands of readers, because they could identify with the idea... and the characters.
If it sounds like I'm talking about characterization in addition to ideas, well, I am. That's because, in my opinion, the two often go hand in hand.
BREAKING BAD is an immensely popular television show. Its idea is simple: "a dying high school chemistry teacher turns to crime to provide for his family after he's gone". That's the idea. The idea hooks us, as viewers. But it is the characterization that keeps us invested in the show. That keeps us tuning in, and binge-watching. It's the idea of, "Did Walter White turn bad after his diagnosis, or was he always bad, and his diagnosis freed his true self?" Throughout the series, he does increasingly terrible things, and yet we root for him and empathize with him, because of the characterization, and the way he's written, and how that all ties in with the show's idea.
My other son just turned ten last week. He's working on a new story right now. It's about a fourth-grader solving the mystery of why his teacher was replaced with a substitute for two weeks. He tells me it will be revealed that the teacher was a robot who had to go in for repairs.
I'm fifty, and writing my 200th (or so) short story. It's about a guy who is terminally ill, and lied on his life insurance application, and now needs to give himself a heart attack before the cancer kills him, so that his family will still get the payout.
In both of our cases, we're drawing from life. We're drawing from experience. Our ideas are pulled from what we know and what we see going on around us.
He's writing a science fiction story. I'm writing a noir piece. But the ideas for both of them would work in any other genre, as well, because the ideas are about human experience.
His idea isn't really, "My teacher is a robot". His idea is "My teacher was out for two weeks, and I don't know why, and that's upsetting to me, because she is a constant in my daily life." That's the root idea -- the one his fellow fourth grade readers will identify with. The fact that she's a robot is the icing on the cake that forms that idea.
My idea isn't really, "I need to give myself a heart attack through a vigorous exercise regime because I lied on my life insurance policy." My idea is really, "I'm fifty, and starting to have health problems, and both of my best friends died the past few years at fifty, and what the fuck happens to my kid if I die, too?" The noir story is simply the fancy dress I've adorned that nude idea in.
The number one piece of advice given to writers is "Write what you know." That doesn't mean if you work in a customer service call center that all of your stories should take place in a customer service call center. It simply means you write about what you know -- what life has taught you.
Sit back, reflect and think about your life. Think about all that you've experienced and felt and seen. Maybe you never got to climb Mount Everest or run with the bulls. Maybe you've never been outside your hometown. Maybe you don't know what it's like to be a Queen or homeless or a steelworker. But you know what it's like to be human. You know what it's like to love and to fear. You know joy and grief. Could there be an Idea Fairy lurking in those experiences? My guess would be yes.
Or maybe you already have an idea. Maybe you're saying, "This doesn't apply to me, Keene, because I've already got an idea for my 800,000 word fantasy trilogy that's going to blow away George R. R. Martin and J.R.R. Tolkien." Well, if so, then good for you, Skippy. That's a great start. But you're no doubt aware that there are hundreds of other fantasy trilogies already published, and all of them attempted to do the same thing. How will yours be different? How will yours stand out? Why should readers invest in your fantasy trilogy instead of Robert Jordan or Terry Brooks or Patrick Rothfuss? Can you give them a reason? Can you imbue your characters with something that will not only appeal to fantasy fans, but reach readers beyond the genre, as well?
Can you make them human?
Because if you can make them human, then you can make a connection with your readers. And if you make a connection with your readers, they'll invest in your idea.