The Place For My Writers Notes

Original Posting 27 Dec 2010

And while I'm cleaning up the scraps of paper from my desk, there's one more in this collection. It says:

Neil Gaiman
"The ideas aren't the hard bit. ..."
You get ideas when you ask yourself simple questions.
What if ...
If only ...
I wonder ...
If this goes on ...
Wouldn't it be interesting if ...

"An idea doesn't have to be a plot notion, just a place to begin creating."
Juxtaposition -- two or more together
ideas + make things up convincingly and interestingly and new

And Dr. Google shows that this is based on an article over here

http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff/Essays/Essays_By_Neil/Where_do_you_get_your_ideas%3F

"The Ideas aren't the hard bit. They're a small component of the whole. Creating believable people who do more or less what you tell them to is much harder. And hardest by far is the process of simply sitting down and putting one word after another to construct whatever it is you're trying to build: making it interesting, making it new."

So get the ideas. But then spin some characters, a setting, a plot, and write!

"You get ideas when you ask yourself simple questions. The most important of the questions is just, What if...?"

And once you have some what if ideas, how do you get a plot?

"An idea doesn't have to be a plot notion, just a place to begin creating. Plots often generate themselves when one begins to ask oneself questions about whatever the starting point is."

Bang some ideas together and see what happens!

Go ahead and read Neil Gaiman's posting. Then let the ideas flow.

What if? If only? I wonder? If this goes on? Wouldn't it be interesting if?

And pick one or two out of that flow, then put them together with characters in conflict in a scene, and wrap the words around your vision so that we can all see what you are showing us.

Write!

Original posting 1 December 2007

Oh, that looks like it could be fun.

I was reading James Maxey's essay at http://jamesmaxey.blogspot.com/2007/11/stories-are-made-out-of-scenes-scenes.html (first of five about his five things he's learned about writing). A good thoughtful piece about scenes and nouns, which you might want to peruse in your spare time. But . . .

Down near the end, he's got an exercise. First, take four "generic" nouns and punch them up. The four he suggests are "man, woman, building, city." Replace with more specific, evocative knowns, and then see what kind of scene or story they suggest. E.g., "Cop, nurse, Superdome, New Orleans" hints at something. Or perhaps "Shuttle pilot, astronaut, launch pad, Cape Canaveral" light your rockets? (Isn't that Cape Kennedy now?)

I also thought his list of starting surprises was interesting. E.g. there was a shark in the kitchen, a skull on the coffee table, a lion in the laundromat, or a giant lizard reading to a kindergarten class - any one of those juxtapositions of the sinister or strange with the mundane gets the brain going and makes the reader want to find out what's going on.

I'm going to be at a conference this week - general chair for the first day's thisworkshop, then attending, so may be a bit quiet. But this gives me something to do during those long conference meetings this week, perhaps? Specify nouns or surprise contrasts, then sketch the results - and smile, that's the end of his talk?

So - write, write, write!