Question Number One

Next spring, I'll be part of a panel discussing where writers get ideas. If you're a writer at an event (or anywhere else, for that matter), you can give odds that someone will ask you that question. There are several snarky answers non-writers don't understand: Joyce Carol Oates sends me her rejects; I subscribe to the Idea of the Month Blog and many others. My favorite serious answer comes from Neil Gaiman, who says, "Getting ideas is the writer's job." 

Think about it. If you don't have good eye-hand coordination, you don't become a surgeon. If you're bad at math, you don't become a chemical engineer. If you have a poor memory, you don't become an actor. 

So...you want to be a writer. How do you do Job One?

There are as many answers as ther are writers, but they fall into a few basic categories. You get a plot idea, or you get a character idea. Rarely, you might get a setting idea (think London's "To Build a Fire").

When I conduct my writing workshop on plotting (or on NANO, which incorporates plot and character), I tell people you need a CHARACTER who WANTS something. Give him or her a backstory that explains why the goal/quest is important, and invent obstacles to prevent him or her from achieving that goal. The obstacles form the plot, but the plot grows from the character. I could go on at great length, but I think you get the idea and I want to spend more time here on plot. When you can do something easily, you don't think about it. When it's hard, you have to figure out how you do it. Plotting is very hard for me because my usual thought process is far from linear.

Plot is a series of events during whch a character meets and overcomes obstacle to achieve a goal (or not).

In 1895, French critic Georges Polti published The 36 Dramatic Situations, a book delineating all the plots he had found in literature to that time. He examined the drama and stories (and maybe opera) in existence at that time and claimed every story followed one of his basic templates. Actually, when I cited the book in my creative writing classes, I pointed out that many of Polti's plots were variations on the same theme. Family feuds could be father-son, mother-daughter, brother-brother, and so on, and he considered each one a distinct plot. I disagreed and felt there were only about a dozen individual situations. 

The book is over 125 years old, and nobody has found a new plot since then. Victoria Lynn Schmidt's Story Structure Architect is a modern reworking of Polti's book and adds new variations, some of them involving changing time. I recommend her book because she includes open-ended questions that generate ideas and plot twists. I'll take all the help I can get.

My point here is that THERE IS NOTHING NEW. You won't create a brand-new idea at this point. You can change the names, the setting, or the time period, but that's all. The same story works with knights in armor, as a western, as a contemporary crime story, or as a future sci-fi tale, all with a change of props and setting. Your job is to find the new twist that works for you. 

Maybe you find a story in the news or overhear gossip at the mall. It's going to turn into one of those basic plots just because that's all there is/are. Maybe you remember an incident from your own life that mattered for some reason. I have published 16 novels, and six or seven of them were inspired by real events. I changed them from "truth," but the original events really happened. One of my short stories grew from recalling the worst summer job I ever had, one where I quit after one day.

The Greek and Roman playwrights took their inspirations from the myths (I wonder who came up with THEM). Recently, I've read Laura Lippman's Dream Girl, which she tells us up front is her re-working of Stephen Kin'g Misery. Both books involve a writer who is badly injured and at the mercy of a crazy nurse. Last week, I read Don Winslow's new novel City on Fire. It's a crime novel based on gang wars in Providence, Rhode Island in the late 1980s, and it's Winslow's retelling of The Iliad. If you know that work, you can identify the modern versions of Helen, Cassandra, Priam, Patroclus, Hector, and Paris. 

How many films and TV shows are spin-offs, borrowing a character or thread from a previous story? Look at the Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman or Marvel Comics franchises. Look at the various incarnations of NCIS and other forensic dramas. Nothin' new here, Jack, but we know how to sell it.

You want to write? Stop beating yourslef up because you don't have a shiny new idea. Take what you like and give it a new paint job. 

One of my favorite writing quotes has so many different variations and is attributed to so many different authors that it makes my point yet again:

Poor writers imitate. Great writers steal.

Workation

Late last year, my health went on hiatus and I found that everything became a challenge. I couldn't go anywhere or do much of anything. Between the cold weather and the accelerating family arthritis, playing guitar and typing were difficult, and naturally, that interfered with my writing. Now that the effects of the steroids are diminishing and warmer weather is creeping back, my hands are regaining some flexibility.

Thursday night, I played my first open mic since mid-November. I didn't drive people screaming toward the exits, and I loved seeing old friends and hearing good tunes for the first time in oh so long.

More importantly, it means I can write again.

Non-writers have the image of the writer as some kind of agoraphobe, hunched over a desk in a dimly-lit garret, pen in hand, scribbling by the hour, occasionally stopping for a sip of water and a bit of gruel. The modern version is a keyboard and oceans of coffee or diet coke. Most artists, whether they're writers, painters, actors, or musicians, dispute that vision.

You need to get away from the work or you'll get weird. Early in my writing career, I forced myself to produce 2000 words a day because I read somewhere that Stephen King did it. In an interview, Jodi Picoult said that writers need to develop the ability to write on demand. That's the purpose of the 2000-word quota. Once you can do it, the job gets a lot easier. Now I know I can produce 1000 words in an hour or less. It doesn't matter if they're junk, because if there's that much, there's enough to fix.

Distance is important, too. I can start a horrific rough draft (that 1000 words, or maybe only a few paragraphs), and if it's not going well, the norm for a first draft, I can step away and play guitar, make a fool of myself on keyboard, or go to the health club. I still do my best planning and editing on an arc trainer.

When you don't have to think about what you're doing, the ideas sneak into view like shy kittens. Ignore them, and they'll come close enough to pet.

Now that I can perform and get away from the writing, it's much easier. The added perspective helps me see why something isn't working and find ways to fix it.

I know actors, athletes, and musicians who tell me the same thing. I often see one of my actor friends at my health club, usually punching a heavy bag. One of my favorite guitar players has composed dozens of songs (he has two CDs out), but when the music isn't flowing, he turns to piano for a week. When he's broken out of the ruts, he reunites with his Martin and sparks fly.

I used to direct plays, and I got my idea for re-interpreting Shakespeare's Twelfth Night as a western while ironing. Didn't Agatha Christie plot her complex novels while washing dishes?

It still works.

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