Bill Conrad's Blog - Posts Tagged "ideas"

When people learn that I’m a part-time author, they often ask, “where do you get your ideas?” I have touched on this topic before, but I thought it would be interesting to cover the subject in depth.
Thought my life, I have created stories. These fantasies served as mental distractions to get me through the day and help me sleep. My ideas often start as a thought experiment. What would happen if my car wheel fell off, and I was stuck in the middle of nowhere? What is the story about that guy with the funny hat? What if aliens landed? What would happen if somebody gave me a million dollars? Side note. After taxes, I would pay off my house because I’m practical, conservative and boring. If someone gave me 10 million dollars, I would start a business. I’m not that boring.
My ethics and personality guided my creative thoughts, which causes me to avoid certain concepts. What would happen if I killed that guy with the funny hat? Easy. I would go to jail and my family would hate me. What if Elvis came to my house? I would tell the local news and let them deal with it. What if vampires… Nope. Not real.
There are many ideas without follow through. What would happen if somebody stalked me? I would go to the police. What if I became a firefighter? Easy, I would fight fires.
I dislike characters like Superman and Luke Skywalker because I would have to explain their “world.” In Superman’s world, super beings can fly and are strong enough to lift trains. What if the mutant spider from Spiderman bit Superman? Gahhh. Too weird.
I’m not that good at forcing a story. For example, Rocky was a popular movie. Bill, pretend you want to be the best fighter in the world. Go! Gahhh. That’s so hard to relate to. What do I know about boxing? Serious physical training? Pushing beyond the pain? I have no desire to jump into the ring and start punching. The result would be a weak story.
How about something more plausible? What if I was at my normal Engineering job and I discovered that the owner of the company was Batman? My job was to design radar for the batmobile. That sounds interesting and perhaps plausible.
This premises could become an interesting plot. A solitary figure behind the scenes helping to stop crime. Batman is an established character with a lot of history. [He even time traveled to ancient Japan.] To make a story like that workable, I would have to tweak the base premise. Not Batman. Hmm. How about the CIA? That might work.
For the concepts that stick, I build up the lead character and explore the plot. I then distance the character away from my life because my life is boring. Not that I am complaining, but readers would not experience the same joy I feel over getting a circuit to work. Side note, Zener diodes are really cool.
Unemployment offered the opportunity to bring my thoughts to reality, and I took the leap. To date, I have had six major “lines of thinking.” I wrote about my three favorites.
Will I ever write about the other three? Unfortunately, no. In grade school, I had an idea about a boy [obviously me] with a pet Cheetah. This premise is far too convoluted to become a novel. The second idea is very similar to my second book except it centered on banking and not immortality. The character relationships are the same as my second book and there is no new ground. My third idea is set in the Star Trek Universe and there are serious legal issues involved. I respect those issues because I would hate it if somebody stole my character/plot ideas. Someday, I might write the story for free.
What about starting out in a different direction? A cowboy novel? 1800s romance novel? Mystery? That is not a direction I want to take. Essentially, it would not be fun to write.
However, I like to watch westerns, dramas mystery, some horror, and crime. Someday, I would like to write about a bank robbery. I also have an idea similar to the movie Starman where an alien man arrives and tries to survive in our society. I have thought about a book of short stories. That is a distant future project and often books of shorts stories don’t do well. For now, I have at least five books ahead of me in the present three plot lines that I want to complete. That will keep me busy for years.
Well, there you have it. I daydream about my life and occasionally, I think up something that seems plausible. I imagine many writers use this same technique.
XKCD Comic that explains my process:
https://xkcd.com/337/

Authors are constantly pushing the boundaries of reality. For example, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein completely opened up horror, science fiction, and drama. The result caused people to think about themselves and their viewpoints.
I define radical fiction as a story that takes a large leap from reality. This means readers are required to accept concepts like impossible physics, alien values, crazy morals, and a society with inhuman rules. Authors like Ray Bradbury, Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke all pushed the views on what is possible. They made us believe in distant worlds, faster than light travel, blue aliens, magic, time travel, and ray guns.
For example, Spiderman’s world has radical biology. He uses a silk gland to leap from building to building. Readers must overcome many hurdles to accept that kind of character. At the very least, the silk gland would be near his butt and it would shoot out three feet. How far can a man pee? It’s the same biological mechanism.
I approached radical fiction with caution. For example, in my first book, I explored the impossible concept of immortality. I explained how it worked with pseudo-science as opposed to proven medical facts that astute readers thoroughly understand. My immortality process utilized “harvested human organs” placed into a host body. This provided the immune system the ability to destroy the “parasites responsible for old age.” In order for this concept to work, readers must take a blind leap into fantasy.
Is my immortality concept plausible? Sort of. Using harvested organs to achieve eternal life is pure fantasy. Having the immune system indefinitely repair the body is almost plausible. Overall, my concept would not warrant a scientific study. However, it’s a good plot tool that “could work” with a little imagination. Wink, wink. Now, if my process required “magic wand” then readers would have to take a leap into implausible fantasy.
My second book has aliens. In the real world, some anecdotal evidence has been uncovered to support the existence of aliens. However, aliens certainly haven’t been on 60 minutes to discuss their political views.
My approach to discussing aliens was basic. The aliens were invisible at the beginning of the story and they briefly interacted at the end. Their visual appearance was “human-like” and they had no special abilities. I was careful to keep their exact details vague. I did this by putting them into invisible suits.
I feel a gradual introduction led the readers into accepting alien characters. The story “could happen just like that.” This approach allowed the plot to build in a realistic manner. This also avoided many questions. What do aliens like to eat? How does the alien ship work?
My second book touches on the concept of telepathy. Science has completely debunked telepathy, so I took a careful approach. Only two characters had telepathy their interaction was difficult, awkward and incomplete. Of course, I skipped over the technical explanation.
I can imagine mentally communicating with somebody. There have been times when I got coordinated with a person’s thoughts. So that gives me something to write about. For me, that is not too far of a leap. Despite all the science telepathy could be possible.
In Star Wars, there were many characters with different backgrounds. Wow, that would be difficult to organize. Star Wars gets away with radical fiction by taking the leap without explanation. Luke Skywalker presses a button on his light sabre and slices away. Never mind the concept of a “light sabre” is completely impossible by every known law of physics, thermodynamics, electronics, and optics.
As an author, I approach radical fiction with care. To me, it is like a gun with only one bullet. You wave the gun around and act tough, but you only get one shot. So, aim carefully. Of course, other authors approach radical fiction like it’s raining bullets. They attract readers who instantly “get” the altered reality.
Harry Potter uses his wand and the water freezes. For me, that’s a bridge too far. My plot has to make sense or at least be almost plausible. In all the technical reading I have done, scientific experiments I have done and Discover Channel science shows I have watched, a “magic wand” has never frozen water. First law of thermodynamics! How could I imagine a world where a magic wand could ever work?
I certainly have a lot of respect for the authors that write radical fiction. They have the wonderful gift of creating a story out of nothing but their imagination. I am trying to push my personal envelope. My present book centers on an alien world. Society, physics and the “people” are different from humans. It has been challenging and fun. I also have a short story idea about a magical world. Someday I might take this leap. In the meantime, I have a lot of ground to cover here on plain old boring earth.

My list of blog ideas has run dry. I have covered writing, outlines, plots, editing, other books, movies, publishing, and characters. I even rehashed old topics and studied my blogging process.
There are topics I avoided, such as family/personal life/beliefs/mistakes. Plus, I avoided the subjects I did not think my four blog readers would not enjoy. Does anybody want to discuss current sensors?
To kick start the process, I challenged myself to come up with four new ideas. I began by drawing four enormous squares on my whiteboard. When I came up with an idea, I put a red X through the box. I have used this method in the past to keep me focused and provide a mental reward.
The best time for developing an idea is during a bike ride or that magical time before sleep. The difficulty occurs when I try to remember the ideas. To help, I use the memo pad on my phone and a pad of paper next to my bed. However, my late-night ideas are hard to read and confusing.
Not all ideas make the grade. Foremost, an idea needs to be enjoyable to me. Writing should be fun. One failed example was writing a manifesto? “I am Bill. Here are my rules! Live by them or else!” For some, this writing exercise might be inspirational, but a “Bill manifesto” is not an exercise I wish to undertake. Plus, can you imagine a world following my rules? An inventor killed by his own creation? On the plus side, music from the band Rush would be on every radio station. Hmm. Perhaps I should write a manifesto?
After three days, I came up with the following four topics:
To Cuss or Not?
A New Type of Book
Is Writing My Therapy?
Ultimate Nuke
Bonus>> Conspiracy Theories
Personal goals are great for growth and focus. Besides, my four blog readers now have a preview.

I did not suddenly decide to become an author. Instead, I invented stories in my bonkers mind for years, and only when I had three fully vetted ones did I write them down. Since that fateful day, I now use an outline to visualize the entire plot before committing a story to paper.
I was Facetiming a fellow author recently, and she described her method of writing. It involves jumping on the keyboard and blasting away. The plot, characters, and details develop as she types. I equate this to somebody asking me to “make up a story.” Unfortunately, I am not great at this activity, and I fill my lousy verbal results with pauses.
We both write well (at least I do in my radically biased opinion), but which method is better? I would argue that the means do not matter and only the final result counts. After all, that is what the reader experiences. Yet, there is room for discussion.
Do outlines improve the quality? They are a plot development tool for people like me who cannot create a story on the fly. Perhaps a story with a solid foundation is superior, but artistic creations are best when made without structure.
Let’s invent a simple plot starting with “Sally walked down the hill.” Challenge accepted. “Sally walked down the hill, turned left, and headed to the grocery store. She purchased a sandwich at the deli and ate it in the parking lot. Sally bought apples at the store, walked home, and fell asleep.”
That effort was not exciting, but there is a foundation. Now, the writer could build up the story with details, flush out all the problems and share their creation.
However, there is a glaring problem. The above story is awful. Nothing happened, and I should immediately delete it. However, it was the best I could do on short notice. Some people have a fantastic ability to make things up on the fly. Obviously, I do not. Instead, I noodle an idea for months before committing it to an outline. On two occasions, I had to start over.
What makes a good story? The term “garbage in, garbage out” applies to the process. A talented author will create a fantastic book, and bad will follow bad. However, readers cannot see how a person makes a book. Instead, they only see the published work.
Do we only look at the final result for other parts of our life? Society, physics, and biology have rules with dire consequences. The process for producing results is often important, visible, and open to criticism. For example, one cannot be a successful cab driver by breaking traffic laws. What about creating a blog? Did it matter how I came up with this topic or how I wrote it? Nope.

My family has had 1,000 watts of drama over the last months, but I do not wish to share my chaotic details because I am a private person. Umm, truth. I really want to share this mess and would value your input. Alright, alright. You deserve a hint. Borderline Personality Disorder. If you know somebody who suffers from this malady, you know how much destruction it causes.
The drama caused many painful emotions, angry thoughts and serious courses of action. It has caused multiple sleepless nights because my mind would not let the problems go. Anger was chief among my feelings and I was surprised how many great story ideas I developed during my angry thought process. Fortunately, I have learned to have a notepad handy and recorded many ideas, including eight article concepts, an entire chapter for an upcoming book and two short story ideas.
My idea for this article was to share my ideas and evaluate them, but as I looked at the chaos I reordered, it occurred to me that the ideas were not that great. But way? I decided to figure out what was going on.
I have always been a creative person and have had many great ideas over my lifetime. My highest periods of creativity occur when I exercise, go to sleep, and write. The more I thought about these specific activities, the more I realized they inspired different kinds and levels of creativity. Here is what I have learned about myself.
I used to think I got my best inspiration during bike rides and hikes. When I exercise, I let my mind drift while I explore nature and work my muscles. I am sure that during this time, my circulation improves, sweat expels things my body does not need, and my mind works at peak effectiveness. Why? Coordinating one’s feet during a hike or moving the handlebars on terrain is mentally challenging. Yet, this activity does not require pure mental power; it uses muscle memory. I equate this in computer terms when a graphics card does most calculations while the main processor acts like a symphony conductor.
I do not always get new ideas during my exercise, but I do think about many topics. Going along the trail is a perfect setting to identify, explore, and solve problems. Now, I save up problems for when I exercise and have found many great solutions. Yet my new article/plot ideas are unfocused (lofty), and only 30% are suitable for being written up.
Right before I go to sleep, I always think about my stories. This includes reviewing the plot, imagining the characters in situations, and devising book marketing solutions. I have concluded that my creative output is poor during this time.
Yet pre-sleep provides the perfect environment for getting comfortable with my plots and characters. This time allows me to develop details, connect ideas, and take pride in my creation. The result of my effort shines when I use my outline to write the story. I occasionally solve problems or develop something new, but it is rare. Also, as I am falling asleep, I often forget to record my ideas.
When I write, my creativity is cold and direct. My core focus is to evaluate the present sentence and, once satisfied, create the next. When I get stuck, I briefly distract myself or change locations to joggle my creativity. While writing or editing, I rarely get big ideas or solve big problems. Instead, I focus on grammar, flow, motive, and logic. Still, it feels good when I fix a flaw or have a creative moment.
To further define this time, I have an example. If a person asked me to sit down and write a story about unicorns, I would be lost. I might be able to develop a unicorn story during a bike ride, but it would not be significant. Yet, I know when I could think up a fantastic story about unicorns.
When I get angry, my creative output is raw and never-ending. I am sure the adrenaline is pumping through my veins, and my fight-or-flight mechanism is at full power. The result is a nuclear cluster bomb of thoughts, ideas, courses of action, and feelings.
When I calm down and evaluate my creations, I find them out of the box, illogical, uncompromising, and wacky. I estimate that 20% of this mess is helpful. Yet, the few gems certainly qualify as creative.
Of course, there is a problem with anger-inspired ideas. Being upset is not desirable, and I certainly do not wish to get angry for the intent of writing. Yet… I value this time, and when I am not angrily thinking about my core issue, I use this time to develop story ideas.
This article vetted many issues. I now know what to expect when I think about problems. I also know creativity is complex and inconsistent. Hey, that’s a creative conclusion.

You’re the best -Bill
July 03, 2024

Hey, book lovers, I published four. Please check them out:
Interviewing Immortality. A dramatic first-person psychological thriller that weaves a tale of intrigue, suspense, and self-confrontation.
Pushed to the Edge of Survival. A drama, romance, and science fiction story about two unlikely people surviving a shipwreck and living with the consequences.
Cable Ties. A slow-burn political thriller that reflects the realities of modern intelligence, law enforcement, department cooperation, and international politics.
Saving Immortality. Continuing in the first-person psychological thriller genre, James Kimble searches for his former captor to answer his life’s questions.
These books are available in softcover on Amazon and in eBook format everywhere.