The perils of too many ideas and the advantages of being obvious

I'm currently reading Philip Pullman's Daemon Voices , a set of his lectures/essays on writing which contains fascinating insights into the craft of writing.

One of the things he says repeatedly is 'never be afraid to be obvious'. He says that as writers, we often shy away from the most logical idea, fearing that it is too obvious or clichéd. He cites the idea of making his armoured bear in his Northern Lights trilogy an exile fighting to recover his kingdom, which he at first rejected because it seemed too obvious, but then accepted it would make entertaining reading, which it does.

Pullman puts this nervousness about the obvious down to arrogance - 'I'm not going to be like all these weaker writers' but I don't agree with him on this. I think it is usually about lack of confidence - 'I can't use that idea, it's been done millions of times, and probably better.'

We forget that the idea doesn't matter, it's the execution. Of course you can write a novel about a shark terrorising a seaside town, if you set it in a different place with different characters from Jaws - and of course in any case, as someone once observed, Jaws is really a biting social satire about the clash between tourists and locals in a small town, which just happens to have a shark in it.

It's also well documented that George Lucas, who was a serious student of these things, embraced the classic storytelling tropes for Star Wars. Need a hero? Make him a young boy who grows up in a poor village dreaming of glory. Want a mentor for him? How about a wise old man. Looking for a cool villain? Dress him in black.

I am taking this advice about embracing the obvious to heart. I know how easy it is to add twist after twist, terrified of making things too simple and hoping that for the reader, more is more. As it happens, I've just read a novel of this sort, where twist is piled upon double-bluff across multiple timelines, and there seem to be around twelve endings. At every stage, where the author thought 'shall I add this idea I've just thought of, which distracts from my central conceit?', they should have decided 'no'.

Of course, there are plenty of classic writers who also add too many ideas. One of my favourite quotes about writing comes from the brilliant Agatha Christie, who was prone to throw numerous extra twists and alternative solutions into her stories. Asked by a young man to think of a pretext to contact a girl he has only met once before, Christie's character, the redoubtable and successful novelist Mrs Oliver, comes up with at least half a dozen excellent ideas. When congratulated on her inventiveness on thinking of so many, she replies wistfully: "Oh, I can always think of things. The trouble is, one thinks of too many and then has to leave some out, and that is rather agony."