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Write What You Like – Coming Up With Useable Ideas, pt. 2

180/365² Sin ideas by Andrés Nieto Porras, flickr.com, CC Attribution license

In The Idea Game – Coming up with Useable Ideas, pt. 1, we discussed finding a place to keep all your ideas. This step is crucial, because you need somewhere you can return again and again to store and grab ideas.

But where should you start finding ideas for stories? There are lots of ways, but focusing first on what you enjoy should sit at the center. It should also be the first place to return when you are feeling dry.

Write what you like

A fairly common phrase in writing is “Write what you know”. I don’t really like it, though. I certainly have never lived on a space station or been in a high speed chase, but I write about them anyway.

So I prefer “Write what you like”. What kinds of books and movies do you like? Do you like thoughtful contemporary dramas or high speed action fantasy? Do you enjoy touching romance or one fight after another. Maybe you like both together?

Knowing what you like is at the heart of finding ideas because it connects you to your passions. We like things for reasons, sometimes reasons that go way back in our lives. We tend to watch or read a lot of stories that follow after our preferences, and so we understand those stories natively. Plus, it keeps you from being bored while writing, because it speaks deeply to who you are.

Mine your mind

Did you find somewhere to put all your ideas last week? Grab that, and start making a few simple lists. Leave a space or two between each items so you can make some notes on them later.

List 1: Favorite books and movies of all time

What are the first books, movies, or TV shows that come to mind as all-time favorites? What do you watch over and over again? It doesn’t matter if they are in different genres, write them down anyway.

It’s okay to write in more than one genre, so don’t count out ideas because they don’t seem to fit what you see yourself writing. Many authors write in multiple genres, and many take things from one genre and add it to another.

List 2: Guilty pleasures

Everybody has guilty pleasures, and those can be a key to what might bring you a lot of joy in creating a story. Are there things you really enjoy that you avoid mentioning to others? Do you tend to read or watch certain things when you are down or sick?

It’s okay to have guilty pleasures, and personally, I don’t think anyone should feel bad for liking something even though they think others might not. There’s something that attracts us to things we really enjoy. That attraction draws you, and your passion draws an audience. However, if it’s something you like a lot, there’s probably a lot of other people out there who like it, too.

Compile a list of guilty pleasures and add some notes about why you like each story. Is it the characters? The high speed action? Comedy? A side character? Look for patterns and similarities, and later you can pick and choose from those elements you like most to make them more captivating to you and to your audience.

List 3: Daydreams and fantasies

What do you daydream or fantasize about? Love? Wealth? Daring adventures?

Write down some of your recent or most vivid daydreams and fantasies, enough to remember exactly that fantasy. If you have a computer-based or index file, you could even start a section just for these ideas. I also keep a dream diary, and write down memorable dreams I have. My first book, Surfer Girl, was straight out of a particularly vivid dream.

It might help to separate story ideas from themes at this point. Keep track of both.

Go Deeper into the Mine

Now take it a little deeper. Make a new list, this time about your plot preferences. Do you like happy or sad endings? A little bit of romance or a lot? Are you good at writing comedy? Action? Melodrama?

Are there patterns you noticed from the above lists? Similarities? Differences? Something that stands out as being completely different from the others? Even though it is different, does it have something in common with what you normally like?

Later, you can pick apart your ideas and just use parts of them. Use a character, an emotional tone, or even a silly line. We’ll be discussing more ways to do that in the next few weeks.

If you like and enjoy your own story, you’re not only more likely to come up with ideas for it, because you’ve probably exposed yourself to lots of stories in that style, but you’ll enjoy writing it more. So start asking yourself what you like most, and what kinds of stories you’d like to see.

Coming Up

Next week, we’ll talk about more ways to give depth to your ideas. After that, we’ll discuss methods of brainstorming.

The Misfit Spies series by Lynn Blackmar