Day 04: Ideas

Short post today, guys, who is basically just me Haha. I don’t’ mind talking to myself on a blog, its not like I don’t do it enough in real life. Anyway,, huge physiology test Wednesday, so I spent a lot of time studding. I still managed to write 1170, is it bad that took me an hour? I thought it was ten, so I was not going to do a post today, but then I took a Tardis and realized I still had a half hour before bedtime.

So, ugh….what am I supposed to talk about now? Oh yes, what the freak, I’ll talk about ugh…..I do have a question.

What does it mean to “Write what you Know”? Seriously, I can’t answer this question, its bothering me. It lets me wander…where do ideas come from?

Its Odd because J.R.R Tolkien didn’t exactly live a life like Lord of the Rings. He lived rather normal life in the suburbs, with a wife and kids. This is not to say he was not one of the most brilliant men of the 20th century, but he did not write about what he knew, in theory., because this is secret…elves, and dwarfs are not real. Jo Rowling also had a pretty average life as an English teacher.

If we all wrote what we knew, we’d be all be writing about how go to and from work, a and work, as Beatnik Turtle would call it in a “Cube farm”.

The worst question to ask is “Where did you get the idea for this project?” To me, I get ideas from other ideas. I just sit there, without thinking or knowing…although cone, I specially recall having another idea for a story I want to work on one day…while I was sitting on the Toilet.

“There are no original ideas,” what a bunch of crap. That is an excuse for laziness, an excuse to just tell another cop show, or another medical drama. If you ask me, good art scan imitate great art, but greater art recreates great art.

Sure, your story will fit a formula. Most of the time, it will have a hero, a villain, a rising action, a falling action, a climax and a resolution. But, I believe if your story has nothing new to bring to the table, you should not bring it (I’m looking at you Grey’s Adenoma)

You want to know the hardest idea about making something original? The hardest you try to make it original, the more unoriginal it is. In another story I have put up on the shelf for a time, I found myself trying to hard to change characters to be original, the thing was, the more I tried to be original, the more unoriginal it became. You now have hundreds of writers trying to hard to be original, so they all poof out the same stuff.

The one piece of advice I can offer myself, or others is this. To be original, take risks. This is a major flaw of heroes. Heroes could have let he virus out on the world. Do something no one expects. Maybe it won’t turn out well, but its better the just doing nothing, and at least you can say you tried. And if it doesn’t work…that’s why we have second and third drafts, people!

Secondly, do not press the reset button. Let every action count, let every conflict matter. Let it move along the story. Don’t just have some guy wake up and make it all a dream. Once you go down a path that will take your story to a new level, don’t hold back. Go the whole way!

Make sure every action ahs a consequence and don’t hold back. Take risks, you can always go back and change it. Going all the way will keep you original because the story is real, and it feels real.