Don’t Talk an Idea to Death

The Trouble With Ideas

The trouble with ideas is that they are ephemeral. Just energy. They land magically and can fly away just as easily. Formulating them in your mind creates a sort of "creative tension.” Sharing them, telling them, repeating them over and over again to others dissipates the tension. Suddenly your new idea has lost its energy. And you’ve lost your excitement. I've found that if I tell a brand new idea too soon I somehow deflate this new tension and lose the steam for creating. It took me a while to figure out it wasn’t the idea that I’d lost interest in, but rather some aspect of the energy had been diminished by my repeated telling.

The trick is to find the system that works for you to bottle the lightning. Some writers throw first thoughts down on paper, others dictate audio notes and transcribe later, others will write out a few finished pages. But the common denominator here is that they are written down. Writing does not dissipate the energy. It bottles it.

Discover what works for you so you can keep the energy to yourself. Create the structure that "holds" the energy. You want to be able to return to it time and again as you grow it.

Create a system to hold your ideas and don’t share them until you’ve bottled the lightning.

Secrets

Why does a character have secrets?

And why when secrets surface in a story is it so satisfying?

We love the reveal of evidence in a crime story, a lost touch in romantic betrayal, memories of stern parenting that stifle motivation in an adventure. What sparks a character’s memory can be unexpected; a song, a taste, an image, but secrets are a deep part of their reality and drives their story. Their secret helps define who they are. And if a character doesn’t have a secret, they may feel somewhat flat.

Secrets play particularly well when opposed to the action a hero has to undertake, and sometimes a secret is the driver of the action a hero has to undertake.

There are reasons we are delighted by secrets in storytelling. The revelation of someone’s hidden history makes us understand them better. As we watch the eureka moment of a hero knowing themselves, parts of their story click into place. The new truths revealed may be so profound that we may understand their story in an entirely new way.

This dovetails to our own experiences. We know the significant impact secrets can have in our own lives, and how they affect personal motivations. Personal reflection and self awareness can be life changing. Personal history makes us who we are, including our secrets.

A character’s journey needs to reflect our own journey so that we can relate to them.

And that is why a character has secrets.

Cultivate Success

How do you start a new project?

What if the project you envision is large and you feel overwhelmed? How do you keep the motivation going in the afternoon after being excited in the morning? Social media is of little help with posts shouting how to write bigger, better, faster! “Don’t delay, you’re already behind, here’s five ways to work three times faster!”

Over-promised promotions popping up on you phone are designed to make you feel ill equipped to succeed on your own. It can be paralyzing.

But they all leavesout the one crucial detail required for success.

Cultivation.

Real success is cultivated by many small steps in the same direction. And each small step needs to be acknowledged as work completed, hours logged, a goal achieved. Forgive me for reworking an old expression, but the journey to the top of mount Everest isn’t completed in a single giant leap, it’s a slow walk up the trail with many thousands of steps, plus the camping out over several days, bringing oxygen and supplies, a sandwhich or two, likely a guide and the belief in your own journey, even though everyone else thinks you’re nuts.

I recently created a garden at my home. It took a year. The parallels to building a long form story process were amazing to me. You start with nothing, you shape odd empty parts together, and they all are separate and feel disconnected. After all the difficult groundwork you look back at your work and it looks very unimpressive. And in fact it looks somewhat like you’ve wasted your time.

But you believe in the process, you believe in your design, you give it daily attention. Trim growths, guide shoots, daily cultivation lays the groundwork for creative growth and expansion. You find that putting in many small attentive steps every day six months go by and you’ve transformed the world around you.

The blank page starts with that emptiness. Even as you work to fill it in with your design the early stages feel separate, disconnected and sad to say, often look unimpressive. That happens to me every time, by the way, with every new project.

But you believe in the process. You’re a mountain climber and you’re going to reach the peak. Keep small goals to be achievable every day. Every writer is different, some are page counters, some are clock timers, others are vibing adventurists who focus on character and sequences. But if you put in the time every day, acknowledge the work completed, hours logged, a goal achieved, you are cultivating.

You don’t need to have all the answers. Sometimes the worse thing you can do is wait until you feel you have all the answers because that space may not exist. Some answers are only revealed on the journey. The path to the top of your mountain is one that you find on your own. No other guide could have even shown it to you. Focus on the path, don’t get overwhelmed, watch the trail and go step by step. Cultivate that journey. And transformation of the world around you awaits.

The Big Idea

What is it? It’s the idea that delights you, makes you giggle or despair (for your characters). It's the idea within your story that gives you glee. The bright jewel, the sun in the sky that made you smile every time you think of it. This has to be kept alive, even as the bookends, and surrounding structure of story start to emerge as you build your narrative. Because the Big Idea is the wave of energy that moves you through an entire project. The generator of excitement with you every day as you write. It was Dorothy going to OZ, not the details of Oz on every page. But this impossible place she would be propelled to by a tornado, with impossible characters who would help her get home, and she would help them in return, is a pretty big idea.

The Big Idea is pure energy and joy. It’s what thrills and excites you, unlocks your heart, engages your mind. So how do you recognize a big idea? How do you identify it?

Notice what the Big Idea does NOT have:

It does not have a story.
It does not have structure.
It is simple.
It should feel as radiant as a little sun. To you.

What it does have:

It will feel good.
It will be unexpected.
It will be original.
The idea will feel like lightning, it will have energy.

Story structure and details come later. The mechanics of how you take the lightning of a Big Idea and put it into a bottle are out there. They have been written all over the internet. Everyone has some point of view on it. But as you expand your idea into storytelling never lose touch with what you fell in love with in the first place. Don’t snuff out the Big Idea with endless complication.

Breaking Story

Well, it’s really the hardest thing to do. I have a writer friend who shared how he could spend six months "breaking story" and still not necessarily have it.

Normal. I said. I spent years and years breaking story on an original script which I finally wrote three years after I thought of it. There is no time limit to the process, no sundial to track the brightness of the imagination. Every story is unique, and has unique demands. Some will come quickly and form completely, some won't ever form at all. Why?

I suspect it has to do with some things I've learned along the way.

And what I have learned is this:

To break story completely you need three things. But to summarize, you need your 1) Big Idea, 2) The Bottle to catch that lighting in, and 3) the Weather. The storms, blue skies and thunderclouds in your hero’s mind. What is their emotional reality? Outgoing? Timid? Courageous? Cowardly? Whipsmart? Convinced they’re stupid? Over Confident? Self hating? This defines how they will approach any action in your story. And as you can imagine, every one of the adjectives above will approach a problem differently.

All three of these things can be charted out in various ways to help give you clarity, I won’t put all the boring details here.

In fact if you sign up for my newsletter I’ll send you a free eBook with these three in detail.

But all three are crucial and can’t be shrugged off. Assuming you have the first two under control, the third is the most important. The old adage in screenwriting in Hollywood is ‘It’s not the what, it’s the who.” That still holds true today.

We care about the people in the story, not just the clever dilemma you’ve hammered them into. Who do you have who is trying to move forwards? What change do they have to make to do so? And what situation forces them to move forward so they have to change? That is the heart of good storytelling, right there.

Why? Because it mirrors our own lives.

At every step of our lives we’ve had to engage in the world and enter situations we weren’t comfortable with and forced to learn as we go so many times we don’t think about it anymore. It starts in grade school and shifting to high school. Then high school and shifting to college or the work place. Then first job, first date, every gathering with new people. You get used to a situation with friends and authority then - bam - new rules - new authority - different friends. It happens through grade school and through your twenties. Then new complexities, families, children’s schools, workplace challenges and advancements. Speaking to 1000 people professionally or just filling the car up at a deserted gas station at night can equally fill people with anxiety, and both are legitimate. When we see how a character experience difficulties in different ways in a story we know who they are. And we’re with them. And when they are showing an emotional place that we have touched some aspect of, we connect with them. And we are on the journey with them.

Just Pick One

A great piece of advice.

Story writing is a big endeavor, a long form process. Not for the faint of heart, it is a long journey and requires determination. And no proper guide would be suggesting otherwise if you were about to climb a mountain. But there are also tools and tricks of the trade that can support you and make your trip successful. I want to give you one.

It came from a friend who was a TV director at a high level and worked on award winning shows. He was faced with something regularly that any story writer is faced with and I want to share his insight.

He was frequently bombarded on the set with producer/writers who would stop production with multiple new ideas, variations on a scene, and changes in dialogue as shoots were underway. As every minute not shooting on set costs money he needed to find positive creative outcomes. He would listen attentively to all of the ideas, pause and lead with this single piece of advice:

“There are a thousand ways to do something right here. Just pick one.”

Years ago this positive approach made me re-think my own process. Rather than look at multiple ideas as obstacles, or becoming paralyzed with attempts to create a hierarchy of better to best ideas, I reassessed the process entirely. Many ideas are a bounty. Many of them are good. Picking one should not be paralyzing. You need to allow forward movement that builds momentum so that creation continues.

I’m not suggesting careless abandon in selection, one always uses discernment. But if you have five good ideas for a sequence, character, scene, know that they could all work well. Just pick one to continue forward.

I found the framing of this unusually positive approach a welcome change to a process where I often found I was fighting myself. That ended with this piece of advice and allowed me not only a continuation of my process, but also helped me reach my endpoint.