How to have ideas
A anonymous reader asked me for help generating ideas for his fantasy stories.
So I want to be a writer, which I imagine is half the job of any webcomic creator. I’m big into fantasy, sci-fi, and horror: some of my favorite authors are Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and Ray Bradbury, to name a few. The problem is, every time I read a story by them, I always get depressed, because their ideas always seem so original, and they make my ideas seem derivative. Do you have any advice for how I can come up with more original ideas, or become a better writer overall? Thank you so much
If there’s one big epiphany I’ve made in my time as a critic and a writer, it’s that ideas are over-rated. Here are a few free ones off the top of my head.
- A Saturday morning cartoon villain goes back in time to win the Trojan War for the Trojans in the hope of winning the favor of the gods.
- A rabbit with a degenerative eye condition sets out on a quest for the legendary carrot of eyesight in a coming of age reflection on dealing with loss.
- Space explorers land on a distant planet and are startled to discover that Thomas Jefferson is alive there.
- A “Space Western”, but backwards, with a bunch of scientists exploring the old west and encountering Star Trek anomalies.
- A race of giant robots breeds humans to fight monsters for them
- An undercover gynecologist solves a murder mystery
- A bunch of teens are trapped on a boat and the only way out is to kill one of their friends
- “Cheers” but it’s the Mos Eisley Cantina
- An amnesiac searching for his true identity wants to go where everybody knows his name
- Moses accidentally comes down with the bill of rights instead of the ten commandments, establishing a new religion who oppress people who want to let soldiers quarter in their house
I came up with these ideas through a time-honored method of just starting to write stuff down and continuing to write even if the words I was writing didn’t make much sense, then cleaned it up a little. You can even see the thread of logic connecting “Space western, but backwards” to “Giant Robot, but backwards” and from “Robots breed humans” to “gynecologist”. If you just force yourself to put pencil to paper and keep moving it without thinking about if the ideas are any good or not, you’ll have tons of ideas and thenn you can look at it the next day with a fresh mind and pick your favorites”.
“But Daniel”, I hear you say “Those ideas suck”. To which I respond “So do ‘A space spider pretends to be a sewer clown’ and ‘A hotel makes you evil and coincidentally your son is a wizard’, and ‘what if the guy who makes dreams is an asshole’“. What makes these ideas good isn’t that they’re good ideas, it’s that they’re executed very well. They’re explored, they’re edited, they’re rewritten, they’re polished, and bam, everyone goes wow Neil Gaiman how do you have such great ideas.
If you go back and look at those stupid ideas, all of which I made up just now, you start to see how there’s potential in a lot of them, you just got to give it a little thought. Let’s go through a few.
A rabbit with a degenerative eye condition sets out on a quest for the legendary carrot of eyesight in a coming of age reflection on dealing with loss
This one seems closest to a “complete” idea. We’ve got a character, a plot, an implied “there is no carrot” ending, and even a theme. It’s a bummer of a theme, but there are lots of bummery cartoons about adventures.
For more evidence on why ideas don’t matter as much as execution: I’m not the only one who noticed that Brave Little Story has the same premise and even the same “find master” plot as Toy Story, but Toy Story isn’t really a BLT rip-off because it executes on those ideas differ-did the vacuum just pee?
And since we know the basic structure of the plot and the thing we’re trying to say, the rest of the story starts to write itself. This seems like a great fit for some kind of episodic story, with the rabbit encountering people who are all about to lose something or have already lost it, and are dealing with it in an unhealthy way. Maybe less Brave Little Toaster and more Phantom Tollbooth. Is make “degenerative eye condition” the stakes of a cartoony metaphor a bit too real? Uh….maybe! But that’s one of those questions you answer in down the line, when you’ve got some development of this idea and know where you’re going.
An undercover gynecologist solves a murder mystery
I like the concept of a gynecologist having to go undercover, but part of why it strikes me as funny is because it doesn’t make any god damn sense at all. Why does a gynecologist need to go undercover? Wouldn’t you need to reveal your identity to whoever you’re treating? This idea also feels a little juvenile. If I make a comic entirely based around vagina jokes all my female friends will look at me weird even more than they did when I put hot pants on a deer. Hm. This idea seems like it really does suck. But instead of throwing it out, let’s go back to the drawing board and write about this idea for a few minutes, see if we can’t salvage it.
A gynecologist is a doctor who deals in birth (and other things, but birth for now). Birth= Creation. A gynecologist is a doctor who creates life….Secretly being a doctor who creates life….
FRANKENSTEIN!
Frankenstein moonlights as a private detective, but steals the body parts of the victims in order to make his monster. That’s an idea that has lots of potential. “It’s elementary, my dear Igor”. Maybe there’s a victim who survives a murder attempt but he’s got just the right arm for Frankenstein kills the dude himself and frames the attempted murderer, or frames an innocent man so that guy will get hanged and Frankenstein can take his legs. And then the cops start getting suspicious so he’s got to keep a low profile but he also needs to steal the crown jewels of England to pay for his experiments. A murder mystery where the detective is secretly committing an entirely unrelated but much worse set of super-crimes. There’s all sorts of plot potential there! Now I want to write this comic because it sounds awesome. Holy hell! Maybe there’s a case where the solution is that the victim faked their death and the police commissioner can go “But how can Mr. Victim be behind it? He’s dead??” and Detective Frankenstein can be all “On the contrary, he’s alive! He’s aliiiiiiive!” Aw man. Man, that undercover gynecologist idea seemed so terrible but with just a little change in perspective it’s suddenly totally rad.
“Cheers” but it’s the Mos Eisley Cantina
Obviously you have to file off the trademarked stuff but if you can’t see the story potential about a slice of life comedy in a bar full of weird broke space mobsters I don’t really know what to tell you. Maybe it can even be the framing device for all the other stories, and one of the patrons is a blind rabbit and one is Detective Frankenstein and then Detective Frankenstein has to fight a monster for the giant robot people! Because it’s Detective Frankenstein in space! Robot Space! Aw man, you could write like fifty stories easy off this premise and all you have to do is cut out all but the best six or so and polish them up a little and you’re an Image comic winning Hugo Awards!
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