Ideas are Worthless! (Storytelling Tips from Comp Class)

 

One of the advantages of teaching composition is that ideas from class spill over into other aspects of my writing and vice versa. Writing and teaching writing feed off each other like a very small and mutually beneficial food chain.

For example, here’s a tidbit of writing wisdom from my Comp I textbook: “Topics are worthless.”[1]  

Instead of writing about the grandiose ideas every other student writes about, such as stem cell research or abortion, the authors encourage students to say something new about the most mundane of topics: why you dislike certain foods, how you overcame shyness, how you learned nothing from a boring history class.

In other words, the topic isn’t as important as what you have to say about it.

The same logic applies to writing stories.

It’s been said that there are no original ideas. Even the most successful books and films are based on well-traveled themes:

• Harry Potter is about a boy seeking to discover his special powers in an ordinary world.

• The Help is about women seeking to overcome prejudice.

• Most super-hero stories can be boiled down to good versus evil.

The trick, then, is to do something different with the idea. Here are five tips to help you forge new paths on a well-worn trail:

1. Ask yourself why you want to write about this idea in the first place.  What attracted you to it? If you write about sparkly vampires, are you doing so because they’re popular right now or because they appeal to you in some other way? Would you write about them if they weren’t popular?  (Hint: If the answer is no, perhaps you should write about something else.) 

2. Read other books built around a premise similar to yours.  Knowing what’s already been done with your idea will help you avoid covering the same ground by accident. It’s impossible, of course, to read every book featuring, say, zombies, but studying a representative selection of zombie stories can give you a sense of what's worked and what hasn't.

 3. Read a variety of books and articles not related to your idea.  Most comic book writers know their respective universes inside and out, down to the smallest bits of trivia. That’s well and good, but many modern comic book writers bring little else to the table. Their stories become insular and repetitive, covering the same ground, plowing through the same mega-crossovers year after year.

Classic comic book writers from the Golden and Silver ages steeped themselves in science fiction or just plain science. They drew from other fields to add something fresh to their stories.

 4. Don’t strive to be original—be truthful.  While fiction does indeed consist of being original—“making stuff up”—it is also about telling the truth: your truth.

Your truth is different from my truth or the truth of the person sitting next to you. That’s because we’ve all lived different lives. Tap into that well of uniqueness that is you and write about the one thing no one else knows: what it’s like to live your life.

 5. Connect the dots.  A writer I recently met described his book as a cross between Lord of the Rings and The Family Guy—two series that seem miles apart. Yet he somehow makes it work.

Find the connections between your idea and something that seems unrelated.  (Yes, I wrote “find” on purpose. Finding connections is better than inventing them. Invented connections can seem forced or phony.)

Everything is connected to everything else—the “six degrees” theory. Your task as writer is to discover those connections and connect the dots.

Finding something new to say about a timeworn topic or idea can be challenging, but it’s also the most rewarding aspect of being a writer: discovering that piece of originality that is not only inside you but is you.

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[1] Jack Rawlins and Stephen Metzger.  The Writer’s Way. 7^th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009. 286. Print.

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Should Writers Be Original or Do What the “Experts” Say?

Image by autiscy via Flickr

It’s an age-old battle between writers and the “experts” – agents, publishers, writing teachers, and so forth.  You (the author) have written a story unlike anything that’s ever been published before. It’s going to set the world on fire with its deathless prose, stunning turns of phrase, brand new characters and settings, and brilliant themes. It will blow away agents and publishers. You can’t wait for the bidding war to start.

And then you get your manuscript back with a form rejection letter: “not our market.”

Originality is one of those words that’s hard to define, but (as a Supreme Court justice said about pornography) we know it when we see it.

But how original does a story have to be? Does anything spring whole cloth out of nothing?

Every story has antecedents – ideas, stories, characters, situations that it refers back to and which it was influenced by.  Even Harry Potter, that benchmark of children’s literature these days, is basically a story about a kid who becomes a wizard.  This concept is not wholly new – J.K. Rowling merely added her spin on it.  And this is a good thing.  Even if you’ve never heard of Harry Potter before, you probably know what a wizard is, so you have some idea of what Harry’s books are about.

Growing up, I was a huge fan on the first Star Trek series, which was unlike anything else on TV at the time.  But even Star Trek had antecedents. It was a spin on Wagon Train (an earlier TV series about people exploring the Wild West), Horatio Hornblower (a series of books about a 19th century British naval officer), and, well, just about every science fiction series that came before it.

The experts tell you that if you want your book to be published, know what market your book best fits into, understand what readers of those books want, and tailor your work accordingly. And they’re right. Here’s why:

Book publishers publish what they think will sell. Obvious? Yes. But how do publishers arrive at their opinions? They watch what has sold in the past and what is selling now. It’s not an exact science, but trends can provide indicators of what an audience wants. Consider the popularity of vampire novels.

I read a newspaper headline yesterday which asked if Hunger Games was going to knock vampires off their lofty perch. I don’t know (or care) if it will, but the headline illustrates a point. Popularity of a particular type of book plays a key role in determining what publishers will publish.

Human beings like to read what’s familiar. We crave comfort through characters we can identify with, settings we recognize, and situations that are similar to those we’ve experienced. Harry Potter is about a kid going to a new school – everything else springs from this simple and universal concept. Star Trek was about exploring new lands (or worlds) on a ship – a call to adventure that is central to the human spirit.

This does not mean there is no room for originality. But originality works best in small doses, when it adds a fresh ingredient to the stew. Gene Roddenberry may have built on existing works when he created Star Trek, but he also added social themes (unheard of on television at the time), an optimistic future (unusual for the Cold War era), an interracial cast (also new to TV then), and serious, intelligent science fiction stories (going completely against the grain for TV).  

And Roddenberry knew what TV viewers wanted (or at least what the experts told him they wanted) – that’s why you see ray guns (phasers), fist fights, and battles with aliens on Star Trek!

So, go ahead. Be original! But know when not to be.

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