Lecture: Ideas · 8:50pm Apr 26th, 2015
"Is this a good idea" threads are one of the most common topics on writing forums to the point that most have to ban these types of threads to avoid getting spammed to death. However, when these types of questions are allowed, most people worth their salt will give a stock "I dunno, it depends on your execution"-like answer. It can be a very frustrating situation for a new writer looking for that extra validation before they begin putting something together, so I thought I would put together a quick guide for self-vetting your own ideas.
But first we must be honest: ideas are a dime a dozen. An idea is a handful of words, but while you write, you are going to come up with thousands more words, each one important in its own right. That contribution of the original idea blurb is minuscule compared to the actual finished product. Stories come fundamentally from authors who actually take the time to write the actual story through to completion, and those stories are only as good as the writer's skill at executing on the fundamentals of plot, characterization, mechanics, and so forth. Poorly executed stories are not saved by good ideas. Poorly executed stories have their ideas ripped off by authors with better execution and then everyone reads the superior version.
I say this because if you are a new author, ideas are probably all you have: the desire to turn ideas into stories is why many of us started writing in the first place. But the more you write, the more you will find that there is far more to writing than the ideas. Look at the table of contents of the Fimfic writing guide and you will not find ideas mentioned at all. If you want to get better as a writer, ideas are not nearly as important as they seem to you right now. So I want you to relax. Do not waste time fretting that your idea is unoriginal or "not good enough." All your idea needs to be is serviceable enough to get you writing: you want to write about it, it gives you enough material to start writing, and it does not work against itself. The rest will take care of itself with time, experience, and help from friends along the way.
Ideas are usually between fifty and a hundred words, if that. Stories span thousands of words. This means the first thing to do is eyeball your idea and ask yourself two questions: "How many words will I need to do this idea justice?" and "How many words of this idea do I feel able to write?"
Suppose I have a Dr. Who crossover on the back-burner involving an Equestria-spanning adventure. I would need tens of chapters to get the idea across fully, but looking at my current finished stories list, I can see I am not in the habit of finishing more than 2k-3k word stories. This means that while I think this is a cool idea, it is not the right idea for me to be working on. I should try to find a smaller idea I know I can finish and come back to this idea when I get used to writing longer stories. Even if I were in the habit of finishing multi-chapter stories, I would still have to ask myself if it is going to be able to capture my attention long enough to pull through. No sense starting something you do not have the time or interest to finish.
If you feel this is an idea you can write, you now need to worry about how you are going to grow this story seed into an actual story. Here is where the "is this a good idea" threads start popping up. Unfortunately, a good 90% of these threads do not contain story ideas so much as situations, set-pieces, or gimmicks that could fit with many stories and would not fit in others. What if Jelly Pony was a changeling? Is it a good idea to ship Miss Harshwhinny with a sock puppet? Twi-dash, but in space and there can be a love triangle with the Space Sphere from Portal 2. The reason the "it depends on the execution" answer is so common is because you can find the right context to make most of these "ideas" serviceable and without that context there is little basis to raise red flags. We want to help you, but we do not have enough information to provide meaningful assistance to the story you actually want to write.
How do you know if you have enough idea to discuss? It needs to be developed enough to answer the basic story questions. What kind of story are you writing? Who are the main characters? What is the conflict? Why does the conflict exist? How will they go about resolving it? Where/when is this set? Why did you choose these elements for your story? If we do not know what you are trying to do, all we can do is talk about the story we would write with your setup, and that could be very different from your intentions. I might see nothing wrong with a comedy about Chrysalis having to share a hive mind with Jelly Pony, but you could have intended a serious drama about gaining acceptance from Ponyville. Whether that drama could work depends on how the conflict is framed and how you intend it to play out.
Pay special attention to the conflict. If you cannot drag a conflict and means to resolve it out of your idea, then you do not have a story.
Now that you have some answers to go on, they need a sanity check. The easiest place to start is expected length vs expected plot. So you want to write a Twi-Dash-Space Sphere love triangle (in space!) and you expect it will be a multi-chapter story. It makes sense that you would need some setup, the characters would need to bounce off each other a bit, and then the resolution would happen. Can you think of a few necessary scenes for each segment? It could be that you thought of one scene of Dash trying obvious pickup lines on Twilight while Twi is engrossed with talking to Space Sphere about space, but in reality it was a one-shot gag. Before you write, always make sure to reassure yourself you have enough material for the expected length and adjust your expectations until they match. This will help you avoid rushing, filler, and plain running out of steam halfway through.
Then there are contradictions. A fluffy one-shot shipping Harshwhinny with a sock will be difficult to pull off because the whole situation is far too silly to fit with Harshwhinny's serious character. If this were a comedy, the contrast could be humorous, but we would want to know going in how we are going to sell the reader on the premise and how we can do this without completely overwriting Harshwhinny's personality. Maybe it should not be a one-shot and we need more space to establish the circumstances that lead up to this odd relationship. Maybe it could be a one-shot if it was all a dream and the joke is her reaction upon waking. We want to look for places where the individual parts of our idea work against each other and either figure out how to make them fit or change them until they work.
Reader expectations fit in here as well. While a new author should be more concerned with assembling something that they can write rather than something original, you should still keep an eye on what elements are necessary for your plot to affect the reader. If your "X is a changeling" story is riding entirely on the pure shock of finding out that Jelly Pony was a changeling all along, the reader is not going to care because he was a one-shot joke character we have no connection to. The same would be true even if it were Twilight or Celestia because we already have plenty of stories where main characters turned out to be changelings. It is like trying to make your villain villainous by having them kill orphans: a cheap, manipulative, gimmick that people are tired of.
So originality does not matter except it entirely matters? Well, no. We just want to ensure the story we are considering is going to be effective for the reader. Make sure your story has more to it than its gimmick if it has one, or at the very least do a story search to make sure your gimmick is relatively unknown. If you plan to play to a certain audience, make sure you do research on your target audience so you end up actually giving them what they want.
For instance, the Hero's Journey has been written a million times because it is a framework that you can work within to give the audience whatever adventure you wish. Not original, but there is room for you to leave your unique mark. But we have been shocked by "X is a changeling" enough that we roll our eyes now. Can somepony still be a changeling in your story? Definitely, but you should figure out something to do with it that does not rely on its novelty to work. For instance, the conspiracy thriller always has an audience. Maybe the changelings have kidnapped Jelly Pony and the impostor is poisoning Equestria's jelly supply? It still may not be very original in the big scheme of things, but now the story can get the audience interested in finding out the specific nuts and bolts of your conspiracy.
No matter how well you answer "Is this a good idea?", you can never guarantee that your story will be any good or even find an audience. That falls to how well you execute and market. But this does not mean that all ideas are equal or that you can skip looking at your ideas in-depth before you write. Find something that gets you excited enough to see it through and do enough due-diligence to make sure your idea is not going to blow up in your face. If it still looks good, go for it.
Damn I missed reading your blogs. Informative as always!
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I missed writing them too, but the topic bin has been dry recently
Truffles has delivered his words of wisdom!
Good blog as always. Thought honestly...
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"Suppose I have a Dr. Who crossover on the back-burner involving an Equestria-spanning adventure."
...You sure as fel found a good choice of metaphores. It kinda struck home
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We all have a Dr Who crossover in our hearts. If only they took less than a year to do properly...
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And thank you for reading them