Tag: developing ideas

The Self-Aware Writer – Self-Awareness & Ideas

Posted on by Ian Dawson

You are an endless supply of ideas and stories.  You’ve lived life, have had good and bad experiences, and have grown from those situations.  How you interpret what’s happened to you can influence how you react in future situations, and this self-awareness and hindsight can help you create and develop stories.

Creating grounded characters and situations that others can relate to is a way to utilize self-awareness as a writer.  This is where your internal self-awareness comes into play by exploring and analyzing real-world events and emotions from your own life.  You can discover relatable moments that readers can connect to that will keep them glued to the page. 

The key phrase here is connection.  You aim to create characters that allow the audience to empathize and sympathize with them and their struggles or triumphs.  Even in fantasy stories, we are drawn to characters who have relatable emotions, goals, and setbacks.  While we all may not go on a journey like Frodo in The Lord of the Rings, our Hobbit hero’s emotional arc allows us humans to relate and connect with him.

This week, take the time to sit and write down five or six events from your life that could be the inciting incident of a new story.  Take yourself back to those moments.  What was going through your mind at the time?  Feelings?  Thoughts?  What was your emotional journey through each of your chosen events?

These don’t have to be tragic; you can also utilize positive moments.  The key is to explore the realness of each situation.  How can those emotional beats be part of your protagonist’s larger character arc?  How would an audience empathize or sympathize with your character?

Only some ideas will hit, and only some life events are worthy of being committed to paper.  As you develop a keener self-awareness as a writer, you’ll gain perspective on when an idea isn’t worth pursuing over one that is.  

It’s all part of the creative process, the ability to prioritize ideas worth your time, effort, and energy over those that aren’t right now.

By digging into your life and past, you can mine stories that aren’t carbon copies of the latest bestseller or Hollywood blockbuster.

Once your story idea and characters are locked in, you can take the following steps: development and drafting.  We’ll talk about those in the next post.

Happy Creating, and I’ll see you next time!

Writing Tip of the Week: The Nagging Idea

Posted on by Ian Dawson

You think about it all the time.  It replays in your head over and over and over again.  It seeps into your thoughts in traffic, in a meeting, or in line at the store.  And it won’t go away.

It’s a nagging idea.  A story idea or a little snippet of a story that lives in your brain 24/7.  You add to it, subtract from it, and fine-tune it, but it remains locked inside your head.  

Time to let that nagging idea escape.

Let’s talk about it.

When in Doubt, Write it Out

The time has come to let your nagging idea find a new home.  It’s time for you to write it down.  Just sit down with a pad and paper or at a computer and write it out.  It can be a seemingly incoherent mess at this stage, but you have to get it down on paper.

By doing this, other ideas may be linked to the initial thought.  Suddenly you have a basic story idea, a character or two.  The main thing is to give the idea space to breathe and roam free.  Seeing it visually in front of you can go a long way to making the idea more than just a nagging thought in your head.

Talk About It

“So, I have this story idea…” 

You can tell yourself about it when you’re alone or pitch the idea to a trusted friend or relative.  Verbally expressing the idea can help gauge if it’s a solid concept or if it is just something your brain has become fixated on for no reason.

Talk it out, and if you like what you’re hearing, write it down.  

Ideas Are Like Legos

Ideas are the building blocks of a complete story.  Even if the nagging idea is a small piece of what could be a larger work, it should be given a chance to connect with other ideas.  Think about the millions of ideas we encounter in films, tv, books, and podcasts.  All of these started with someone having a small idea they added to, built upon, and eventually used to create a project now out in the world.

Final Thoughts

Ideas can come and go, but a nagging idea is worth paying attention to.  By writing it out, talking it through, and building on it, you may be able to take a small idea that’s been living in your head and create something larger and more significant.  Only when you decide to act upon that small idea can bigger things emerge.

Happy Writing, and I’ll see you next time!