h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I love writing short stories but rarely think of good plot ideas, and so hardly ever write anything. The only ideas I tend to think of result from reading something else, and getting a similar plot idea... and so I find it very difficult not to plagarise!

Has anyone got any tips for getting ideas? Is there something specific you think about, or do they just come to you randomly? Are they influenced by your own life, current events, or the books you read and films you watch?

For me it was never a question of finding plots, but of actually sitting down and make something of it...

So how could one go about getting ideas? It does sound simple, but the most important thing for me is to keep my eyes and ears open. I buy groceries and see a kid run away from the coolers with the ice cream... is there a story in there? I pick up bits and pieces of a conversation on the bus. Old lady says to young lady, "yes, mine was like that, too." Mine what? Husband? Dog? Divorce? Cancer treatment? Sex life? Is there a story in that? In summer nights, I used to hear through the open window this one couple in the house make out quite loudly. I mean, I woke up from it. Then one night, one irritated citizen opens the window and shouts across the back yard, "Can't you f***k in silence?" Is there a story in that?

No, finding stuff to write about is easy as cake. Actually sitting down and get it out of my head onto paper is the part that I have difficulties with.

Yelbakk

Well I try to get the atmosphere from movies/TV into written form...

History helps aswell... With me it's: "Ah, I wonder what would happen in a place where THAT happened instead of THAT.."

I look at people and wonder if that kind of person would be fitted into another kind of situation...

I mean Baxter's personality in FRAGMENTED [Plug! Plug!] is an abstract form of someone I know without so much cowardice .

And the Creators' arguements at the start of my story is the way I am with my mates (though none of us have ever said 'Oooh'!)...

I get visual images, or odd sentences, like "Have you ever smelled a dead dragon?"
They make me want to make up a story to go with them.
Also, I get a curious thought in my head, like the idea of calling some powerful force for help, but when the creature arrives, it doesn't want to do what is needed. One of my stories is like that; the creature called on doesn't particularly like mankind, and isn't sure whether or not it will bother to help.

I TRY TO DO THAT BUT I ALWAYS FIND THAT IT'S BEEN DONE BEFORE... IT'S PRETTY DAMN HARD TO FIND ORIGINAL IDEAS AS MOST THINGS ARE COMBOs...

I find I get interesting ideas but the big problem is developing them. I could say
"Where's the f***ing conflict?!"

I've got this idea that called be summed up as "dualing guardian angels". A person has two guardian 'angels' one from heaven and one from hell. One day the two GA's have a bet......and that's as far as I've got. The appeal of finding another story idea is too great.

'What if?' - the most important tool in any writers armoury when it comes to thinking up ideas... take any situation, anything at all no matter how mundane, and ask 'What if?'.

For instance, what if someone could stop time but still move around? What if someone of evil intention found out? What if this evil person had something over the other guy, could make him do what he wants... and just carry on from there...

What if the attractive bank manger seduced me in her office? What if, the next day, she accused me of rape? Why would she do that?

I find ideas are the easy part and developing them into a story... it's the bloody sitting down and writing it bit that gets me

Just keep asking what if?

One of the most important things to do is to carry a notepad with you wherever you go. As has been mentioned before you can be sitting on a bus and you overhear a conversation or see something happen, jot it down. Often I wake up at night with an idea so I have to have a pen and paper beside my bed.

Don't try and force it, that will be a sure way of blocking the flow of ideas. My problem is trying to limit the ideas in one story and fleshing them out.

Suppose that you wanted to write a short story and had no materials at the start: no character, no setting, and no plot. You'd have to pick something -- anything! -- to get started. You can always change whatever arbitrary starting point you had.

So, start with yourself. Start as far back as you can remember and work forward, trying to avoid getting beyond age 12 or 13. Pick the moments when you were happy, terrified, enthusiastic, anxious, mean, kind, embarrassed, attracted, flattered, etc. Something with strong emotions.

Write that story. Write about what happened, what you felt, what you thought about it all, what you did, and how it all ended. Write about where it took place and who was there. Then sift through that for the patterns beneath it all, translate each character into an adult, and then tweak them all so that they aren't recongizable.

Then read it as if it were a story you were reading and start to clean it up. Get rid of the crap that fiction won't accept. See where that takes you.

- emc, who stole all of this from three or four sources -- most notably Mort Castle, who you all ought to know

I tend to centre my stories around interesting characters, including people I might see in a waiting room or on a train and not speak to at all. Quite often I'll mix tendencies of different people into one story character, thus producing characters with many quirks, which is fine as long as these don't contradict. I then place these ficticious people in false situations they usually wouldn't get involved in, and determine what they do by what I'd imagine the real people they're based on would have the tendency to do. However, I find that truly good plots are things that just come to me occasionally - perhaps when I've been thinking about things that have happened to myself. They must fit together like a jigsaw, with an introduction, complications, and then finishing with a resolution.

My main problem is that my friends are likely to recognise themselves appearing at bizarre points in my stories. For example, a character with an uncanny resemblence to my boyfriend's father turns up as an eccentric professor, and my maths tutor makes a cameo appearance where he baffles one of my main characters with his unusual habits!

My favourite character however, who the novel I'm trying to write revolves around, wasn't consciously based on anyone I'd ever met. Even though my ficticious Hans Kornikov-Angstram would seem to be a very complex personality, I met someone a few weeks who practically *is* him. Not only did he look just like the character I'd made up, he also studied the same course at university and had many of the same mannerisms and ideas. I didn't tell him about the resemblence, but I did tell him about the book and he wants to read it when I've finished! I'm hoping he'll like Hans and won't notice the resemblence or ask if I based the character in any way on himself!

Didn't Jilly Cooper write a novel where all the main characters were based on real people with their names changed? I think one of the characters was an Irish chat show presenter. Apparently people were buying the book to see if they could recognise the characters.

lol - never heard about that! However I did once hear about a competition in some magazine where the winner got to make a brief appearance in a Dick Francis novel. Fine if the person in question happened to be interesting and easily representable in a flattering light...

"Doris was a supremely unremarkable lady. She was the kind of person you could pass in the street and not even acknowledge the existence of, or, to put it quite bluntly, a puny, insignificant little person. However, if it is vitally necessary to spend time in her company, the only thing about her appearance that one might acknowledge is that her face looks extraordinarily like something a cow has chewed on for a few hours and then spat out."

Fortunately, my characters only have habits and mannerisms resembling those of friends, as opposed to actually being the friends with different names. The problem is, if you write books about people you know, the problem is that you can't then tell anyone that you've written them!

I've had a number of plot ideas that have sprung from reading something. That doesn't mean the plot is always the same as what I've been reading. (I did read an introduction to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales that said that some of the people mentioned at the start never told their stories, and other travellers who *did* tell a story weren't mentioned at the start. Kind of made me want to set things straight.) No, what happens is I read something and it triggers a train of thought. I read 'The Lady of Shallott' by Tennyson and thought a modern publisher would reject that as a story. Telling a story about a cursed medieval lady would require major plot changes, but then 'Lady of Shallott' doesn't really have a plot. That's the kind of thing. Or a single word in a book can trigger ideas. Some ideas come from conversations.

As has been said, it's not the plot ideas that cause the problems. It's sitting down and writing the story.

What do you like?
What do you Know about?
What do you understand and what baffles you?

all of those things above are good strating pints for a good storyline. Research is a major part of fictional writing these days. In order to make your plot/Storyline as real as possable you first have to know and have knowledge of the plot. so pick something your passionate about and you wont go far wrong ..the words will flow easily and you can always change things around when your finished that all important first draft

I get mine from role playing my story is off of my character I made

Could you give an example of that?

A15809709
A15843873
that good

"How do you get ideas for plots?"

Hmm. Interesting question.

I think the spark that will set off the whole thing is a spark of ingenuity (yep, pun intended). Just think of a good idea. Not necessary an original one; and it would probably be near-impossible nowadays anyway. I mean, Moses may have the Creation story all told and explained in Genesis, but that didn't stop John Milton from writing 'Paradise Lost', did it?

Afterward is the parallel process of characterizing and plotting. Make up these wonderfull people that you would love to see in your story, and a bunch of interesting situations to throw them into.

Things will work themselves out from here. Hopefully.

Oh, by the way, did I mention that the only story I ever written is so messy (as is has been for, um, more than two years now) that I can't even post it here?