How many times have you had a writer-friend (or someone in your writing group, etc.) say to you, “I’ve got the best idea for a story!” but then when they tell you what it is, it leaves you thinking: they need to learn the definition of “best” (and the definition of “story”)?
Welcome to the world of agents, publishers and writing coaches.
There are millions of writers out there who all want to write a story. Problem is, most of them have really lame-ass ideas.
I can’t even tell you how many story ideas I hear on a regular basis that start out with something really generic–I want to write a story about love in the south. Or my story is about a girl who escapes a bad home life. Or it’s a coming-of-age story for a boy who just wants to be in a band.
LAME. AVERAGE. EVERYDAY. And that is NOT what great stories are made of.
Sure, a great story may start with something kinda lame, average and everyday, but with the right information and creativity injected, it becomes something much better.
Just think if J.K. Rowling came up with the idea to write about a wizard-boy, and then just left it at that. LAME!
Because while the day-to-day life of a wizard-boy may be interesting to you–and maybe even interesting to some–it’s not ever gonna be enough to make your story stand out among the sea of stories about wizard-boys. You need more than that.
You need something high-concept. You need a freaking Concept, period. You need a bad guy and a Premise for the story.
And it’s kinda hard to have those things when you’re constantly settling for less-than-average story ideas.
Where the Real Problem Lies
The real problem for most writers isn’t that they have lame, average, everyday ideas (although that is the problem for some of them). The real problem is that most writers aren’t generating enough ideas in order to actually uncover the ones that are worth writing about.
So they settle for some half-baked, lame-ass idea, because it’s all they can come up with.
And that’s what’s really sad. Half-baked, lame-ass ideas are career suicide for writers.
Writers who write and publish ideas like that are the reason so many writers believe that it’s “hard to be a successful fiction writer” and “writing fiction can’t possibly be a full-time career” and “successful self-published novelists just got lucky.”
But the truth is…it’s none of that.
The truth is, those fiction writers who have created success did so because they didn’t settle for the first idea that came to them. (Which is another reason why it’s SO important to plan and develop your story before you write it–but that’s a whole other ball game.)
And if you’ve ever had that experience I just described–where no one is buying your novel, no one is leaving reviews and no one except people related to you are telling you that your story is any good–it’s time to own up to the fact that your story is probably pretty freaking lame (sorry to be the bearer of bad news).
You Need To Do THIS Instead
If you want to avoid being one of those writers who either spends their life pitching and re-pitching and re-writing pitches and getting rejected by a thousand agents and publishers who all pretty much say the same thing–“this story sucks”–or who self-publishes a novel, only to hear crickets…you have to STOP SETTLING.
Settling is for writers who don’t believe enough in themselves to wait for–or keep digging for–the golden idea that will take their story to a whole new level. (Another reason why planning is so imperative.) Writers who settle do so because they’re afraid that’s the only idea they’ll ever have, so they’ve gotta run with it while they’ve got it.
And some writers who settle have even convinced themselves that the lame-ass idea is actually pretty good (delusions that will get you no where).
But you’re not a settler, right? Because you know that you want an actual, real shot at having a successful fiction-writing career.
And to have that actual, real shot at success, you’ve gotta have a kick-ass story. Anything less just won’t cut it.
Here’s How To Cultivate Better Ideas
There’s an exercise that I do on a regular basis to help me generate killer ideas–for fictional stories, for nonfiction eBooks, for blog posts, for video posts, etc. You can do this exercise with pretty much anything you need to generate an idea for.
Here’s how it works:
- Get out a notebook or a piece of paper
- At the top of the page write an intention for what you want to generate ideas for (for example, “Books I can write” or “Stories I can tell”)
- Make a list of 30-50 ideas that fit under whatever you set as the intention (an alternative version would be to set a timer for 10-15 minutes and generate as many ideas as you can ’til it goes off)
Now the point isn’t to come up with 30-50 really awesome ideas. Not at all.
The point is to come up with 30-50 bad or so-so ideas, which then clears a path for a really killer idea to come through. Sometimes it comes though on the actual list. Other times it will come through afterward because your mind is free and clear of all those mediocre ideas.
That’s the thing about the mind–it takes in SO much information on a daily basis and you’ve got SO much going on inside there. It can make it really, really tough to “hear” the great ideas (or even the really good ones) when you mind is clogged with crappy, average, lame-ass ideas and thoughts.
This exercise will help you clear those out so you can finally have access to the ones that are actually worth writing.
You Can’t Just Do It Once
A lot of times after I teach this exercise to writers they’ll try it and then say to me, “I did it, but it didn’t work. Or I didn’t come up with anything great.” To which I respond, “Do it again.”
Generating ideas isn’t something you do once or only when you need an idea. No, idea generation should be something you do on a regular basis.
I have “idea generation” on my to-do list DAILY.
Now I don’t always come up with 30-50 ideas. Sometimes I do 5-10 or sometimes just 5, but the point is, I make a focused, conscious effort to continuously generate ideas every day.
By doing this, I get my mind thinking in the right way and focusing on the right things: better ideas.
Most of what I come up with is total crap that I would never do anything with. But every time I do this exercise, I always come up with 1 or 2 really killer ideas that I can act on right away.
And that’s the whole point.
Share With Us
Give this exercise a try and then come back and report in the comments how it went for you.
