What do you do when you have an idea for a story? How do you decide if it's worth trying to write a whole novel with, or if you should write a short story with it instead...or if it should just be part of someone's backstory, or if it should be combined with another idea, or if it just isn't worth writing at all? How do you develop it? How do you keep track of it?

Basically, when you come up with a story idea, what are your next steps?

It's more practicality than anything

1) What is it

2) Is it alone or a part of something else

3) I daydream about it for a bit

4) I weigh my time

5) I usually discard it at some point, but if it's not I stuff it in my memory bank.

I've got several ideas all smashed with others at the moment. I don't have the time to write them though.

I have found that for me, the best way of thinking about writing is to write, the best way of thinking about drawing is to draw, and the best way of thinking about sewing is with a lot of pins.

So when I get an idea that I need to use, or that I just like so much that I want to develop it whether I have time to write it at the moment or not, I make a file for it. The file usually ends up having a 10 000 to over 40 000 wc. It's for development, it doesn't include any actual story writing, that goes in another file. The actual list of scenes and the character profiles also get their own files.

The development file just has... stuff.

Usually everything at the beginning of the file is obsolete by the time I get to drafting the book. It's like a record of evolution.

I've been writing books long enough that I know what needs to happen to an idea before I can write a book about it. I need to work out several things about the main character(s), work out the supporting characters that have structural roles, find the conflict, find the point of it, work out how it will.. go together and stuff. One of the questions I generally ask in the development file is 'will there be much poetry?' Because that's something I have to know. * shrugs * There are a lot of questions like that. It's kindof a loose development 'system', I guess. It's mostly just me knowing what works for me.

But I don't have a system for deciding what idea to work on, other than: do I really really like it? If I don't I don't work on it, and if I do I work on it after I finish one of my other projects.

When I begin writing, I basically sit down and go. No outline, nothing. And this has yielded me many sales from Smashwords and Amazing Amazon. (BTW, Amazon isn't THAT amazing... as far as their KDP SELECT goes, Any thoughts??

p.s. I do enjoy the fun of writing from an outline at times, which also works well.
Fantasy Writer 101
age 15
<3

I just sit down and start writing it and sometimes it comes out longer than other times. I've lost count of how many times I've started a short story only to find out ten thousand words later that it wanted to be a novel instead. If pansting isn't really your thing then sit down and write a brief outline of your idea. You can tell from the complexity of the plot and the number of characters needed to carry it out whether it will take up a whole book, or just a few pages to tell the story in full. And sometimes you'll be wrong, but that happens to everyone. Neil Gaiman set out to write a short story, thought it was turning into a novella, and ended up with a novel that he apologized to his publishers for writing, because they weren't expecting it.

I just start writing background and random scenes that appear in my head, and as I do that, I get to know the characters more and more and plot slowly coalesces around them and then I can guess at how long they should be.

While I have one idea that is absolutely a very long series, I just found another one that is more of a standalone novel or novella length. So for me, it's really just finding out as I go.

Wow. You guys seem to be good at actually, er, writing. I have very little time to write, partly since I just don't have much free time in general, and partly because I have so many other hobbies. (Writing is, honestly, not a huge priority in my life.) So I tend to do as much work on my writing in my head as I can while I'm washing dishes or in the shower or otherwise occupied bodily but not mentally. Meanwhile, I also tend to be very picky about what projects I actually work on when I do have time to physically sit down and write. This is the main reason why I asked this question in the first place - I was hoping to find tips to help me sort through my ideas using my in-head time, determining which ones are worth spending my actual writing time on! But I didn't make this clear in the initial question.


This sounds like my current procedure, except that I've started to write down most of my ideas, or at any rate jot down notes that are supposed to jar my memory about them. So lots of emphasis on in-head time (the daydreaming, determining if it should go with another idea, &c) and a minimum of actual writing (the writing down of the idea).


Good for you. It seems like different writers can have wildly different ways of approaching the same thing, and so a lot of learning to be a writer is just learning what particular methods work for you...and the only way to do that is to keep trying until you find the right one!


I think I'm always a bit nervous that if I don't work on this idea I'm interested in RIGHT NOW, I'll lose interest in it and not want to work on it later on. So if I want to ever write out the idea, I MUST right away. This is a rather stupid frame of mind for me to have. I do have plenty of precedent of my abandoning ideas once I get bored of them...but I also have plenty of precedent of my returning to ideas that I've previously abandoned and improving on them.

You know, I think that basically I have two issues here that are making me want to carefully figure out what ideas to work on:
1) I don't have much writing time, so I want to use what time I do have as best as I can.
2) I'm afraid that I'll abandon my ideas and leave something half-finished (making me think that it was a waste of my precious time, which is not necessarily true), so I want to make sure that I'm really excited about an idea before I start working on it.

Issue #1 is a real issue. Issue #2 is mostly just me thinking stupidly.


Off topic, but I'm curious, what books do you have published on Smashwords and Amazon?


Well, er, maybe you can tell. Right now I'm trying to finish up a story that I thought would be nice and short after considering what characters were involved and what things needed to happen...but which ended up almost getting to novella size (DID get to novella size if you count all the bits I've already cut out...). But yes. I get your point. I just need to get better at outlining if I want to be able to judge how long a story will be before I start actually writing it!


This is basically what I do in my head when I have an idea.

Not really. I just have a lot of assignments for a fiction class I co-opt for my novel project.

Nice. My mom usually has me skip all my writing assignments that involve writing fiction since, to her, I do plenty of it anyway...

I can't do that, as it would mean flunking my class, and it forces me to keep working on the project.

It's also really helpful because it pushes me to write scenes I wouldn't ordinarily think of to flesh everything out and make sure it's a project worth working on.