The Story Ideas Virtuoso

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The Story Ideas Virtuoso – Celebrations

By Deb Gallardo

This post is the 2nd in a short series in celebration of publishing my 200th article last week. It is a continuation of “The Best of the Story Ideas Virtuoso.”

From January 2008: Story Ideas from Looking Backward and Forward

Endings, Beginnings and the Gateway Between

In that semi-carnal, semi-sacred moment in time, somehow meaningless and yet infinitely profound, people around our shrinking globe celebrate the death of the old year and the birth of the new.

I say “semi-carnal” because of over-indulgence in numerous activities in the name of celebration. I use the term “semi-sacred” because the transition from old to new, from death to life, perfectly explains what Judeo-Christians call resurrection or re-birth.

The moment the clock strikes midnight, what actually happens? If you slept through it, did you miss anything other than seeing what Dick Clark looks like now? Is it merely a matter of hanging a new calendar on the wall and life goes on, no big deal? When you think about it, a hour earlier people in the next time zone east of you already went through this. And on the other side of the world — across the International Dateline — it’s already a day later. What’s the big deal? In a second the moment is gone. How can this artificial temporal phenomenon have any real meaning?

But it does. Regardless of what day or time it is elsewhere, no matter what time zone you live in, wherever you are is your own time reality. Our lives are affected by the gravitational pulling and pushing from the sun and moon, from earth’s rotation on its axis, its revolutions around the sun, and our solar system’s indiscernible movement within our a galaxy in an obscure area of the cosmos.

Is it any wonder that we mark the days and weeks and months and seasons and years? Is it so surprising that we imbue these with importance and feel their unmistakable power?

And so artificial and man-made though it may be, the start of any year is an almost universal clean slate. Whether you follow the Chinese calendar, the Hebrew calendar or the more universal Roman calendar, a new year is unsurprisingly a time of reflection and a time of hope. It is in this gateway leading from death to life, from “forgetting the things behind and stretching forward to the things before” that we gain perspective for the future and make peace with the past.

In reality, we can do this at any moment in time. The new year is still young and there is ample time for reflection and planning right now. So out of this time for contemplation and dreaming, along with that all-important planning of what actions you will take beginning today, take a step back and observe this process as if you were the proverbial fly on the wall. Note anything that resonates with emotion.

What regrets do you hold from last year? What do you want to avoid this year?
What did you learn from last year? What do you hope to learn this year?
What did you accomplish last year? What do you want to accomplish this year?
What would you do over if you could? What will you keep just as it is?
If you were restricted to accomplishing only one thing this year, what would it be and why, and how would this thinking change your planning habits?

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From February 2008: Story Ideas- Book Review, Part I

If writing for children is something you’ve considered, I have a book recommendation to get you started right away. Story Sparkers: A Creativity Guide for Children’s Writers, published in 2000 by Writer’s Digest Books (still available for purchase through online channels) and written by Marcia Thornton Jones and Debbie Dadey, is sure to get your creativity activated with at least some of its many exercises, tips and suggestions. Jointly the elementary teachers authored these popular series:

Adventures of the Bailey School Kids
Triplet Trouble
The Bailey City Monsters

In addition, the authors have written several books individually.

The first chapter of Story Sparkers opens with two paragraphs that define what we all need in order to get started writing – a spark. I’ll let the authors speak for themselves.

Page 5
“Sparks are tiny glowing embers capable of igniting into a brilliant fire–or of being completely snuffed out by the surrounding ash. As writers, we need to discover our own buried story sparks capable of igniting into full-fledged stories, articles, and poems. The strategies and exercises in this book will help you dig through the ash and find those glowing embers that will spark your writing, igniting it until it glows.”

Since the book’s intent is to get you writing, the authors start with the basics:

Where to write (computer vs. paper)
Where to store your story sparks (computer vs. container)
Children’s market overview
Genres
Lists and lists of books, including Caldecott and Newbery Medal Winners
What’s Hot
What’s Good

Lots of great advice abounds in the Try It Yourself sidebars scattered throughout the book. These tips are designed to move you to action, instead of merely reading ABOUT writing.

Action steps for chapter one include setting up the place you will keep the story sparks you uncover, whether it’s a computer file folder, a hand-written journal devoted exclusively to ideas or, if you jot down ideas on anything handy, then a shoe box might serve you better for storing those napkins, sticky notes, backs of envelopes, index cards and toilet paper jottings.

Other tips include joining the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), always good advice for aspiring children’s writers. Another is reading widely in all children’s genres, both classic and current titles, to help you determine your preferred genre.

Finally they point you to The Horn Book Magazine and the School Library Journal for monitoring trends in the industry and what’s being published now. If you love reading children’s books, you’ll adore the mandate that you spend hours at libraries and bookstores pouring over today’s books, along with time-honored classics, doing your due diligence with market research.

And of course, you must hone your writing skills, yet think like a kid. How’s that for the best of both worlds?

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Story Ideas – Book Review, Part 2

For more than 30 jam-packed pages, Marcia Thornton Jones and Debbie Dadey explain your brain and offer exercise after exercise to help you find those methods that work for you to generate story sparks. From the blinking cursor or blank sheet of paper that portend writer’s block, to dealing with that self-righteous, know-it-all, über-critical little editor that sits on your shoulder and rejects everything you create, you are led by the hand through every story-generating technique they could think of.

But don’t be lulled into just reading the how-to’s, the why’s and the wherefore’s. Have a pen and paper nearby. Trust me. You’ll be glad you did.

First they tackled the facts about right brain vs. left brain, showing which half creates, which half edits, and how to keep them both happy while maintaining your sanity as a writer. The strategies that follow encourage BOTH sides of the brain. Read Story Ideas – Book Review, Part 2 (Opens in new window)

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From March 2008: Story Ideas – Online Marketing for Writers, Part One

In today’s fiction market, when U.S. publishers annually put out hundreds of thousands of books, yet devote promotional funds to only their top authors, getting the word out about your writing has never been more important. That said, here is a bold statement: Today is the absolute best time to be a writer. Here’s why.

As the Internet continues its explosive growth, the publishing landscape is evolving. Even big name publishing houses are scrambling to keep up with the many ways the buying public wants to consume the written word. Hometown newspapers are struggling more than ever before to stay afloat. Because studies show that 40% of Americans read 1 book or less per year, none of us knows how all this will shake out in the coming years.

Three things are certain, however.

There has never been more of a need for good writers, both fiction and non-fiction.
There has never been more of a need for those writers to be able to market their own work.
There has never been a more lucrative, accessible and affordable marketing medium than the Internet.

Read Story Ideas – Online Marketing for Writers, Part One (Opens in new window)

Story Ideas – Online Marketing for Writers, Part Two
Story Ideas – Online Marketing for Writers, Part Three
Story ideas – Online Marketing for Writers, Part Four
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From April 2008: Creative Writing – Do What You Love to Love What You Do

Joel Comm posted a video today about doing what you love. Since this is a topic I addressed earlier at The Writing Life – Go With Your Strengths, and since so many people on this planet live lives of quiet desperation because they hate their jobs, this is a lesson we all need to learn and relearn. Even when quitting a day job is out of the question, following our passions is possible as a hobby. If you think you don’t have enough time, just consider taking 30 minutes a day to spend time on an activity that you LOVE. You will find that this brief activity energizes you. Can you afford NOT to take the time to do what you love?

I would go so far as to hypothesize, based on the fact that all matter in the universe vibrates – including the cells in our bodies, our brains, etc. – that someday scientists will discover this (remember you heard it here first, LOL):

Maybe what we were made to do causes our body’s resonance frequency to synchronize with either a universal constant or a frequency unique to ourselves. Or perhaps different parts of our body vibrate at different frequencies and when they’re dissonant, that’s when problems occur.

There is more that we DON’T know about resonance and dissonance and their impact on our state of mind, physical condition, disease-resistance, etc, than we do know. If you are familiar with any scientists who specialize in the effect of various frequencies on human anatomy, send me a link to their work, please.

My theories notwithstanding, if you’ve ever been “in the zone” with any activity, chances are it was something you love doing. Whatever causes that effect, we’d all love to bottle it and have it available at all times. Doing what you love can bring you closer to that blissful state, because it’s what you were created for.

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From May 2008: Story Idea Snobs: Rant

I’m always amazed at the arrogance and insensitivity of writers for whom finding story ideas is not a problem. It’s as if they think this skill — and YES, it is a skill — is hard-wired into a writer’s being in the neonatal stage.

It’s not.

Finding story ideas is a LEARNED technique. If there were special eye glasses we could put on that would show an aura around every potential idea, how much easier it would be for writers in search of inspiration.

Working writers — those who make a living at writing — are the most likely to have no sympathy for people stuck for ideas. To their credit, they must face deadlines and juggle multiple projects, so they don’t have the luxury of saying, “I don’t have any ideas.” But what many of these writers either have forgotten or never experienced is that when you’re just starting out or wanting to begin writing, having something to say doesn’t always come spontaneously.

Once you’re in the groove, LOTS of things come more easily, and the longer you work at it, the easier it becomes. But getting started is the hardest part of the process. There is tremendous inertia to overcome. And as there is a learning curve, the path is upward-sloping, adding to the difficulty of generating enough steam.

Sometimes getting started writing is like the first, interminable hill on a roller coaster ride. The Blue Streak at Cedar Point comes to mind, although it’s probably tame by today’s standards and it’s a “woodie.” But back in the sixties when I first rode it (also the LAST time I rode any roller coaster, thank you very much) I wanted to get off about 30 seconds into the climb to that first peak. After cresting the rise, momentum took over.

The law of inertias states that a body in motion tends to stay in motion and a body at rest tends to stay at rest. That’s why I get irritated with those same writers who say, “Geez, ideas are everywhere! Just look around you. Why do people keep asking me where I get my ideas? Give me a break!” They don’t seem to realize the gift they own, so they deride others who don’t have it yet.

Yes. Let’s sneer at all the poor babies who haven’t learned to walk yet. “Hey, I’m running, and you can’t even walk.Nyah, nyah! What’s wrong with you?”

My response is, “Get a heart transplant — one capable of feeling something besides contempt.”

There is nothing more demeaning when you are struggling to learn a skill than to have someone blithely say, “Oh, it’s easy! You just do this…” That’s NOT useful. It’s a cloaked put-down, even though the speaker may believe s/he is being encouraging.

Although writer David Ware‘s blog post was responsible for my semi-rant today, still he offers useful tips for finding story ideas. His best tip talks about the way writers need to look at their world. We may not have special writer’s eye glasses, but we do have a kind of radar. We just need to find the switch to turn it on.

You’ll have to do some reading between the lines in his sparse explanation. But if you read my blog regularly, you can find an abundance of DETAILED instructions for how and where to find those elusive story ideas, that will dovetail nicely with his suggestions.

TURN ON THE “WRITER’S RADAR”

The best way to find writing ideas is to keep your eyes, ears and mind open… There are many ideas that present themselves throughout the day, if we are just prepared to receive them… When something happens, ask yourself, can I write about this? With time & practice, you will soon find the ideas popping out at you, before you even have the chance to ask that.

To read the entire article go to: 8 Tips for finding story ideas

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From June 2008: Creative Writing – Imagination vs. Talent

Mark Twain said, “You can’t trust your eye if your imagination is out of focus.” What a great quote! It aptly introduces the blog post I found at “The Unknown Screenwriter” today.

If you’re a writer – screenwriter, novelist, short story author or blogger – this topic applies to you.

A reader wrote in asking if NATURAL TALENT was a prerequisite for success as a writer. The discussion that followed the post was as good as, or better in some ways, than the original question and the blogger’s response, IMHO. Many respondents with some experience in the film business commented that talent often gets in the way when the writer hasn’t yet mastered screenwriting structure — the key to a successful script.

The blogger feels that imagination, knowledge and experience are just as valuable as talent. He also says that knowing the mechanics is essential. When a writer has all these elements developed, then the natural talent has a way to flow.

Read the debate on imagination versus talent for the creative writer. (Opens in new window)

Don’t forget to read the comments, too. Language warning: This is a blog for adults.

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And there you have it, a brief retrospective on the first 200 posts here at The Story Ideas Virtuoso.

Feel free to leave comments and let me know what your favorite posts are. Be sure to sign up to receive the free pdf file while it’s still available.