On my computer sits a folder with perhaps a hundred story ideas in total. It’s been near that tally for a while now. No matter how fast I write books or use the ideas here or there, the number never goes down. You can generate 5 great ideas in a day; you can only execute 1 in a few months (at least).
I already accepted I will not write most of these ideas. The folder is already too full for one lifetime, even if I somehow attain Brandon Sanderson levels of productivity. In my experience, it’s the same for most writers or creative people in general.
But I was being unnecessarily harsh on myself and the ideas. You see, each idea of mine was filed away as a potential book, maybe a series.
Invented a cool magic system with three parts? That’s a trilogy!
Invented a nice character arc? That’s a book!
The past few years, I’ve gained more experience writing stories of varying lengths. I’ve finished long fantasy novels, mid-sized children’s books, short stories, you name it. I finished and published most of that, although at this point almost all my work is only available in Dutch. (The coming years, many more English works will come out internationally.)
The number of writing contests in which I participate has also steadily risen. I don’t care about prizes, or winning, or anything. But I like having a clear prompt and a strict deadline, for it motivates me to crank out a story in an evening. Maybe it’s good, maybe not, but at least I executed that idea and gained more experience.
These two trends came together in a sudden realization: no, not all my ideas need to be books. In fact, most do not.
I started looking at the ideas in a different light.
Instead of generating new ideas for each small contest, I picked an old idea in my “tiny sketch ideas” folder and did that. (Modifying to match prompt or other restrictions of course.)
I realized some ideas sounded cool, but really couldn’t sustain more than 10,000 words. I also realized some tiny idea, hidden inside another idea, actually had way more potential and should be moved into its own project.
Writing more (short) stories, seeing old and new ideas in a different light, it taught me a lot about an unsung and unnoticed writing skill: deciding the length and complexity of a given story (idea).
I don’t know how I didn’t see it before. I mean, I also develop games, and there it’s pretty standard practice: you create a minimal prototype first, to see if your game idea deserves a full game or not.
My line of thinking was wrong. I thought that each idea had to be a book. And once I committed to it, I had to write those 80,000 words. This, obviously, is overwhelming and has led to many unfinished projects in the past. Because after 5,000 words I realized I had nothing more to say … and it completely stifled creativity and motivation.
I now realize there is much truth to a story should take as long as it needs. It sounds like vague advice. It sounds like some ideal that can never be reached due to the fact you probably want to sell your novel.
But that’s only true if you think this first version is the final version. It’s not. You can write a story and realize you are done after 40,000 words.
Now you …
- Know how much content this story idea had.
- You also know it needs one or two extra bits to bring it to a full-length, commercial novel.
- And you probably know exactly what is missing or what is needed, because you spent all those weeks figuring out the idea.
In short, writers should prototype their stories. Write a short story with that magic system idea. Write a bunch of short stories set in that world you imagined, see how much content you can draw from it.
You can always turn a short story into a longer novel later, or combine it with another idea. It’s near impossible to turn any idea, however unsuitable, into a book (or even series!) by default. You’ll be milking a single interesting nugget for way too long, stretching it thin until the reader sees through your pathetic attempt.
That’s what the writing contests taught me. I could pick old ideas and write them under 2,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 words. Some fit perfectly. Others showed themselves as having more potential than I thought, bumping their head against the word limit. And other ideas revealed themselves as whimsical and silly, not even enough for a short story.
Now I know. I can turn some of them into full novels with confidence and certainty. I can remove ten ideas from this endless list because I have either executed them and/or realize they’re not worth much. The list finally shrinks and I have an easier time picking projects.
Develop this skill. Prototype stories. Learn to judge the potential (in terms of storylines, word count, complexity) of story ideas. Don’t try to turn tiny ideas into full books, nor compress a huge imaginative world into a short story.
An additional tip that helps me—which I mentioned a little earlier—is to combine ideas.
For example, there is a Dutch writing contest that asks for ~10,000 words, but also requires the idea to be suitable for expansion into a full novel.
I couldn’t find a suitable idea from my list, not even when going back to the “maybe, one day, very experimental” ideas.
But I could find a few interesting … nuggets. I realized they would never become their own (English) novel. But if I combined them, I’d have enough content for 10,000 words, and enough potential for one full book.
In the end, I could strike 5 mediocre ideas off the list, as I combined them into one much stronger idea. An idea with so much potential and intriguing mystery, that my entry for the contest basically wrote itself.
I can’t overstate how useful this realization and this skill is.
Suddenly, my list of story ideas isn’t that overwhelming anymore. I’m confident I can execute most of them one way or another. I can easily pick out ideas for writing contests or “let’s just have fun this Sunday”-short stories. I executed them, I scratched that itch, now I’m done with them.
I’m not reaching for content anymore. With so many previous writing projects, I started strong with ~5 chapters introducing my cool idea, and then I was completely stumped. Yeah, that cool idea really didn’t support more story than this. Now I can recognize this beforehand. I can combine ideas. I can pull the trigger on a book once I am certain it is supposed to be a full book.
Practice this. Prototype your stories. Use writing contests—or silly self-imposed challenges—if needed.
That’s my tip for today.