Lesson 1: Ideation · 3:45am Dec 8th, 2021
How do we begin writing a story when we don’t have any ideas? Or perhaps we do have ideas and we’re simply unsure of how to turn them into a story. This lesson will serve to cover the process of “ideation,” and more specifically, centred and iterative ideation.
So, why do we need to ideate? Well, it helps us form clear images in our heads about what we want to convey to our readers. It also lets us know that what we start with when we begin writing is a set of ideas that is interesting and will stand out.
The phrase “Every story that can be written has already been done,” encapsulates the problem we are trying to solve with our creative process. If you start a story today thinking you are going to do something fresh and inspiring and everyone is going to love it because there’s nothing like it, then it’s not going to happen.
But what we can do is tweak the things that circulate in our culture, reevaluating them and stitching them together with different elements so that it is both familiar and foreign at the same time. Take Spider-Man, for example. Spider-Man would not be the beloved comic book hero he is today if his story was retold in the exact same way. Great power, spider bite, getting the ladies, when it all becomes rehashed, it all becomes stale and expected.
In recent years, the story of Miles Morales has gone through this same iterative process. In the comics, who is Miles and what is his character conflict? He’s the next Spider-Man, and he’s worried he can’t do as well as Peter. The animated film “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” develops upon this further, giving meaning to Miles’s identity as a black/Latino kid from Brooklyn. His opening struggle that carries throughout the film has nothing to do with being Spider-Man, but with the expectations put on him when his dad forces him to go to a new school where people from his neighbourhood aren’t as represented.
Through iteration, Miles becomes more than a Spider-Man replacement, new layers are placed on top of his existing character arc, and most importantly, the film manages to develop off of the comics rather than simply transferring its writing from one medium to another.
An introduction to a general process of design and planning
For some, you might know that I have a small background in graphic design, art, and photography. And I want to make it clear that “design” in its broadest sense does not just refer to visual media. Design refers to the organization of ideas and elements within that body of work, whether it be a poster, a photo, a building, or a story. I mention this because iterative ideation is not something I picked up from my writing experience or from published authors, but from my graphic design coursework and video game developer conferences.
Central Ideation
The “central” part of central ideation means sticking to a single idea, and every idea you come up with has to tie back into that first concept. This is an important first step because it prevents the pitfall of having too many things to write at once. Stories can become cluttered or undirected when there are too many ideas to revolve around.
As a quick exercise, say we want to write a story about Twilight Sparkle. With central ideation, we want to distill our reference down to a simple archetype, trope, or cliche, so we’re going to go even more abstract and treat Twilight as just a bookish nerd.
Why does being “a nerd” matter to a person? It’s a label and sometimes part of one’s self-identification, so in what cases is it important? The first thought that comes to mind is in high school. In a school setting with young characters, social groups are highly important, and small identifiers like “nerd” or “theatre kid” become a lot more impactful than if the character were working in an office among adults.
But if that is why nerdy characters are so often portrayed in high school settings, it doesn’t mean we have to do the same, it just means we have to come up with a setting that fulfils similar social situations. And in this case, that situation is being among young peers.
Right away, I’m sure you can come up with many fictional and real reasons for a nerdy kid to actively engage with other young peers. Maybe it’s at an arcade, and it’s a slice of life story about video games. Maybe it’s some kind of cadet training facility. Boom, you’ve ideated from “nerdy kid” into “militaristic fiction.” Or maybe instead, the nerdy kid is in an orphanage. Now you’ve ideated a story that might touch on themes of family and identity.
You can also go the opposite direction on the slider, and deliberately look for story elements that are contradictory to being a nerd. We’ve had some settings so let’s imagine plots. What kind of plot is uncommon to nerdy characters? How about being too popular? What kind of story do we get when the nerd is perceived as the popular party kid? It might be a story about living dual identities and choosing self-expression over social pressure.
Then, once you have your ideas plotted out, and can begin to stick the concrete details back in. In this case, turn the nerd archetype back into Twilight Sparkle, and begin adding the next layer.
And though this exercise is with a character, it can really be done with anything. Have a setting you like? Ideate what characters and plot are and are not usually associated with that place or world. Same for if you’re starting with a plot. What places and people go with a hero’s journey or a revenge plot, and what can you do to add a twist to those?
Iterative Ideation
I consider iterative ideation different central ideation, even though much of the process is really the same. You’re not reaching out and thinking of new ideas to tie back to a central subject. Rather, you are sticking with that subject and iterating that idea alone.
The team that worked on Horizon: Zero Dawn executed this process well with their design of cultures and background characters, as well as their main and side characters. And, for your homework, you will be looking at a part of that presentation to better understand the full depth of their creative process.
We can use that process in our stories as well, not just physical or visual elements like setting and characters. We will get further into plots later, but just for now, understand that there are established types of stories that have been told ever since stories have existed. Iterating on those existing stories means taking someone’s existing idea, boiling it down, and then gradually adding small changes.
In my short story “Phoenix on the Cross,” which is set in my Sunset the Shimmerian world, the final scene I wanted to portray was iterated off of elements of mythology and religion. Being based on Conan the Barbarian by Robert E Howard, I wanted to find a way to capture his ability to capture vaguely familiar history and myth and transform them to eerily distant, at times almost alien, mysterious and unexplained pasts.
So, for a scene, I iterated on the Eucharist. Not to spoil too much, but there is a scene in my story where the characters intake the blood of a divine being tied to a cross in order to gain their own salvation. Yet the Eurcharist is an incredibly familiar religious practice, so how did I “hide” it? I posed myself multiple questions: What if the divine is unwilling? What if the participant is unwilling or coerced? What does “salvation” look like in this world?
The Eucharist is a celebratory ritual, so the easiest thing for me to do was just to go to the furthest extreme and make it really horrible. Then, the great thing about iteration is that it is repetitive, so once you have one idea you can still move the sliders for your story up or down incrementally. Little less gore? Little more? Create your extremes as a guide to help decide how to dial in to what you want exactly.
The importance of iteration and reference
Just like with visual art, stories do not exist without reference. Do not be afraid to copy from the best authors. That does not mean copy their words or their ideas one-to-one. Instead, practice taking apart your favourite characters, scenes, plots, settings, themes, or whatever. Isolate key elements as if they were critical points of a picture, like an eye or a vanishing point in the distant background.
Develop the skills to iterate
Design is about finding a path when you don’t know where you are going. That is why it is so important to focus on single subjects when you are developing your skills as a writer. Even if you never take an idea to a full story, those iterations will still be in your mental bank, and you can revisit them whenever you like when new ideas come to you.
Delete your work, less is more
This refers more to the actual writing of the story, your word choice and efficiency at conveying ideas. You want to be short and concise in your own planning stages so you are efficient when writing your scenes. As we go through future lessons and discuss the process of both planning and writing, you may start to feel overwhelmed with how many ideas you are putting down.
For example, an inefficient scene would be something like this: “Twilight sat at the front of the classroom, hunched over her test. Around her, dozens of students did the same, some periodically checking the clock to see how much time was left. The flickering of stars outside her window and the light of Equestria’s upper atmosphere shone through the station’s window.”
Here, each sentence describes something about what the story might be about. First there is the character, Twilight, followed by a sentence that tells the author this is a stressful/important test. Finally, it sets up the genre with a description of the environment. Even if we were to rearrange the sentences, we’re still dedicating one idea per sentence.
Less is more, so let’s shorten it to one sentence: “Light reflecting off Equestria illuminated Twilight’s exam as she chewed on her pen.”
It’s not exactly hard to do, and yes I made the less efficient scene deliberately long, but sometimes when we start writing and are filled with ideas, we miss these details and start putting down everything we’ve developed over the course of ideation.
If you can do it for a few sentences, then you can do it for paragraphs and chapters too. Deleting our work, even during the first draft, is a very important tool to being comfortable in the ideation process when not everything will necessarily stick.
Homework
Your homework assignment is to see how iteration and ideation is used by other writers and artists.
Watch “Repopulating the Earth: Character Production on Horizon Zero Dawn” from timestamp 30:40 and onward
- Optional: Read “The Phoenix on the Cross”
Addendum: Here is another example of shortening for efficiency, taken from me editing another writer's description instead of trying to make up something deliberately long.
The passage in question:
My adjustment:
Reasons for the adjustment:
1. "silence wasn't welcomed by the various pets inhabiting the pet shop."
We know they're pets, that's implied by "pet shop." There's no need to repeat the word "pets," you can instead call them animals or creatures, or beasts if you want to give it a different vibe.
Repeating words like that adds excessive information that feels wrong to read or say. It's like writing "the baseball players went out on the baseball field to play baseball" instead of "the baseball players started their game."
2. There's no action. The last sentence can be replaced by a number of words. Mull, meander, shuffle, those are actions that convey that the character is thinking about something else because they're being very sluggish or inattentive to what they're doing.
I'm guilty of just packing descriptive scenes with sensory overload as well, I do it the most in my Nightmare Knights fic because it's really more of a casual slice of life where I don't have to think as hard when I write. But when I sit down to write a serious story, these considerations are pretty important to me.