Tag: ideas

The Great Plague

I get ideas sometimes. 

You never know when inspiration will strike, but it will happen. More often than not, those flashes of inspiration are just random ideas that don’t connect to anything. I’d like to share one of those random ideas with you. 

It’s not good by any means, but feel free to use it if I spark an idea in you.

There’s this theory that Syphilis came from America and brought to Europe, while others theorise that the disease has been latent fin Europe for a long time and it only suddenly mutated into the disease we know today.

The latter one  is just bad storytelling.

I also heard that Native Americans were much more advanced than we previously thought, apparently, a long time ago. They’ve found huge wooden cities scattered across America that don’t fit the description of the nomadic Indian. So I was thinking, Imagine if a disease ravaged the land, much like the black death did in Europe, only, much more devastating. It destroyed Native American civilisation until there were only tribes left. And by then, the survivors had become more or less immune to the disease.

Then came Europeans who had no idea. 

They had sex with the Indian’s and brought it to Europe and then, another plague more devastating than the black plague occur! 

Destroying European civilisation as well. Maybe they go back to their feudal cities? 

So what is this civilisation destroying disease? Where did it come from? 

This is basically how I approach writing, by asking questions. Then I explore them and ask more questions. But whether you should answer them for yourself or reveal them to your reader that’s a different issue entirely, because some things are better left unanswered.

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by Stamphers

Digging for gold when there are gems in the sand

Stories, I can find them everywhere. In nature, in books, in people, in movies, in shows, in patterns in the sand, in sound, everything is a reminder of a story. Stories aren’t manufactured, I firmly believe, they are out there to be found and some part of me even believe they have existed at one point – in another time, on another dimension, perhaps? That’s the only explanation I have for them existing. Where do these words come from otherwise? Are they mere result of our brains conjuring them up from the impressions we’ve had over our lives? It doesn’t sound as sexy, that’s for sure and I am a romantic ❤

It has become bothersome, really, because I do want to explore all the discoveries that I’ve made but I fear I never will because they’re too many. I do write them down though, for safekeeping. After every finished story comes the impossible decision to choose which of the tales deserves to exist, in our presence anyway, because they do exist already, somewhere else.

It’s probably not smart, but I tend to pick those stories that are the least developed, those that are just mere ideas and concepts. One example is a story about a man being trapped on an island with a witch. That was all. Who is the witch? Who is the man? How did he end up there? What kind of world do they live in? Those are the questions I love to find out.

I’m not good enough to make this sort of work painless, however, but I will someday. The story that felt right from the start.

by Stamphers

Kill your Darlings… Ain’t that the truth…

Why is it so hard narrowing down your ideas into a cohesive story?

If you are anything like me, your mind is bombarded with ideas all the time, which is no exception when you write. You want to explore everything; everything is interesting, until you have material for three or four separate stories which has nothing to do with each other but you try to make them into one anyway.

This is my struggle.

On top of that, I’m very arrogant. I believe I can make a story from virtually nothing. You have one of those very vague but cool ideas, you know, which you try to make into something. I didn’t really have to be persistent with this idea because I have plenty where the plot is very clear and I have a clear message which I want to convey… Not this one. I don’t know what’s it’s about or what I’m trying to say, it’s just a cool idea I want to make into something.

I still believe I can make something out of this because I am still arrogant, but it will take a lot of work and I have done too much already to give up now…

Learn to discard ideas, kill your darlings, as they say, which I never believed in but is truer to me now more than ever.

by Stamphers

Organized Mess

Ideas, ideas, ideas… Why, they are everywhere, constantly bombarding my mind?! Why is everything so inspiring? I can’t watch a movie, read, or take a walk before something interesting pops up. What am I suppose to do with all of them?

I try to organize them.

It took time to come up with this system, and still it’s not perfect, but this is the best I can come up with, so bare with me. I separate them into three categories: ideas that are concepts, ideas with narration and ideas with plot.

Guess which category most of my ideas end up as?

Concepts are easy, so little is required of you to have them. The definition I use for a concept idea is that it has neither characters nor any sort of narrative, meaning they are the “what if” stories. These types of stories can turn into anything, if you let them, and require the most work. They are also the most fun because the plot hasn’t materialized yet.

Then there’s ideas with narration; they are the next step after the concept. These types of ideas are still very open to change, but there have events that tie it together. The characters are nameless and faceless, at this stage. Things has little consequence because we do not care about the world yet. You might have noticed with my ambiguous talk that this stage is difficult to define because where do you draw the line between concept and plot and is there something in between?

Maybe after further study, I’ll figure it out…

Then there’s those few ideas where, at least, some of the characters have been materialized. They have faces and personalities and there’s an urgency that drives the story forward. Ideas with plot is what every writer strive towards, because without characters we care for, we don’t care about the story overall. Even if the world building is excellent, the scenes vividly expressed, or an interesting topic is brought up, if we don’t care about the characters, the story is without meaning.

So this is how I organize my ideas. Obviously when I pick my next story I should choose the one with a plot already in the works, but sometimes it is liberating to choose an concept and see where it will lead.

© Christopher Stamfors

by Stamphers