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Today’s writing life topic is about dealing with multiple ideas. Have you ever had to do any of this?

Most writers have more story ideas than they know what to do with. If you’re in this boat, you need to know how to cut through the clutter and make the right decisions. Here are a few things I’ve learned that have helped me.

Write everything down

Writing your story ideas down cements them in your brain. You’ll be able to mull over them longer to see if they’re good ideas. Even if you discard an idea, down the road, you might come back to it and find there are elements from it you like that you can incorporate into your other stories.

Don’t just write down basic story premises, write down any ideas for fleshing out those stories or just random ideas that would be cool in some story.

Let it sit

The only stories I’ve ever written quickly after coming up with the idea has been short stories. Novellas take more time to prepare for and novels even more. Think of a story idea like a potential spouse. You want to see it from many different angles and get to know it over time before you dedicate your life (at least a large portion of it) to the story.

I’ve had many great story ideas over the years. Some of them I’d really love to come back to at some point. But so far they’re not officially in the plan, because I’ve had time to think over them.

Either there’s something missing (like I’ve got a fantastic character idea, but no plot), or it’s just not as good as my other story ideas, or perhaps it’s not expedient for the type of career I want to forge over the next decade but it could be a good book to write once I’ve already established myself. #branding

Make sure all streams lead to the ocean

In other words, once you’ve given your story ideas time to sit, you’ll start to get an idea of which ones are *probably* keepers. These are your oceans and the streams (your random bits of inspiration) should lead into them. 98% of inspiration you get is not a new story idea! It’s idea that can fit inside your current story if you just train yourself to think that way.

To paraphrase Sanderson’s third law slightly out of context: “Don’t add something new if you can use what you already have.”

By following this rule, you should end up with a few very solid story ideas that are highly developed.

Now to turn it over to you. How do you sort through story ideas?

 

 

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