creativity

Writing Thoughts: The Story Is Just Part Of The Story

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

When you make a story of any kind, the beginning isn’t the beginning and the end isn’t the end. Any truly living story is just a slice of something much larger. I learned this lesson lately.

As I’ve begun the final edits of my novel, A Bridge To The Quiet Planet, I had decided to try writing short fiction on the side. I had many ideas, from using random stories to doing more in the setting of my novel. The idea seemed fun, interesting, different, and relaxing – and maybe profitable.

With my first attempt in draft form, I handed it off to some friends to edit, confident that if I could get such good reactions to my novel draft, this was sure to be of equal quality. However, one of my editors was extremely critical – he noted how it was constrained, limited, and it didn’t seem to be like my other work. How could I have gone so wrong?

At first annoyed, I sat down and analyzed his voluminous comments (this person is someone I’m trying to push towards pro writing and editing). Soon I realized that he had a point.

There wasn’t the sense of setting I usually created – I write on Worldbuilding but this world didn’t seem alive. There was little sense of extra details or of things going on around the characters. It was like a studio backlot.

I didn’t do much with character senses or feelings. The tale was limited and scriptlike, minimal on sensations. Even with the rather intellectual cast of my experiment, the focus was too literal.

Characters themselves seemed constrained – only when they really interacted were they characters. They also didn’t interact well with the setting. It was like actors wandering through a soundstage.

My story, in short, wasn’t alive. So I asked myself how did I get here – and the answer became very apparent.

I had taken a break from fiction for awhile, and returned to it with my novel. To do the novel I had used various plotting and outlining techniques, and I tried to do the same for the short story. I had produced a very detailed outlining system for short stories, ensuring I got to the point and didn’t overdo it.

I had built a skeleton for a story. However I’d put very little meat on the bones – the minimal at best. I had created a system, but not created much of a story, at least to my standards and that of my friend.

With this idea in mind, I examined some of my other short story ideas that had been incubating – and they felt much more alive. These were ideas that had been sitting around for some time, that were played with and thought over. Because of this imagining and re-imagining, they were more connected, more alive, more nuanced.

This story I had just attempted was the least thought-over and least nuanced. Too much of it was alienated from itself.

That’s when the lesson of all of this hit me like a thunderbolt – you don’t write a story, you write part of one.

A story should be a slice of your setting, a piece of the history of that setting, a small and interesting part of a much larger potential. It should have characters who are not sprung into being at the start, but are created and written so they feel like they have pasts and futures outside of your story. Everything should feel large, no matter how short the story is.

Now these things may not be immediately apparent – you may have a story idea and need to better realize the world and characters. You may only need so much detail. But you need enough for the story to be alive because it’s part of something larger, at least conceptually and imaginatively.

Based on this idea, I’m back at it. I can’t say what you may or may not see, but if you do see any short fiction from me, I think it’ll be much better.
– Steve

The Brainstorm Book Method: Creative Challenges

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Hello everyone, and welcome to my new column series. It’s a followup to an old series I did on how to use a brainstorm book. I’ve decided I need to rewrite to include my later insights, improve the writing, and explore it further.  If all goes well I might turn it into a book.

But let’s get to what’s important – the Challenges of Creativity.  These are why you need some method anyway.

Creative Challenges That Plague Us

Creativity is something we all rely on. For some of us, such as writers and graphic artists, it may be the core part of our careers. For others, it may be part of what we do, like creating presentations or infographics. Even if creative work isn’t part of our career it may well be part of our hobbies, recreations, and goals.

To be creative, as so many of us need to be, we need inspirations. We need those lighting-bolt ideas that come out of the blue, or slowly—incubated dreams that suddenly come to life. Inspiration is where the connections come together so we can make new things.

The problem is that creativity brings in a lot of challenges – a lot to fear.

We fear a lack of inspiration. We are terrified that our new ideas and innovations will just dry up. Without those creative sparks, we can’t do what we want to do – and the fear of losing them makes it worst.

We might fear too much innovation. Ideas come thick and fast, new possibilities intrude on our thoughts as we’re dealing with past inspirations. We get overloaded trying to keep up with what we might do – it almost makes a lack of inspiration welcome.

We fear losing ideas. No matter how many we have, too many or too few, we need to keep track of them to cultivate them and develop them. How we track them and evaluate them becomes critical to our creative work.

We fear not knowing how to focus. We have our dreams and ideas, we want to develop them – but which do we focus on? What creative work comes next?

We fear not knowing how to plan long term. It’s a problem to focus short term, but how do we arrange all these ideas for long-term? Will some never come to fruition? Should others be moved up in priority?

We fear being blocked. What do we do next? Why did this great idea suddenly stop energizing us? Perhaps the greatest fear creative people have is when things just stop in our heads.

If you sit back and think about it, creative work can be very stressful. Thinking over what can go wrong can paralyze us and make our creative efforts even harder to do. There’s an irony in that.

. . . maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up.

However, even if I’ve suddenly destroyed your confidence, I do have a solution I’ll be discussing in the upcoming blog posts – what I call a Brainstorm Book method.

The Brainstorm Book – A Quick Overview

The Brainstorm Book Method is actually three things.

  • First, it’s a physical thing – a book you record ideas in. You use this book to capture ideas.
  • Second, it’s a system – a way to use those ideas to maximize your creativity and prioritize them. You review the book at certain intervals, capturing and prioritizing ideas regularly.
  • Third, it’s a philosophy – a way to think about creativity. This helps you innovate and make your own methods or tweak my methods to fit you.

I’ll be exploring this method over the weeks to come – to help you out with your creative work and maybe put some of those fears to rest.

Remember, this is not just for artists or writers. This is for anyone that needs to imagine, dream, and creative – which is really anyone. From home cooks innovating new recipies to someone trying to figure out better memo systems on the job, we all create.

So, next column, let’s talk about your Brainstorm Book.  Er, the physical one.

– Steve

Writer’s Advice: Too Many Ideas To Finish?

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

At Fanime someone asked me a simple question:

“What do I do when I have too many ideas and can’t finish any.”

I’m sure you can relate.  We’ve all been there.  Some of us may have overcome it – and as I did I wanted to share what I’ve found.

  1. List out your creative projects.  Only do the ones you’d really want to do.  I keep a separate Incubator for “maybes.”
  2. Force-rank them in order of value – nothing can be of equal importance – only one is #1, only one is #2, and so on.  Value of course depends on you to determine.
  3. Take the top project and get it done.  Do it until you’re finished.  And yes, realizing that you’re going to focus on one thing might make you rethink value and revise the last stage.
  4. Once you’ve gotten one thing done, then you might consider juggling multiple projects at once.  If you’re still getting your priorities in order, don’t do more than two at a time.
  5. No matter how many you do, always keep their priority in mind.  When time gets tight, when things go wrong, you’ll know what to focus on.
  6. Eventually you’ll figure out how much you can handle and still get things done.  I myself usually have about 4-5 projects at any one time, but they’re of various complexities and timeframes.  Usually one Real Big One, a few midrange ones, and one or two short range (one month) ones.

This method is a simple way to keep focused, get things done, and learn your capacity for work and how to stay on top of it.

So why does it work?

First, it requires you to ask what you want to do.  You find what you care about.

Secondly, it requires you to think about value.  That requires you not only to evaluate the value of something but ask just what is value to you.  If you’re just starting out getting in order maybe it’s just something you can finish easily.  Later it may be something that makes a profit or teaches you a skill.

Third, it makes you prioritize.  This helps you further think about value and focus your efforts.

Fourth, it helps you get something done.  The experience of completion, even if the work is small or flawed or simple, teaches you a lot about productivity, completion, and what you want.

Fifth, you feel good as you got something done.  That feeling of achievement will help you stay directed and encouraged.

Of course this comes from my work in Agile.  It’s all about value, ranking, adaptability, and learning – without being overcomplicated.

Give it a try and let me know how it works!

– Steve