The Wheat and the Chaff
How do you know when you have a good idea?
Welcome back to Up a Creek, a publication about writing and storytelling, relating the lessons I’ve learned in a 20-plus-year career as an author of novels and graphic novels.
Where have I been? Not writing substack posts, that’s for damn sure. But I’m back. For now. No promises on the next one, though there’s a heck of a lot of news on the book and TV front to share before long.
Today, though, I wanted to write about something else, and it comes from a question I was sent. Ben asked:
How can you tell when your idea is good versus when it needs more time? Do you end up just trying to write and reaching a block quicker?
How, in other words, as a writer, do I separate the wheat from the chaff? Great question.
Probably the question I’m asked the most often is, “Where do you get your ideas?” This implies a belief that ideas are both rare and valuable, and in my experience they are in fact neither. Ideas come from my brain. They come constantly, to the point of distraction.
Do you want more ideas in your brain? Read a lot, and read widely. Fiction and nonfiction. Subscribe to a newspaper and a couple of magazines. Fill your brain with stuff. Then, as I’ve talked about before, just dedicate yourself to becoming a storyteller. Once you do, your brain will start to take all of that new stuff—that raw material—and try to hone it into story-shaped pieces.
Point being, don’t fetishize ideas. I’d say they’re a dime a dozen, but they aren’t. They’re truly worthless, as you can’t copyright an idea.
OK, now we have some ideas in our chock-full brains, and we need to figure out what the hell to do with them to turn them into stories and then books or movies or comics and then turn those into adoring audiences and, ultimately, money.
One: How do you know when your idea is good?
When an idea first comes to me, usually I just think on it for a while. I like to take walks or kick them around while I’m lifting weights. I start to imagine the characters and settings and scenes. I think about whether I can see the architecture of the story. I think about whether it has anything to say. I think about whether it moves me, emotionally. And I think about whether it’s commercial.
That’s a lot, so let’s unpack it a bit.
First, does the story jump to life in my mind’s eye? Sometimes characters appear and they’re just ALIVE in an undeniable way. Sometimes killer scenes appear, fully formed. Those are great signs. Because spending a long ass time writing a book or script is a lot easier if you enjoy the characters, and they help by writing themselves. At the same time, that isn’t enough.
Second, do all of those elements—the characters, setting, etc.—lend themselves to a story structure? This isn’t about plugging into a formula. It’s just wondering aloud if there is enough conflict to keep things interesting. And does that conflict have both an internal and external component?
Third, what does this story say? Does it have a theme or a point? Truly challenge this idea. Are you excited just because it seems sell-able, that it resembles some other book or movie that made a lot of money? That isn’t enough. True art demands a purpose. I’ve tossed dozens if not hundreds of notions because they felt, ultimately, hollow.
Fourth, what is the emotional give-a-shit? I’ve written a lot about this previously, so I won’t belabor it here, but audiences engage best with stories when they care about the characters. Which, for me, means characters that are skillful and special but flawed, and above all, characters that have a deep, unfulfilled yearning for something.
Fifth, is the story going to be something that can sell? This is one of those things you just get a sense of after you spend a lot of time in the industry. Something that helped me a lot was when I first wrote comics, I would go to conventions and hand-sell my books. It was a great experience at seeing what gets people to hand over their money. You need to think about audiences, but you also need to think about the people who commission work—the editors, publishers and producers. You should know your industry. Know comp titles. Know trends.
Two: When does an idea need more time?
If you didn’t have absolute clarity on all five of the above, your idea needs more time. Or, perhaps, it should be tossed aside entirely.
Anyway, that’s OK. Ideas are easy. Writing a book or script is hard. Don’t expend that effort on something that isn’t ready.
And you can always come back. I tend to think of incomplete ideas as oddly shaped rocks that tumble about in my head. Maybe one is just a really compelling character. Maybe one is a story structure with no theme. Maybe one is just a premise. Over the years in my subconscious, these things bounce around and collide against each other, and every once in a while two oddly shaped pieces end up fitting perfectly together. A character connects to a theme. Or a structure to a setting. Then, I’m back to it.
Patience, is my point. When an idea is truly ready, it’s undeniable.
Three: What next?
Ben asked about forging ahead and crashing into a block. I can’t say that’s a bad approach, but it isn’t mine.
If I feel like I’m pretty confident about those five above questions, I start by filling a notebook with stuff. Just anything at all that associates with the idea. Characters. Settings. Scenes. Thematic stuff. Research stuff.
Specifically, I don’t do anything structured here. It’s a brain dump in the purest sense. And as I’m doing this, I’m seeing what the holes are (there are always holes). What isn’t as strong as I thought? What can be pushed farther? How does it all cohere?
I’m also stress-testing as I go. Does this continue to hold up? Do I still feel excited? Often, it doesn’t carry water, and I relegate the idea back to the rock tumbler sitting on my shoulders.
But, if it feels like it’s clicking, I have one more final exam, so to speak, before the outlining and writing begins in earnest.
Four: The Log Line
In case anyone here doesn’t know, a log line is a paragraph that summarizes a story. It shouldn’t ever be external facing. It isn’t a marketing hook for your project, though it should inform the marketing. It’s just the most concise possible distillation of your story.
Here’s the log line for Jaws:
A police chief, with a phobia for open water, battles a gigantic shark with an appetite for swimmers and boat captains, in spite of a greedy town council who demands that the beach stay open.
Why is this important? I would argue that if you can effectively convey your story in two sentences, then you have something that is strong and clear and simple. And while there is absolutely space for oddball art, I love nothing more than a cleanly told story.
Now, this next bit I owe to my friends, the husband-wife writer-director team of Ruckus and Lane Skye (go watch Devil to Pay and thank me later). They shared with me this format for a log line.
Protagonist + Antagonist + Goal + Stakes + Urgency + Setting
If you must, you can add the Inciting Incident and the Backstory, though I would always try to avoid them in the name of simplicity.
In the case of Jaws, that gives us Protagonist (police chief with water phobia), Antagonist (giant man-eating shark), Goal (save beach goers), Stakes (life and death), Urgency (beach season beginning), and Setting (coastal vacation town).
You take those elements for your story and try to write them out into no more than two sentences. Does the log line pop? Does it feel complete? Does it both answer the big questions and beg the small ones? Congrats, you’re ready to get to work.
Or do you feel some doubt? Does it not quite hit as strongly as you expected? That’s OK. It needs more time to percolate.
As always, thank you for reading. If you’d like to learn more about me and my writing, please visit vanjensen.com. You can like and comment on the post below! Till next time…
Good reminder to hold those ideas loosely.