Aug
24
Little Orphan Ideas
Amy

Upon occasion you will find you have written pure drivel. Writing so awful it’s not worthy of printing in order to shred and bury the ashes!

While other days, you pen something great only to discover it doesn’t work with the developed story. I know the recycle bin seems tempting, but fight the urge. Whether you’ve struck gold or garbage, don’t delete it.

Where then do you put these awful/awesome musings (HINT: don’t obliterate them)?

I keep a file where I save the aforementioned little gems. A waiting place until I find the right narrative for them. Amy’s Idea Orphanage.

How do these concepts find families? Here is my favorite example:

I cite for you The Mask of Zorro and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

If you read the script for The Mask of Zorro (read it) at the end (SPOILER ALERT for those three people who haven’t seen these movies) Zorro duels his enemy in a cave. In the movie however, they battle at a quarry.

Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio knew to keep that inspiration and plugged it into Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

It was a great setting for a crisis climax but was in the wrong story.

In my humble opinion all the little tales, even the lava that I wrote about in a previous post, have a story they belong in. They just need the right home.

Where do YOU keep your stray ideas?

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  • First -- UGH! How did you two survive this bad ugly family dysfunctional world?

    Two -- Computers come with sooooo much GBs now-a-days, why delete anything? Under my writing folder there is one called Notes. Under this are TONS and TONS of bits and pieces of odds and ends just waiting to be swept into something somewhere.

    Hmm, now that you mention it, I don't think I've browsed that shelf lately. Well, nice talking to you, but I think I gotta go catch up on some reading now.
  • Cindy, you forever crack me up! I can't wait to see what your notes lead your to write! Keep me posted.
  • Sae Sae,

    You have taught me so much of what I know, how could I not give you credit? "You are a shimmering, glowing star in the cinema firmament."

    Mwuah!
  • saesaenorris
    I keep all my ideas in little books I call my Ideas Books. I've got nine volumes that I've accumulated over the past eleven years. I've since been organizing them on my laptop. Each of my stories has a working title, with a document that simply says "Notes". In that document, I write the date and under the date, I write my idea down.

    I know that my stories evolve, some blend into each other. But, like a mother that knows her kids, I know which of my ideas went with each original story. If I choose not to use an idea, I'll peruse it later or try to imagine it in the context of a different story.

    Yeah, NEVER throw your ideas away. You'll probably find that you'll just end up rewriting them -the good and the bad. Free up your subconscious (if not your RAM) for the true gems!

    (And thanks for the credit, Amy!)
  • Name
    I really should have a file to keep them all in. Instead, they're strewn through my documents with names like "Chapter 1 - Total Failure" and then, every so often, I get in a housekeeping frenzy and delete them. I gotta stop doing this!
  • It's something my script consultant taught me, there are so many ideas that I have tossed over the years. I have found that now when I look at them and they don't work I am already thinking about what other story they would go with. Sae Sae Norris is so wise.

    XoXo
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