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When I'm bored, I've been known to browse fanfiction.net. Which isn't the suicidal notion one may at first think - Many good authors post there, and you just need to sort through the rest to find them.
That isn't what I started to talk about, though. I think we've all figured out by now that there are great stories residing somewhere on that site, buried as they may be, though ff.net bashing is still a source of amusement. For me, anyway. But we all know that I'm easily amused.
I've noticed that I'll forgive a lot of faults in a story if it's got a really original idea. I'll keep reading, just for the events, even if they do not seem to be arrived at logically.
And because of this, I've noticed that some of the worst writers have some of the most original ideas I've come across. That's far from saying that any bad writing automatically has an original premise, because a lot of it does also tend to fall into neat, pat categories; or that anything that falls outside the lines is badly done.
I've found myself reading stories that seem completely out of place, or completely unrealistic, or just out there, and I'll stop and take a good long look at it. All too often, if you tear away lack of grammar and proper punctuation, there's something interesting inside. If you hold the story in your mind, and you strip away improper characterization, what is left is often a gem of an idea. If you take that idea, and look at it, you can see just *how* it could work.
Perhaps all I’m trying to say is that the ideas themselves are often sound, and what makes them appear otherwise is all that is heaped atop of them. Of course, an idea in and of itself is not a story. Which is just plain common sense, and I really didn’t need to comment on.
It seems to me that there's a certain freedom in not having a good grip on a character. You can do absolutely anything with them, without being constrained by what they *should* do. There are no boundaries to keep your story within, and it seems to me that no matter how wide your boundaries are, you can only do so many things before you start to cover the same ground again and again.
(The first time I started to write this was late last night, and right around here was was some sort of metaphor about different ways up a mountain; and the first people up a new way having to watch out, lest they trigger an avalanche and be squashed flat by several tons of snow; and about the careless being eaten by bears. That should tell you just how late it was.)
The difficult part of truly original ideas is, too often, just making them work. The stories that are done well consistently are done well consistently because *they fit the character.* They strike cords within us in relation to the characters they are pulled from. We all hold in our minds a picture of the characters we read about. They have a form in our mind, or we would not be able to write them ourselves. There are things that hold separate, say, Draco Malfoy and Lex Luthor’s Smallville incarnation. We tend, naturally, to stories that hold true(r) to our own pictures of the fictives.
Fandom is, for the most part, huge. You can find characters doing everything beneath the sun, and, to me, what makes a story is if the author can make me believe what is going on within their own little world. It is simply easier to make the reader believe things that fall within the boundaries around the characters.
This is where we have bad stories around good ideas. Because the author does not know or chooses to ignore the space around the characters they are writing about, they have fantastic premises. Their ideas can be splendidly original. By the same token, however, because they do not know their characters, their stories can be frustrating to read to those who do know them.
This is where I almost stray into the old discussion of character or plot driven stories. Or, I almost did, but then I decided that would be a bit *too* presumptuous of me, so I’m only going to use how *I* structure stories.
I find that I don’t use either a traditional character or plot vehicle while plotting. I like to come up with an idea, or a happening, and work around that. I like to start at the end, with a character some place we’d never see them normally, in a way or with a person we wouldn’t naturally assume, and I like to get them there. I like to try to get them there so that the reader doesn’t really realize that where they end is quite some place from where they’d normally be.
For me, it’s the getting there that’s the fun. I have what happens in my head, and something different, and I want to make it so that the change works. I want to convince my readers that this is their character, and all the while I’m shifting them a bit to the side. I want to do something different, and have it work.
Having an original idea is of no use if you can’t get the characters from here to there.
I think a lot of us are in this because we want something different, or something more, than what we’re given in the source material. We have an idea, and we want to play with it.
Having an original idea is of no use if you can’t get the characters from here to there, but getting them from here to there is of no point if nothing happens in the middle.
**Which doesn’t mean that stories that have been told can’t be told again, and well, as long as there’s some sort of spin on it. Which doesn’t mean that all good stories are way out there. Which doesn’t mean that classic struggles are anything less than classic struggles. Which is only a collection of random observations, on which comments would be apprecitated.
That isn't what I started to talk about, though. I think we've all figured out by now that there are great stories residing somewhere on that site, buried as they may be, though ff.net bashing is still a source of amusement. For me, anyway. But we all know that I'm easily amused.
I've noticed that I'll forgive a lot of faults in a story if it's got a really original idea. I'll keep reading, just for the events, even if they do not seem to be arrived at logically.
And because of this, I've noticed that some of the worst writers have some of the most original ideas I've come across. That's far from saying that any bad writing automatically has an original premise, because a lot of it does also tend to fall into neat, pat categories; or that anything that falls outside the lines is badly done.
I've found myself reading stories that seem completely out of place, or completely unrealistic, or just out there, and I'll stop and take a good long look at it. All too often, if you tear away lack of grammar and proper punctuation, there's something interesting inside. If you hold the story in your mind, and you strip away improper characterization, what is left is often a gem of an idea. If you take that idea, and look at it, you can see just *how* it could work.
Perhaps all I’m trying to say is that the ideas themselves are often sound, and what makes them appear otherwise is all that is heaped atop of them. Of course, an idea in and of itself is not a story. Which is just plain common sense, and I really didn’t need to comment on.
It seems to me that there's a certain freedom in not having a good grip on a character. You can do absolutely anything with them, without being constrained by what they *should* do. There are no boundaries to keep your story within, and it seems to me that no matter how wide your boundaries are, you can only do so many things before you start to cover the same ground again and again.
(The first time I started to write this was late last night, and right around here was was some sort of metaphor about different ways up a mountain; and the first people up a new way having to watch out, lest they trigger an avalanche and be squashed flat by several tons of snow; and about the careless being eaten by bears. That should tell you just how late it was.)
The difficult part of truly original ideas is, too often, just making them work. The stories that are done well consistently are done well consistently because *they fit the character.* They strike cords within us in relation to the characters they are pulled from. We all hold in our minds a picture of the characters we read about. They have a form in our mind, or we would not be able to write them ourselves. There are things that hold separate, say, Draco Malfoy and Lex Luthor’s Smallville incarnation. We tend, naturally, to stories that hold true(r) to our own pictures of the fictives.
Fandom is, for the most part, huge. You can find characters doing everything beneath the sun, and, to me, what makes a story is if the author can make me believe what is going on within their own little world. It is simply easier to make the reader believe things that fall within the boundaries around the characters.
This is where we have bad stories around good ideas. Because the author does not know or chooses to ignore the space around the characters they are writing about, they have fantastic premises. Their ideas can be splendidly original. By the same token, however, because they do not know their characters, their stories can be frustrating to read to those who do know them.
This is where I almost stray into the old discussion of character or plot driven stories. Or, I almost did, but then I decided that would be a bit *too* presumptuous of me, so I’m only going to use how *I* structure stories.
I find that I don’t use either a traditional character or plot vehicle while plotting. I like to come up with an idea, or a happening, and work around that. I like to start at the end, with a character some place we’d never see them normally, in a way or with a person we wouldn’t naturally assume, and I like to get them there. I like to try to get them there so that the reader doesn’t really realize that where they end is quite some place from where they’d normally be.
For me, it’s the getting there that’s the fun. I have what happens in my head, and something different, and I want to make it so that the change works. I want to convince my readers that this is their character, and all the while I’m shifting them a bit to the side. I want to do something different, and have it work.
Having an original idea is of no use if you can’t get the characters from here to there.
I think a lot of us are in this because we want something different, or something more, than what we’re given in the source material. We have an idea, and we want to play with it.
Having an original idea is of no use if you can’t get the characters from here to there, but getting them from here to there is of no point if nothing happens in the middle.
**Which doesn’t mean that stories that have been told can’t be told again, and well, as long as there’s some sort of spin on it. Which doesn’t mean that all good stories are way out there. Which doesn’t mean that classic struggles are anything less than classic struggles. Which is only a collection of random observations, on which comments would be apprecitated.
