Who/where do you bounce ideas?

[Kali]

I know the basics of my characters, but I don't predict every single thing that's going to happen before I sit down to write.  I love the discovery, the "Whoa, where'd *that* come from?" moments.  I may know the major plot points, but I don't know what happens between them.  And even the plot points can change while I write. 

So I have Rachel and Dean in a scene together and I have hours to fill before Brendan comes to pick something up.  I know the two characters, I have them in a specific place after specific events, and I basically say, "Ok... go."  The two of them talk about what's going on, the specifics of their oddball relationship get dug up, there's some posturing, some up-in-mah-grill-ing, and then Dean says something completely in character that makes me realize, "Oh crap, he's going to kill Brendan."  And suddenly, new plot point!  Hadn't planned on it, but there it is.

Now, sometimes these things won't work with the rest of the plot and I have to backtrack and find a new path to take the conversation while still staying completely true to both characters, but I just love those moments. *happy sigh*

[Lord Rae]

I know the main characters every move for a while. It might change to be more interesting but I don't think it'll alter much. The other "mains" the ones most featured but not the main goal I even have some rough guidelines. But I have completely hollow characters they interact with. I've been trying to flesh them out but I keep tossing out lame ideas.

[Starbeam]

I know the basics of my characters, but I don't predict every single thing that's going to happen before I sit down to write.  I love the discovery, the "Whoa, where'd *that* come from?" moments.  I may know the major plot points, but I don't know what happens between them.  And even the plot points can change while I write.  

So I have Rachel and Dean in a scene together and I have hours to fill before Brendan comes to pick something up.  I know the two characters, I have them in a specific place after specific events, and I basically say, "Ok... go."  The two of them talk about what's going on, the specifics of their oddball relationship get dug up, there's some posturing, some up-in-mah-grill-ing, and then Dean says something completely in character that makes me realize, "Oh crap, he's going to kill Brendan."  And suddenly, new plot point!  Hadn't planned on it, but there it is.

Now, sometimes these things won't work with the rest of the plot and I have to backtrack and find a new path to take the conversation while still staying completely true to both characters, but I just love those moments. *happy sigh*

Pretty much this.  As for bouncing ideas, I go to my fiance.  Mostly just give him one or two elements that have me stuck, and he stews on it for a while, and gives me whatever he comes up with.  Or I just give him a few elements to see how much interest there is.  If he doesn't like them, chances are they won't work as well as I thought.  

[library lasciel]

I'm also more thinking about earlier in the writing process - I get these mental strafing run kindof episodes, where two or three or six or twelve vastly different plots and settings and sets of characters will sear themselves into my brains and demand that I acknowledge them before they release my hostage-brain.

Then I'm left with my sets of hastily scribbled character and plot and scene notes from trying to get it all down - and I don't know which ones are the good ones. 

Which one should I spend my time fleshing out?  Which one is trite and overdone (one example that I know I have to wait on is a vampire story - those are DOA right now, so it's going to have to sit for a few decades), which one is full of inconsistencies, which ones are so out-there that I can't get other people to follow me, which ones am I not good enough to handle yet....

That sort of thing is where I have the most trouble.  I've only got so much time, and I am splitting it between all these different (many dozens) of potentially viable baby plotlings, and to be truthful, I think it would be more productive to pick one or two or three and focus on them - but how do I know which ones to pick when they're all equally interesting and real in my head?

[meg_evonne]

Really great discussion thread and I ditto everything said, still I'm not sure we've addressed what lasciel is asking.

I've been fortunate to take some online classes with editors, authors, copyeditors, journalists etc--the hardest, absolutely hardest assignment I faced was--"Post your premise. I (senior editor at major house) will decide which one has legs." You see I'd come with this lovely little plot and three characters that I loved. Scrap that baby. It wasn't even on her 'maybe' list of okay. Somewhere in this forum section was my plea for assistance. I ended up with six decent premises that I thought had staying power with my attention and marketability for a result that might be of interest to a house.

I didn't hear anything from the instructor for sometime. I like to think she was running it past either her personal agent or her companions at work. Bottomline? We ended up combining the 4th and 5th premise, and before I was done writing it I had actually encompassed a 3rd premise.

I truly believe that our initial thoughts are too common and we have to dig much deeper, painfully deep, for a marketable, workable idea--especially as hopeful debut authors.  I'm speaking premise here NOT HIGH CONCEPT BITE LINES of less than 25 words as Colleen Lindsay shared at DFWCon.

Feel free to PM me, but start with a few simple questions first:

How many subplots and threads can I work into this idea that are, or can be weaved together?
How many characters can I manage and still produce the best work I can do at this point in my craft?
What would be likely tension points on my story plot curve?

Then isolate the tension points and judge how you are going to escalate the tension to drive the plot to the climax.

If your tension points (at a minimum: opening, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, 9/10th marks) seem lacking, then don't toss out the premise, but start the layering process to bring in more subplots, more character conflict, more whatever is needed.

I truly believe that 'nodes of contact' as Donald Maass discusses are crucial to a well fleshed out, decent book. Our premises can be fantastic, but if we don't figure out those contact points along with a two sentence premise fairly soon in the process, then we probably will only stumble across a great story idea. Planning for that great story idea before wasting hours of your valuable writing time is essential.

Best writing Library Lasciel - love your tag name by the way. 

[library lasciel]

First off, apologies for the hugely ginormous point-by-point below.

Also apologies for leaving this thread alone for so long - I've been doing a lot of thinking about it, but it wasn't making sense.   I try to stay away from the keyboard when mentally babbling.

Finally, instead of asking these by PM, I hope it's ok to continue in this thread, in the hopes someone else might have advice or elaborations, or that someone might find the information useful to them as well. 

Righto - into the fray!

Really great discussion thread and I ditto everything said, still I'm not sure we've addressed what lasciel is asking.

I've been fortunate to take some online classes with editors, authors, copyeditors, journalists etc--the hardest, absolutely hardest assignment I faced was--"Post your premise. I (senior editor at major house) will decide which one has legs." You see I'd come with this lovely little plot and three characters that I loved. Scrap that baby. It wasn't even on her 'maybe' list of okay. Somewhere in this forum section was my plea for assistance. I ended up with six decent premises that I thought had staying power with my attention and marketability for a result that might be of interest to a house.

Did any of the editors ever say what criteria they're using to decide what premisi (premises... premae?) were good together, or why certain ones of them were not workable at all?  I've been thinking about this the most, and I have no idea how to proceed. 

My baby plotlings are all over the bloody place - I've got traditional 'swords and horses' adventures, several far-future Sci-Fi stories (all in different far-futures, of course), a recent-history vampire story, urban fantasies... about the only thing they all have in common is that they're not set in the 'vanilla world.'  How can those get smushed together? 

I didn't hear anything from the instructor for sometime. I like to think she was running it past either her personal agent or her companions at work. Bottomline? We ended up combining the 4th and 5th premise, and before I was done writing it I had actually encompassed a 3rd premise.

Was that a collaborative process, or more organic - to be blunt, did the editor come out and say 'well, that's too simple, you need to put x in' or did it just end up "feeling like it fit" in with the rest as you were writing and charting out the plot and the tension points?

I truly believe that our initial thoughts are too common and we have to dig much deeper, painfully deep, for a marketable, workable idea--especially as hopeful debut authors.  I'm speaking premise here NOT HIGH CONCEPT BITE LINES of less than 25 words as Colleen Lindsay shared at DFWCon.

Feel free to PM me, but start with a few simple questions first:

How many subplots and threads can I work into this idea that are, or can be weaved together?

Here is where I've been having my weeks-long existential crisis.  Let me preface this by saying that I am not trying to insult or make any sideways comments about any authors who may seem to be targeted below - I love READING their works. 

I've come to the realization that I manifestly do not want to write epics or trilogies or long huge staggeringly complicated tomes of dense reading stuff.  I feel really bad for saying this, and I almost feel like admitting it means I have no chance to be published or have anyone interested in my work.  I have ideas, I think they're fun - at least worth looking into, and I am committed to trying to write them as fully and complex-ly as they need to be (and that I'm capable of)... but I don't think any of my ideas NEED to be epics.  I LIKE simple one-shot stories, and worlds where a baseline is set, a book or two is written, the interesting idea is finished and solidly done, and then the reader is free to go wandering off on tangents because there's wide open mental space left.

Is that totally awful?

How many characters can I manage and still produce the best work I can do at this point in my craft?

This one I'm ok with - I have the opposite problem, actually.  I get a little character happy and have LOTS of them.  Still, I feel this is related to the above point.  There's this trend where every character in an epic is vitally important to the overall plot at some point, and so the same people keep circling back into the story at different times and places.  I don't necessarily mind that, but I also like the thought of just having mostly ... you know... people.  Moving scenery.  Not plot-vital troves of information and subtext to be teased out and used to further the plot.  Again, I feel a bit of a bad person for saying that.
 

What would be likely tension points on my story plot curve?
Then isolate the tension points and judge how you are going to escalate the tension to drive the plot to the climax.

If your tension points (at a minimum: opening, 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, 9/10th marks) seem lacking, then don't toss out the premise, but start the layering process to bring in more subplots, more character conflict, more whatever is needed.

I truly believe that 'nodes of contact' as Donald Maass discusses are crucial to a well fleshed out, decent book. Our premises can be fantastic, but if we don't figure out those contact points along with a two sentence premise fairly soon in the process, then we probably will only stumble across a great story idea. Planning for that great story idea before wasting hours of your valuable writing time is essential.

As a technical writing point, this one's hard for me, because I'm still working out the kinks of the basic ideas.  I've basically memorized Jim's writing blog, and that method seems to work well mentally for me. 

I'm not yet to the point of wanting to nail down specific plot activities for all of my plotlings tho - I was hoping for a method of weeding them down BEFORE I get to that point, to save mental effort for a hopefully more likely to be successful payoff.

Best writing Library Lasciel - love your tag name by the way. 

Thanks - I'm a sucker for a fallen angel and a fine alliteration.