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Posted by:

robert

Date:

January 11th, 2009 3:46 PM

Header:

Where Ideas Come From

Bulletin:

I don’t seem to have mere ideas. By which I mean that the ideas I have don’t come alone: they appear in my brain along with the tools they’ll need to have a fighting chance of actually becoming full-fledged stories.

I don’t just think, “I should write a story about sentient pants” or “I should do a pirate manga” -- concepts pop into my mind complete with titles, plots, appropriate art-styles, and often specific artists who would be good for them.

Many of these, ultimately, are not usable ideas. The other night I sampled a bunch of new anime and noted that it often seems like there’s only two kinds of characters in them -- the quiet, reserved character, and the gung-ho “I’m going to be the greatest ____ ever!!!” character. For no reason whatsoever into my mind popped the idea of a girl who wants to be the best whore on a pirate ship. EVAR!!! She’s extremely gung-ho about her own crew -- teary eyed in her pride and devotion, even -- but it all goes bad when she gets stolen by the crew of another pirate ship.

You don’t want to know how many twists, turns, and pivotal moments this thing had swimming in the amniotic idea-sack it was born with, how intimately well I understand the characters and their motivations (the dawning realization that the main character isn’t just some run-of-the-mill whore, but rather that she uses her amazing whore-powers only to contribute to her ship and to help make her ruffians the best ruffians out there; the original crew finally realizing how much they love and value the girl, and launching a daring rescue to get her back).

I could write this today. (But I won’t.)

Anyway, pirate whores aside, what I’m grappling with lately is the power of these random ideas -- the very strong desire some of the better ones come with for me to write them right now. This would be fine -- welcome, even -- if I didn’t already have such a mountain of perfectly good but as-yet-unused ideas, and if I didn’t have scripts and stories and novels I wasn’t currently trying to finish. There’s a crime thing I’d like to finish for Karly, and a horror-y thing I’d like to finish for Andrea, so would you mind visiting someone else for a couple of days, Idea Fairy? After that I promise I’ll give some attention to the superhero with the glowing butt, the girl whose stomach eats ghosts, and all the other deeply weird things you’ve been sending me.

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