Recently, I saw this question posed on the internet: Where do your ideas come from, and how do you know which ones to pursue? (Short answer to the first part of the question: Everywhere. Long answer to the first part of the question: I will direct you to my post about hobbies.)
But it is interesting that the next part of the question focuses on which ideas to pursue—something I had actually been pondering around the same time I saw the original post. Because, as I am sure other writers and creatives will tell you, sometimes you have dry spells…but sometimes ideas seem to bombard you from every which way until you become exhausted just trying to figure out where to begin. And, unfortunately, you often have to choose between them or else risk driving yourself mad and / or burning out entirely.
I am currently working my way through such a creative state. And the journey has given me a new sense of clarity on my ideas and, like the second part of the question asks, which ones are worth putting the effort into more than others. How do you know if a story idea is worth pursuing? When multiple concepts and fantastical images are floating around in your conscious mind, how do you decide which one (or two, or maybe three, if you’re good at focusing) to give the majority of your attention to?
For me, a big part of it is how quickly the story itself seems to latch on to you. There is a verse that I love in the song “Quiet,” from Matilda the Musical:
“These answers that come into my mind unbidden,
These stories delivered to me fully written.”
Now, for those of you who have not seen any iteration of Matilda, when she sings this verse she is referring to a story that has been coming to her little by little over the course of the musical that turns out to be a result of her brilliant mind subconsciously tapping into a real historical event. But from a writer’s perspective, ideas work in a similar fashion—especially the ideas that have a higher chance of becoming fully formed down the line.
No matter where the idea comes from—be it a dream, a moment in time, a brief interaction with another human being, a strange word overheard on the bus, etc.—it quickly unfurls into something more. A character you thought you knew right away suddenly has a quirk that adds a whole new element to the plot; a concept that simply seemed intriguing at first continues to flesh itself out into several chapters’ worth of action in your head; two blank canvases you call your MCs suddenly start speaking to each other, and the dialogue for a whole conversation, and a thematic element to hang over their heads, breaks out between them before you can even leap for a pen and paper. The story, while not entirely appearing fully written in your head, seems to be writing itself faster than you can actively work on it.
That, to me, makes certain ideas worth pursuing more than others. Yes, you might have an intriguing concept turning over itself in the back of your mind, but if nothing else immediately comes from it, if no clear character personalities or working themes or even a simple chapter’s worth of getting from Point A to Point B make themselves known to you, you are better off leaving that idea on the back burner and putting the work into the thing your subconscious mind is clearly more excited about.
And of course, like most things in life, ideas work on a spectrum. Some remain one-dimensional concepts no matter how long you mull over them; others, as the song suggests, do seem to fully flesh themselves out even as you’re still working on the introductory chapter. But most of them fall somewhere in-between. Depending on how many ideas you’re sorting through, you might have to weigh each story’s potential for pulling together into something solid before you fully leap into pursuit.
Night Owls, how do you know a story idea is worth pursuing? Are you currently in the midst of an idea overload? What do you do when you have too many things to create?
