Who thinks their ideas are stupid?

Please don't worry about your ideas being silly.

Ideas can always be made to sound silly. What's important is how you write them up.

A few years ago I was lucky enough to speak at a writing festival where several best-selling writers were also speaking. We were all talking after our events and two of them--who had both had major number-one world-wide best-seller books out that year--talked with me about plotting. I said how ludicrous my plots sounded when I tried to talk about them, and they both howled with laughter, and said that yes, they felt the same, and they were amazed anyone ever took their books seriously.

Plots are ludicrous. Ideas are silly. Writing is ridiculous. But we do it, and somehow it works.

It's not that my ideas are stupid. It's more that I must come up with a plan to prove my ideas are smart.

What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed - fully understood - that sticks; right in there somewhere.

~ Dom Cobb, Inception

In a lot of (published) novels and movies I read/see, Act 1 is good, Act 2 can either be good or bad, and Act 3 is poor.

So even the pros struggle with great ideas, at least after the first flush of intrigue in Act 1 has passed.

I read a number of well regarded crime novels closely before attempting my own, and was encouraged when none of them were so clever that they left me amazed. Plenty were fine, plenty were good, but very few blew me away with the strength of the ideas alone.

And yes, I think all my ideas suck.

WriterTrek said:

Generally I feel like I have great ideas, but they always fall flat when I try to get them out there. =/

Click to expand...

Yep. Count me in.