Writing sheds are great but human engagement is better

This is the third in my series on SFF writing craft.

This isn’t the post I planned to write next in this series, but a recent Twitter dust-up got me thinking about my previous post and my next. Finding story ideas demands time and turning them into stories takes energy. We must also allow our minds to wander. But how much time do we need for all this? And once we begin our work, do we need long stretches of isolation?

The Twitter conversation I mentioned started here. I won’t go into details, but basically, there’s a long-held belief that artists and writers must work in long stretches of uninterrupted time and shouldn’t be bothered to participate in basic life activities like shopping, or child-rearing. The article delves into the privilege wrapped into that belief.

On a practical level, yes, we need mental space and mental time to create. It is important to establish a writing routine and habits that signal to others we are in writing mode. But that is not always physical space or linear time. Do we need a dedicated writing shed where we disappear and our partner slips meals under the door? No.

I know a writer who wore a special sweater to signify to her partner that she was in writing mode because their apartment was too small for her to have an office. I know multiple authors who wrote entire novels on trains during their commutes.

I wrote much of my first novel while on walks during my day job lunch hour. I found deep insights into theme and character during revision periods that came not while sitting at the keyboard but in flashes while doing something else like the dishes.

What we need as writers are inspiration, insight, and flow-state. None of those things equate directly to time or isolation. They can benefit from both, but are not required. We tend our garden of inspiration by consuming other works of art and information. Our insights will come when we allow our minds to play, rest, and focus on things that aren’t writing. Multi-tasking is a myth, there’s only time-slicing. We can achieve flow-state by avoiding time-slicing. We must make the best use of whatever time we have to put words on a page. Work better, not harder or longer.

Whether online or in-person, human interaction fuels stories, both in terms of ideas and in the execution.

Fiction writers need to participate in our families, friend circles, and communities. Whether online or in-person, human interaction fuels stories, both in terms of ideas and in the execution. How else do we inhabit characters different from ourselves, who have a range of experiences, and react to situations, stress, and relationships in believable ways? Writing is a solitary activity, but productive writers cannot live in isolation.

I suspect this lack of engagement is why so many Great Dead Authors wrote books about writers. They only knew themselves, and even then, they didn’t have the insight they believed.

Kevin Fellows

I’m a poet and author of fantasy and speculative fiction. My debut novel At the End of the World is available now. You can find my poetry in the Star*Line Summer 2020 issue, and at Free Verse Revolution.

Part three of the Exploring the Craft: Writing SFF Fiction

Published authors seem to hate being asked where they get their ideas. I also hear beginning writers, or those thinking about writing, ask where they can find original ideas because everything has been done.

Well, everything hasn’t been done. The idea there are only 6 stories or 12 stories or whatever the clickbait headline of the moment says is just misleading. What those statements are talking about are archetypes, not ideas. And even that isn’t entirely right, because they’re only talking about Western archetypes.

I digress. Story ideas, particularly SFF ideas, are endless. How to turn an idea into a story is a topic for later. Today I just want to share ways to find ideas we can work with to generate stories.

The secret is Consuming

I don’t know the science behind this, but know how my mind works, and I suspect yours works similarly. We form ideas from inputs. Our brains make connections between stimuli: memories, visual, auditory, and olfactory cues. I can hear someone say, ‘my brain isn’t imaginative like that.’ But it can be. We can train our minds to make more connections, and with practice, better ones in terms of story. But first, we need the stimuli.

Ten ways to prime our brains to spawn ideas

1. Read books. Fiction, non-fiction, memoir, poetry, comics, anything. 
2. Watch a TV series, particularly one lauded for story-telling, but more importantly one you think you’ll enjoy. Just watch for entertainment.
3. Watch a documentary. Whatever subjects interest you.
4. Watch a movie you know well. This time, don’t watch for the entertainment (What happens next? Will they, won’t they?) but look for things like characterization, the what-ifs beyond the story, the settings, and the costumes. If you’ve watched the movie several times, watching it again allows you to focus on details that add to the story.
5. Play a video game. It doesn’t have to be an RPG. First-person shooters can let your mind do things in the background.
6. Take a walk. Fresh air boosts creativity, providing visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli. I listen to podcasts when I walk. They don’t have to be about writing. Facts about the world, history, or science all feed my mind. 
7. Take a shower. Sometimes doing nothing is most productive. It’s often when we’re distracted when we make connections.
8. Call an old friend and have a conversation about anything.
9. Have memorable experiences. I don’t call it a bucket list, just an, I want to do this list. Kayak, climb mountains, and when we can again, stroll an unfamiliar downtown and try new foods.
10. Play What-if. Brainstorm what-if ideas without thinking about if you can turn them into stories. Just play. Play is an important element in creativity. I’ll recommend another book here, What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers, by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter.

Make some of these a habit. When we keep our minds full of diverse topics, the synapses fire. Two or three unrelated things come together in our subconscious mind and produce an idea that might work in a story.

Examples

Here’s an example from a recent experience I had with a piece of collaborative software. Artificial Intelligence powered the software. It regularly provided prompts based on reading emails I wrote. These were so annoying I ignored them. When the same AI noticed I wasn’t opening the prompts, it asked if they were spam. I responded, yes. The AI was now marking its own communications as spam. Glorious.

I had an idea for a story, but I didn’t know it yet. It took one more nudge to get my mind to produce the idea. One of my walking podcasts mentioned AI in the context of helping writers. The full story idea immediately surfaced in my mind. The same day, I wrote a story about a collaborative AI and gamification gone to the extreme.

Another recent example. I went to South Korea for work six years ago. Nothing about this experience ever showed up as a story idea. Until this week, with the news of scientists creating hybrid monkey and human embryos. That triggered an idea I’m still mulling.

There’s no telling what our minds will connect or when to generate the spark of an idea. But for that process to work, we need to keep our minds full of a wide variety of things. We need to experience things. And often, when we try the hardest, we struggle to find ideas. It’s when we stop looking and focus on something else, our minds can get to work in the idea factory.

Next

In the next few posts, I’ll look at ways to turn raw ideas into stories.

Kevin Fellows

I’m a poet and author of fantasy and speculative fiction. My debut novel At the End of the World is available now. You can find my poetry in the Star*Line Summer 2020 issue, and at Free Verse Revolution.