What’s The Big Idea? 2

That Idea Isn’t Yours

Years ago, when I thought my official career was over, I had a phone call from a friend who was contracted to write a thriller which he could not do because of health problems.  He offered me half his advance if I would write it.  (Mimicking styles is one of my many skills – snort.)

This is when I disappointed myself.  I could not do it.  Fortunately, because I was an experienced writer, I knew I could not do it.  It was not a matter of trying and falling on my face.  I knew the particular source of tension/plotting in the story was something that not only left me cold but annoyed me faintly.  You see, it was a “corridors of power” sort of thriller set in Washington DC.  It required the inherent belief that making a law alters reality and has no unintended consequences.

I lacked that base belief, and therefore could not believe in the plot.

Could I write the book, in the sense of writing each of the scenes?  Sure I could.  Could I write the book in the sense of the words being right?  Sure I could.  But, again, as an experienced writer I knew that no matter what I did to it that story would feel hollow.  It would never be right.  I couldn’t feel it and therefore I would betray a reader who expected feeling as well as sense in the story, in a thousand little different ways.  The… rhythms of it would be wrong.  The cookies the reader expects as reward would not be there.  It would in fact be a very bad book.  And I couldn’t do that to my friend.  Not knowingly.  So I said no, as much as I needed the money (at the time we were paying two mortgages as our former house hadn’t sold yet) I couldn’t possibly write that.  (This by the way is also why I’ve never done any writing for hire – save the book about Jane Seymour and even that was difficult, as much as I live part time in Tudor England, seems like – because I’m not a great TV or movie watcher, and therefore I would never FEEL the universe as people who are fans enough to buy books set in it.  I could totally have written a novel in Galaxy Quest universe, mind you, but no one ever asked – sigh.)

But the odd thing, and the reason I had experience enough to know what I could and couldn’t write, is that you can have ideas that aren’t our own to write.  Well, at least every writer I know can, though it’s entirely possible that this only happens when a bunch of writers get together and are shooting the cr– er… breeze together.  Or, as we call it around the house, dinner time.

You get a bunch of writers together and we start talking about stuff and the conversation can easily range from economics to the painting styles of the sixteenth century, and next thing you know someone goes “That would make a great story.”

Sometimes the words just came out of your own mouth, and it might even be a story you’d like to write, but when you try to write it, it just… falls.

What do I mean by that?  If the words come out of your mouth, wouldn’t it be something you can write?  Not necessarily.

Given enough incentive – or liquor – I could have come up with Target Santa, for instance.  (No, I didn’t.  My son did.  I didn’t even know he was writing it till I saw the first episode written out.)  I could have come up with it but I could never have written it.

Why not?  Well, because that sort of sustained relentless action is not my thing.  I can write action as well as the next person, but then other stuff must happen to ratchet up the action or the prize, and then action again.  There is a rhythm to the way I write.  And at least for now, that isn’t it.  (It can change over time.)  Also, my sense of humor is quite different.

Or take Dave Freer’s stories, which are subtle and layered.  I’m about as subtle as an ax through the head.  If I tried to do what he does I’d sprain my brain cells and bog down in chapter one.

I do in fact have three or four novels started which I’ll never finish, because they’re not mine to write and that became obvious by chapter three.  I’d still love to read them if someone better at it writes them, but I can’t.  (Both of them are convoluted and interior and the narrator of the first is an opium addict.  It requires painting with a far smaller brush than I even know how to use.  I like splashing the yellows and reds on the canvas, lets face it.)

So how do you know which stories aren’t yours to write?  Well, most of the time you have to actually try it out.  If you’ve started the story and the feel of it is wrong, and you can’t bring it to feel right no matter how much you twist it, it might not be your story.  Set it aside for a few years.  In a few years, it might have become your story.  Or not.  Or you might have a better understanding why you couldn’t write it.  Or not.

Insisting on writing a story that patently isn’t theirs to write because they’re stubborn and take it as a challenge is one of the easiest ways for someone to run aground and never really have a career.

Note I’ll never write from inside the head of an outright STUPID character.  I can be close – Dyce is a total dits, but she’s more impaired in her sense of reality than dumb – but I can’t DO THAT.  Because to an extent I don’t believe in stupid people.  Yes, I know they exist, but I’m surprised every time I come across them.

I’ll also never write a lesbian character.  Well, not from inside her head.  No offense to my lesbian friends – you know who you are – but heck, I have trouble believing that men REALLY are attracted to women (took me a while.  I’m almost sure it’s true now, which is why I can write romance, which was impossible 20 years ago.)  The idea of women being attracted to women SIMPLY won’t fit in the reptilian brain.  Don’t get in a huff.  I KNOW it’s true, intellectually.  I just can’t believe it at the basic, primitive level required to feel it and write it.  And therefore I can’t write it.  I don’t have any issues with whoever people love or whatever does it for them – I just can’t write it convincingly.

There are other things I can’t write, as I’ve pointed out above.  And if you think that a good guide to this are “things I don’t like reading”, that would be wrong.   There are things I enjoy reading that I can’t write.  I love F. Paul Wilson’s Repairman Jack, but I couldn’t possibly write it, even if I labored at it for a hundred years.

As I said, the best way to learn what is and isn’t your idea to use is to try a lot of them.  (This is where writing short stories is useful.)  After a while you come to realize some stories will never be part of you, and not being part of you cannot be written to any degree of competence.

Mind you, if they offer you a lot of money and you know they’re not going to require a GOOD book – say the next megamillion dollar movie release wants you to write the novelization for a million dollars – go for it.  If you can.  I probably couldn’t because it would break me TRYING to write it.

So, try a lot of stories, develop a feel for which aren’t yours to tell.  And if a story feels wrong and you just can’t get into it while writing it, and it’s taken an unreasonable amount of time, unless you’re contracted to do it already, set it aside and come back to it in days or months or years.

It might be you approached it wrong.  Or perhaps that idea isn’t yours to write.

Up next: You don’t know where that idea has been.