I have a friend who's told me, on and off, about the movie/book/comic series he's working on. I noticed at one point that he had a tendency to add in more and more characters, plots, and details that were going to show up in the project.
At first some of the ideas were neat, and exciting. Others I didn't like as much - but an idea is just an idea; it's hard to tell how it's going to play out in a story once things are developed. Ideas can be done effectively or not - you just never know (or i never know, anyway). A perfect idea is only perfect until it's actually MADE. Then it'll have its imperfections. It might be great, but perfection rarely or never actually happens. …And it doesn't have to! Perfection is never required.
Anyway, the stories my friend has been talking about haven't come together yet. Hopefully they will at some point!
But I realized I could relate to some of the issues he has with creating. Even though I don't talk about it much…or TRY not to…I have multiple story and comic ideas that have been in my mind for years. I've made character sketches, and story outlines, and some worldbuilding. Spent hours doing it over the past few years, really - some fun series and one or two epics…if only in my own mind. And if they ever come into being at all.
Anyway, I've see that tendency when I'm planning something to include every single idea I've ever had in the story, somehow. It plays out in the lists of individual chapter/story ideas, and in characters. I would have character lists and profiles just expand and expand until I had a cast of over a dozen main characters. How would I ever service all these characters effectively?
Granted, some characters could be deleted, or combined, or made into minor characters in the end - it might be easier to have more material than you need, and cut out what you don't need, than to not have enough and have to fill up your world as you're writing.
One upside to having multiple ideas in the planning stage is that I'm learning NOT to try and fit every idea and character type into every series. It only guarantees (for me, anyway) that the series will NEVER happen.
Will I ever get to finishing all these ideas? Definitely not. Hopefully I'll do some, if the overstuffed planning, not to mention the procrastination, getting in the way.
Not every idea needs to go into every thing.
I think I'm giving myself therapy with this article, trying to bust through my procrastination of the last week or two.
Here's hoping for more forward momentum, anyway…
See you next time!
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Banes at 12:00AM, July 18, 2024
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NeilPurcell at 3:37AM, July 20, 2024
..continued. There's another problem, which I call "The OC Problem". Modern creators love their "Original Characters". I cringe when I hear that term. This is the sort of artist who always has a roster of characters but no story to go along with them, but the creator wants to fit everything they ever thought of into whatever they're making. They fall in love with their characters and they don't want to cut any of them, even though that's exactly what they need to do. If you tell them to cut a few superfluous characters, it's like heresy to them. It drives me crazy. And yet, people still ask me to help them write. I've had to tell people to just go somewhere else if you're not going to listen to me.
NeilPurcell at 3:31AM, July 20, 2024
I've had this conversation. I had another creator ask me to help her punch up her story. I suggested cutting all sorts of content. Plot threads that go nowhere, unnecessary and redundant characters, and meaningless scenes that add nothing to the story. There's a tendency for younger artists to think of stories like it's a day in the life of their OC, so they think through the story structure "logically", but they don't understand why it's not interesting. In the one from my experience, the author had a training scene, because superheroes need to train. But there's nothing in the scene that moves the story. And I was like, "You can cut this. This is not interesting." To be continued...
plymayer at 8:57PM, July 19, 2024
@Jason Moon. Great flick. Didn't realize it was a comedy until the dog on the board on the bridge.
Jason Moon at 9:56AM, July 19, 2024
@Plymayer - I love Tim Burton. I wore out my Beetlejuice VHS tape as a kid from watching it so much.
plymayer at 9:27PM, July 18, 2024
@Jason Moon, a movie or series version of Craters Edge should be done by Tim Burton.
Jason Moon at 4:34PM, July 18, 2024
I wish a production company would come to me and make a live action of Craters Edge. I think it would be way more workable as a series instead of a movie trilogy. I wonder what kind of woman would make a good "Eeve"? I'm also curious who could pull off playing "Salem" and "Salaster" and what their voices would sound like. Good food for thought.
RobertRVeith at 2:05PM, July 18, 2024
Back in college, I had this professor ask what I knew about the world I wanted to set my novel in. I came back with a 20,000 year overview. He asked in which era the novel was set. I told him I had story all the way through. He suggested I tell one story about one character. That one story about one character in this 20,000 year timeline became Dragons in Civilized Lands. Which is, arguably, still overstuffed.
Andreas_Helixfinger at 9:23AM, July 18, 2024
Me I'm still planning and refining as I'm updating. Yes, it's a little bit embarassing to think about all of the times I've gone back and changed this piece of world info here or this piece of a dialouge there. But at least I haven't allowed that to stop me from keep moving the story forward, keep unfolding as I'm still figuring things out. I'm not trying to make it perfect, but I am doing my best to make it satisfying once all is said and done.
dragonsong12 at 7:26AM, July 18, 2024
I think most creative people like to constantly workshop new ideas in their mind. It's why I love long drives, just uninterrupted brainstorming. And having all these details is great even when you don't use them because it can inform world-building you actually DO use. Reading this reminded me though, that the real pitfall is getting too swept up in that loop. I had a friend like the one you described once, would spend hours telling me all about his comic franchise that he was planning - the full run of the main story, the spinoffs, the legacy characters, the side stories - all of it fully planned out in the meticulous detail...only he got so wrapped up planning and tweaking and refining that he never got started. He didn't want to start until he had everything ironed out, but that's an unreachable goal. I know my own work is incredibly flawed and has plot holes and inconsistencies despite my best efforts, but it exists. Until he puts pen to paper all those plans don't mean much.
PaulEberhardt at 5:50AM, July 18, 2024
Same with me. You and your friend are certainly not alone in this, Banes. If this friend is very much like me, he might voice his ideas to someone to find out if it still feels/sounds like a potentially good idea when put into words, observing both your reactions as well as his own (the latter is the actual secret trick here). I've found that doing this helps immensely in sorting your thoughts and sifting out stuff until the remainder is small enough to fit into a structured story. It works on your own, too, which I sometimes actually do if I feel sufficiently unobserved, but running ideas with a friend feels less silly and is often more rewarding.
plymayer at 2:21AM, July 18, 2024
For example, there is a four deck farm on the U.E.S. Hunter. Probably never make it into a story.
plymayer at 2:20AM, July 18, 2024
I have whole universes and more in my knoggin. Most of the characters are pretty fleshed out in my own mind. Sometimes they don't make it into the light of the story though. Especially in the haste to get the story out.
bravo1102 at 1:49AM, July 18, 2024
I've come to the conclusion that I can best do the story if I strip it down to the basics and get it out there. Sure I have some huge epics but others don't have to be and I can turn out short stories to get the ideas turned into finished works.