{"id":179,"date":"2021-03-20T21:18:31","date_gmt":"2021-03-21T03:18:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/?p=179"},"modified":"2025-10-04T08:28:04","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T14:28:04","slug":"when-to-set-the-cool-ideas-aside","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/2021\/03\/20\/when-to-set-the-cool-ideas-aside\/","title":{"rendered":"When to Set the Cool Ideas Aside"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is the biggest project you\u2019ve attempted yet.\u00a0 It\u2019s going to be your masterpiece, and you can unleash the full force of your creativity and writing knowledge gained since your last project.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fantasy novel, with X, Y, and Z cool elements.\u00a0 Ooh, and what if you did this?\u00a0 And what if they all had genetically-edited fluffy ears?\u00a0 Oh, and that other thing should happen in the middle of the story too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Go to When to Set the Cool Ideas Aside<\/a> to keep reading!<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

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Before you add literally every cool idea you have while writing, hold up for a moment.\u00a0 I know from personal experience that when something is the first major project you\u2019ve attempted, or are doing after you\u2019ve learned more about writing, it can be tempting to use every new idea you have at once.\u00a0 It\u2019s your masterpiece, and you want to do as much with it as you can.\u00a0 Before you keep throwing in more random details though, you should consider one thing: Is this the right story to include it in?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All the elements in a story should serve a purpose.\u00a0 Notable events that happen should be tied into the plotline (if it\u2019s a long work – obviously this doesn\u2019t apply to, say, microfiction).\u00a0 Details like talking about how cute someone\u2019s genetically-edited fluffy ears are should be relevant to the characterization or worldbuilding, rather than just being this random, one-off thing.\u00a0 Which means, sadly, that not every idea would fit well in a given story.\u00a0 For example, those ears.\u00a0 I wrote a short story about a year ago that was initially going to be set in a futuristic society where people could give themselves fluffy ears.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I had to cut that detail because the story was focusing on the group interactions, and the extra space required to clarify that the world was slightly different wouldn\u2019t have contributed anything to it.\u00a0 (Why am I apparently obsessed with this, you ask?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 I just like fluffy ears.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So when you keep coming up with more elements to add to a work-in-progress, it\u2019s helpful to ask yourself: does this connect to anything else in the story?\u00a0 If it does, or can be added: how complex is the project already?\u00a0 Because obviously brainstorming is great, and we don\u2019t want boring stories.\u00a0 It\u2019s just that everything in the story should be there for one reason or another, so you have to filter which ideas you include because there isn\u2019t room to write everything<\/em>, and doing so might make the story worse, not better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t just ignore the extra ideas, however.\u00a0 Write them all down for next time!\u00a0 Maybe you keep a physical notebook somewhere, or maybe a computer file.\u00a0 Personally, I tend to jot down all the ideas I have – for blog posts, or plots, or cool character names, etc. – on my phone, and then organize them into categories in my ideas file later.\u00a0 That way, I don\u2019t forget anything that could be useful, and I can focus on writing my current story with only what’s relevant to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thoughts?\u00a0 Drop them in the comments! Also, happy spring break (or belated spring break) to all my fellow students.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the biggest project you\u2019ve attempted yet.\u00a0 It\u2019s going to be your masterpiece, and you can unleash the full force of your creativity and writing knowledge gained since your last project.\u00a0 It\u2019s a fantasy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":180,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179\/revisions\/181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}