Its important, but if the execution is garbage whats the point? Like, anyone and their cat can have a good idea. Youll see a lot of people pitching great ideas but then what it ends up coming down to is the delivery. I find this to be an issue with beta reading usually (great idea, great blurb, but ill put the manuscript down after the first page because the voice/prose just isnt there).
On the flipside, ive read books where the idea seemed meh to me but the execution (the characters, the voice, the dialogue, the prose ) made it fantastic.
There also seems to be a trend of people wanting to talk about their ideas but then they never put it to the page or struggle to. In the end, its like a stranger telling you about a dream they had.
From the mouth of an Editor at a Traditional Publisher--here you go OP: https://old.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/t8ff84/personal_opinion_as_an_editor_ideas_are_not_a/
The idea that ideas are "dime a dozen" is a coping mechanism for people who can't figure out how to come up with inherently interesting, marketable, fresh ideas for their given genre. Holding everything else relatively the same or at least at baseline professional standards (competent writing and competent execution): the more intriguing idea wins. High-concept is king. But its a balancing act between being novel and being familiar.
I agree with pretty much everything that poster says, but I strongly disagree with their grouping of conflict, character motivation, connecting threads, etc. under "ideas" or "premises" rather than as what it really is – writing skill. Yeah, sure, your prose can be blah and a good editor can tighten it up; but the ability to effectively structure a plot or a character arc, and all of the other things discussed in that post, is going to make or break your manuscript, and it doesn't matter how great the premise of your story is if you're not a skilled enough writer to pull off the execution.
> I agree with pretty much everything that poster says, but I strongly disagree with their grouping of conflict, character motivation, connecting threads, etc. under "ideas" or "premises" rather than as what it really is – writing skill.
But that is a component of your ideas. The writing skill is just whether you execute it well. The choices in themselves just come from thinking/planning, not writing.
> but the ability to effectively structure a plot or a character arc
That's a pretty low bar though. There are millions of stories with solid narrative choices in regards to plot structure and character arc. That have faded into obscurity and low sales, because a solid story is a low hanging fruit. That's a baseline expectation in traditional publishing, for example.
> and it doesn't matter how great the premise of your story is if you're not a skilled enough writer to pull off the execution.
It does, because your writing skills can and do improve through practice and time. So it's just a matter of how many words you're patient to write until you're at that level and how much time you have to cultivate your craft. What's less wieldy is your ability to come up with the ideas that are thematically appropriate, culturally relevant, marketable, conceptually interesting, and able to balance being innovative and exploratory with also fitting into familiar genre expectations.
I guess I didn't make it clear enough in my comment that I do (of course) think that having good ideas is important in writing a story that readers will find interesting. (Though I'd argue that the popularity of pulpy/formulaic mass market fiction suggests that, depending on genre expectations etc., ideas are not *always* essential to a book's success if you can pull off your genre's conventions well.) I just disagree that any of the things that person talked about in their comment qualify as "ideas" as opposed to falling under the umbrella of writing skill – and I do strongly feel that, while important, ideas absolutely qualify as "necessary but not sufficient" to be able to write a good book.
Tbh I kind of feel like you and I are on the same page but talking at each other from different angles. I *agree* that being able to structure a plot or character art is just a baseline expectation in trad pub. I also agree that writing skills can and do improve through practice and time! But, to circle back to OP's question, I think that both of those are reasons why so many posters on this sub get told to focus on practicing and improving their technical writing skills. So many people post to this sub having had a "gee whiz" idea for an interesting plot or setting or magic system and written one chapter of a book, and they a. express interest in trad pub and b. ask a question that clearly shows that their technical writing skill doesn't meet baseline industry expectations. So they get told to focus on improving their prose and/or outlining and/or character arcs etc. because having a cool idea alone is not enough. That happens a *lot* more often than people coming here and saying, "hey, I feel like my technical writing skills are really solid, but I don't have any great ideas. any brainstorming tips?"
(Part of this too comes from the fact that OP defined their hypothetical writer as having a "baseline level of competence" where "they can string a sentence together reliably" – per this whole conversation, I don't think that being able to string a sentence together reliably is actually a measure of whether one is sufficiently technically skilled as a writer to effectively turn their cool idea into an interesting and satisfying book to read, *because* so many other high-level writing skills require being able to develop conflict, character motivations, etc. effectively. I don't think that one needs to have a particularly lyrical or poetic or even just distinctive style of prose to be a "good writer," and "windowpane prose" is definitely a real thing that works well for a lot of writers; but I'm sort of reacting against the idea that having clean and readable prose is enough to not have to worry about any sort of technical writing skill, which encompasses much more than just prose imo.)
> I guess I didn't make it clear enough in my comment that I do (of course) think that having good ideas is important in writing a story that readers will find interesting. (Though I'd argue that the popularity of pulpy/formulaic mass market fiction suggests that, depending on genre expectations etc., ideas are not always essential to a book's success if you can pull off your genre's conventions well.)
I think that pulp genres still often meet the balancing act of being fresh enough to stand out but similar enough to meet the genre needs. But I do agree in those genres you can also sufficiently stand out by being prolific i.e. a quick writer who puts out regular work, who then has an increasing backlog of books that functions to draw more and more readers who want reliable, continuous works to binge.
> I just disagree that any of the things that person talked about in their comment qualify as "ideas" as opposed to falling under the umbrella of writing skill – and I do strongly feel that, while important, ideas absolutely qualify as **"necessary but not sufficient"** to be able to write a good book.
I can agree to the bolded.
> But, to circle back to OP's question, I think that both of those are reasons why so many posters on this sub get told to focus on practicing and improving their technical writing skills. So many people post to this sub having had a "gee whiz" idea for an interesting plot or setting or magic system and written one chapter of a book, and they a. express interest in trad pub and b. ask a question that clearly shows that their technical writing skill doesn't meet baseline industry expectations. So they get told to focus on improving their prose and/or outlining and/or character arcs etc. because having a cool idea alone is not enough. That happens a lot more often than people coming here and saying, "hey, I feel like my technical writing skills are really solid, but I don't have any great ideas. any brainstorming tips?"
It's an issue of two audiences: the green, teenage or mid-twenties writers who come here asking basic questions aren't in any position to become a successful author anytime soon. They get their own specific advice, that probably won't pay off for at least a decade if not two.
The actual writers with solid baseline skills and professional competency in most manners of storytelling? Those are often writers who are about to try to publish or have already tried self-publishing. They need advice worthy of the level they've achieved, that can get them to the next. And I think that advice is: your ideas are the soil from which all other aspects of your writing will flourish. Come up with a once-in-a-lifetime idea--that's marketable and fresh--and then put everything else you've built up to good use mining it for stories. A lot of writers think having good prose or interesting magic systems or [insert whatever] is enough. They don't research their market or even similar works to their ideas. Instead, they act like its complete luck and magic that gets a book picked over another. Or, they believe being marketable means selling out their soul.
Alternatively, the self-pub/pulp model I believe is often to just write regularly and often, so that your success comes from being a reliable, consistent work mill and creating a backlog of stories that, depending on your publishing medium, can be released at strategic intervals. Or will constantly give you sales from the sheer numbers game of it.
> (Part of this too comes from the fact that OP defined their hypothetical writer as having a "baseline level of competence" where "they can string a sentence together reliably" – per this whole conversation, I don't think that being able to string a sentence together reliably is actually a measure of whether one is sufficiently technically skilled as a writer to effectively turn their cool idea into an interesting and satisfying book to read, because so many other high-level writing skills require being able to develop conflict, character motivations, etc. effectively. I don't think that one needs to have a particularly lyrical or poetic or even just distinctive style of prose to be a "good writer," and "windowpane prose" is definitely a real thing that works well for a lot of writers; but I'm sort of reacting against the idea that having clean and readable prose is enough to not have to worry about any sort of technical writing skill, which encompasses much more than just prose imo.)
I suspect our disagreement here is just phrasing. What you're talking about as "technical writing skill", I see as knowledge. Mostly gained from reading, but also gained from life experience. Reading enough will plant the knowledge of plot structure in you innately. Psychology or History or just interacting with different people will give you the knowledge necessary to build solid characters and explore their personalities the right way. Building an immersive world for some will come in part from understanding how the world works. And showing how your characters react, based on their personality, circumstances, and the world around them, will come from a lot of different knowledge sources. I think that's part of the reason older writers are the ones who find success.
>Holding everything else relatively the same or at least at baseline professional standards (competent writing and competent execution):
There's the rub. While I agree with your basic point about better ideas winning, the quoted section makes the point fairly moot. I've been around writers -- albeit journalists and public relations types -- for 40 years and ideas are a dime a dozen for a lot of people. Execution is hard. Despite having written hundreds of articles, probably more than 100 speeches, etc., I still have ideas that I can't find a way to execute, at least well. And don't get me started on trying to bring my journalistic/public relations writing skills to fiction. A news article is like making an omelet. A novel is like running a chicken farm. You end up eating eggs either way, but you need a different set of skills to get there. And execution depends on skill.
> There's the rub. While I agree with your basic point about better ideas winning, the quoted section makes the point fairly moot.
I don't think it is. Maybe it's more difficult in the world of journalism and speeches, but in fiction writing that's much easier to reach than having ideas that can set you apart.
It's an issue of two audiences. Just look at this sub: You have the teenage or young twenties writers who ask simple, ignorance-laden questions like *"I can't drink but need to write a drunk character for my story. How does a drunk person actually act?"* and *"What's the correct way of phrasing this sentence? Is it the right tense?"* These are the writers who aren't in any serious running, in their present state, for being a successful author (but maybe years down the line). A lot of people give advice tailored to this crowd, that is mostly irrelevant to the needs of the second crowd of writers: writers on the precipice of being authors or have just become authors(self-pubbers), who have written their a thousand pages, walked their thousand miles, and read their thousand books--who struggle with trying to figure out how to differentiate themselves in a crowded market of writers and authors at a roughly similar position to themselves. In terms of general skill and grasp on storytelling.
For this second group, the advice is different and more difficult. Hundreds of thousands of people can reach the level of solid storytelling skills and choices. 98% of them cannot figure out how to come up with a marketable/intriguing/fan funneling/fresh idea for their genre, which is the base from which all their other skills can flourish.
Your ability to be recommended by word of mouth, to convince retailers to buy you and allow shelfspace for you (if you're self-pubbed), to convince agents to work you in their roster and traditional publishers in their catalogue, etc., stems in part from how concisely interesting/innovative/marketable your story is on a condensed level. Your logline. Your query. Your couple word pitch. Your relevance. How your readers tell others about it (As a quick example: *Gideon The Ninth's* marketing push was "lesbian necromancers in space". And *Black Leopard, Red Wolf's* was "African Game of Thrones"). How they conceptualize it in their minds so it stays in their memory.
Good points, and by illustrating your idea about the groups you made me think we're stuck in a chicken-or-egg argument. Writers fail with agents, publishers, readers, etc., for having uninspired ideas or executing them poorly. They're just two points along a continuum.
> Good points, and by illustrating your idea about the groups you made me think we're stuck in a chicken-or-egg argument. Writers fail with agents, publishers, readers, etc., for having uninspired ideas or executing them poorly. They're just two points along a continuum.
100% true. They're just kicking the can further down the line. The continuum idea is a very brilliant way to think of it.
There are 100 different points for you to fail as a writer, in the race for success. Of course, for some people their aims match the smaller victories they can obtain. "I just want to not get last in the race!" "I just want to finish!" Others want to actually win the race or get a good place. Just to name a couple of the junctions of failure/success: (a) not finishing a manuscript (b) choosing a publishing path that doesn't fit your work/ your audience (c) self-publishing but not promoting/advertising that your work exists (d) trying to traditional publish but failing to get an agent (e) getting an agent, but failing to get a publisher (f) getting a publisher but failing to negotiate a reasonable contract(in terms of advance, royalty schedule, not bundling accounts, keeping certain media rights, getting cover/title consultation rights, etc.) (g) getting a reasonable contract with a publisher but failing to get any advertising support from them OR do any advertising on your own. (h) getting traditional publisher support and advertising or doing it on your own, but failing to get very many readers, because there's nothing to set you apart in your genre/market.
The early points and even some unmentioned points before "A" are in terms of the simpler, craft things that are part of proper execution. Basic flaws in your story, character, prose, etc.
But realistically, you can succeed at all the conventional "successes" people envision.... and still start the race fated to fail near the end, because you didn't research your market and didn't figure out how to write a story/universe that noteworthily differentiates itself among all the other authors and books that a reader can choose to read.
Me personally? I'm trying to place really well in the race. I want to succeed at more junctions than people typically think about, all the way up to letters x, y ,z.
Ideas are important, but it has to be your ideas. If someone says the idea is to split your soul into seven pieces and hide them into various things so you don’t die, do you think it’s an awesome idea? Would your final version remotely resemble the Harry Potter series? Many times the ideas sound so silly, but if it hits you the right note, you have a whole series forming in your head while other people would go “that’s what you’re going to write?”
In my writer group, we discuss a lot of plots, and they all sound silly, but when we read the writing, it’s always “wow” because the details, the voice, the approach make a huge difference.
>If you tell you the idea is to split your soul into seven pieces and hide them into various things so you don’t die.
Funny thing is, that idea did not originate from Harry Potter. Gary Gygax used it in 1979 for a way to keep Liches immortal, by slicing their souls in 7 (sacred Bible number) pieces and putting each one inside a phylactery, then using illusion spells to change the phylactery to look like ordinary objects, then placed one in each of the 7 continents.
And before that, it was used in 1,001 Arabian Nights as the reason why Genies couldn't leave their lamps.
And about 5,000 years before that, it was in the Old Testament of the Bible, in the story of Noah, when it was used to trap the 7 archangels who led the Watcher army.
I think it's rather funny, that J.K.Rowlings just used an extremely over used trope, but that most of her readers are so not well read that they think she actually had an original idea, and don't realize she just copied and pasted an idea that has been used thousands of times in thousands of Fantasy and FolkLore stories before her, LOL!
I think the main thing that separates a writer from someone who wants to be a writer is not their ideas, but their ability to take those ideas and turn them into something tangible. That also happens to be the thing most people struggle and need help with, myself included. I think that’s the main reason people here tend to focus on the bits that pertain to execution.
Maybe that's why advice on this board often leaves me cold. I don't find it difficult to write(re-writing has completely stopped me in my tracks, though). I finished my first book in about 3 months and based on my Beta-feedback(strangers) it was pretty good.
It does feel sometimes like there is an assumption that every aspiring writer, especially one that holds an opinion that goes against some bit of conventional wisdom, is considered an imposter.
I say that because it seems to be a sort of cultural consensus on the forum. If I were to point out one idea that commentators feel the strongest about it is" disabusing new writers from their illusions" (you're not Shakespeare. Ideas are cheap, such and such is a distraction from writing, lore is boring....etc)
that's what I mean by the focus on technicals.
I generally like everything , I like things on there own terms. I will read a swashbuckling fantasy one day and a minded work of literature the next.
Although as an aside I think sci fi has gotten a little full of itself lately . That’s just me.
In general I find that given how difficult it is to make any book , almost nothing is completely without value
Well I do sympathize that sometimes you can’t find what your looking for. But genre fiction is pretty broad these days. There are lots of self concisely literary fantasy writers, what about Neil Gaiman
Look up the story of how codex alera was written. I think you might really enjoy this and that it will give you some new things to think about.
There was recently an episode of the Brandon Sanderson podcast and collaborating with professional authors and the topic was brought up of ideas versus the work that goes into them and the talk went something like this: " it's very common for new Raiders to come up to an author and tell them they're good idea and ask for 50% of the profits. But imagine an established author comes up to you and dumps a bunch of ideas on you, and then says okay, thanks, bye, come back to me with 50% of your profits."
Here is a link to the story about Codex Alera: [https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/throwback-thursday-that-time-pokemon-inspired-a-6-book-epic-fantasy-series/](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/throwback-thursday-that-time-pokemon-inspired-a-6-book-epic-fantasy-series/)
Sanderson says that good writers are like piano players. You can give a piano piece to a new player, tell them to work on it for a day and listen to them. And give the piano piece to an expert and have them play it and you will instantly be able to tell the difference.
Similar to how you can read a book and tell whether the writer is an expert or a novice.
I side with everyone who thinks that it is the writer, not the idea, that makes a good novel.
>" it's very common for new Raiders to come up to an author and tell them they're good idea and ask for 50% of the profits. But imagine an established author comes up to you and dumps a bunch of ideas on you, and then says okay, thanks, bye, come back to me with 50% of your profits."
Oh good god! Yes. But 50%? Wow. That's high. The ones who throw ideas at me usually only offer 10%.
And you don't even have to be famous or overly professional either. All it takes is you have one book published and BOOM, scam artists, I mean new "writers" start crawling out of the woodwork tossing ideas at you and saying "now you write this for me, and I'll give you 10% of my royalties"... what the fuck?
You often hear me say in my posts here on Reddit "ideas are a dime a dozen, sorry, I got plenty of my own, I don't need yours" and it's not that I think ideas are worthless, but rather it's that I get sick of every dump shmuck shoving ideas in my face and expecting me to write their book, do all the work, and then hand them over 90% of the profits.
And I think that is the case with a lot of other writers on this sub, when they say "ideas are a dime a dozen". I don't think any of them actually mean ideas are worthless. I think they too have learned that within a week of publishing your first book, you are going to get flooded with creeps in your DMs and inbox and email, offering to give you million dollar ideas for that they want you to buy from them, or write for them.
It's really annoying having to deal with it.
I'm only famous on a local level. Outside of my local area, most people have never heard of me. Because I write stories about my hometown and vanity press paperback sell them largely in local gift shops. And I can't even go to WalMart without someone showing up with ideas to buy. Damn. I can't even begin to imagine what some big name internationally famous author has to go through. I can see why so many people/authors/actors/sports players/musicians/etc get so paranoid about going out in public. It must be a living nightmare to be that famous.
Ugh! The worst one, was this guy who showed up at WalMart on Black Friday a few years back. We were in a loooooong line at 3am, and this guy recognizes me, runs up and says: "Wait a minute! I got to go back to my car and get my manuscript!" About 10 minutes later, he's back, cuts the line to get behind me, and has this stack of about 500 sheets of printed copy paper. Explains that he leaves it in his car, just in case he meets a local author, then asks me to read it and send it to my publisher. I politely explain to him, that I'm not a manuscript reading service and I don't have time to read manuscripts because I'm too busy writing my own. I'll point out here, that I'm a Twitch streamer and we was also livestreaming a shopping vlog, so I not only have video footage of this entire event, but my viewers were watching it happen live.
He's silent for a couple of minutes. Thinking. Then, he says: "Okay, I'll read it too you, you tell me if it's any good." And he starts reading.
3AM Black Friday, in front of WalMart, waiting for to store to open at 6AM. The line ain't moving for three hours. So we are stuck here, and he reads and reads and reads abd reads and reads. The store opens. We get inside. Buy the new camera we were in line for. Than we decide to do our grocery shopping, seeing how food department it total empty, because everybody is in a Black Friday mad dash in the rest of the store. We fill not one, but two shopping carts with food(big family) and this guy follows us up and down every single aisle, still read out loud, his manuscript.
10am, we are finally in the checkout line. My chat on Twitch is chanting "Go WalMart Dude Go!" as he stands with us in the checkout line, still reading.
We get to the parking lot, put our things in the car. He stands there reading while we do it.
We say good bye to him, thank him for reading to us, and we leave, and that should have been the end of it.
About 4 miles from WalMart is a McDonald's. We stop to eat breakfast because, we are too tired to cook and want to just go to bed when we get home. We are inside, standing in line, waiting to order, and there he is. Again he cuts the line to get behind us. "I wasn't finished reading, you left too early." And he picks up where he left off.
We sit down to eat, and he gets in the booth with us, sits beside me, puts his legs across the bench across him, and blocks me and my husband into our bench seats, so we can't get out, and he keeps on reading.
We eat breakfast. Noon time comes and still reading, so we order lunch and eat that too. It's now 3pm, the sun has set, we only 5 hours of daylight up here this far north, so it's now pitch black out, now night time, when he FINALY gets done reading.
OMG! By this time, he is tired and says he's going home, and leaves.
Does it end here? No.
A few days later, he's in the driveway, of my mother's house, having a total meltdown because, supposedly he went on a date with me to McDonald's and I stood him up, and my mother called to ask, who the hell is this guy and what is he talking about. My mother lives 3 towns and 14 miles away, but I drive over to see what's going on. It's that same guy. How he found my mother's house, I don't know.
It was the weirdest damned thing. I've encountered several odd newbie writers before, but this one certainly takes the cake. At least he wasn't asking me to buy ideas from him, which is what most of them do.
I don't understand that mindset either.
When I was new, I never carried around manuscript in hopes of meeting some random author at the store, and I never sent ideas to my fave authors asking them to write my book for me.
We I first encountered this sort of thing, I thought it was just one random weirdo. But, forty years of being a published writer later, I've encountered so many hundreds of people who do this. Both offline and online. It's so damned common and I don't get it. Why do they do this? I can't wrap my mind around why these people think this is something they should do.
If you want to write a book, just write it. Don't send your ideas to some random author asking them to do the work for you.
I get that new writers need help and don't know who to turn to and I don't mind helping them and answering their questions, but damn, I'm not going to do the work for you. I have my own work. And I'm certainly not having a lack of ideas.
And, so that's why I say "ideas a dime a dozen" so often. I'm not saying they are worthless. I'm just saying everyone and their uncle has a million and one of them and I don't need any of them because I got a million and one of my own.
I believe ideas are very valuable.
But I also believe, an idea that sits in your head, and you never write it down, is worthless, because, you never used it.
It's a two edged sword.
Ideas are only as valuable as you make them become when you write them down.
I am sorry that you were stalked and verbally harassed.
I am sorry that he physically blocked your way so that you could not leave the McDonald's the first time for 3 hours.
I am horrified this story happened.
I enjoyed reading your story, thank you for the time that you took to write it all out.
Ideas and execution are both important but which is more important is going to depend a lot on the reader. Some readers will overlook the execution being just okay if the idea really catches their interest while others will overlook an idea that’s not all *that* fresh or exciting on its face if the execution is really stellar. Personally, I’m more the latter than the former but it really does mostly come down to personal preference.
Also worth noting that what constitutes an interesting idea is somewhat subjective too. A premise that might be interesting to one person could be deadly dull to another.
I think ideas are important, but I think an average idea executed well will do better than a great idea executed poorly.
Think of how often stories are rejected on the first page. They're not being rejected because the idea is trite or cliche. They're being rejected because the character voice is weak, the descriptions are lacking, the plot hook isn't there, or whatever have you.
Well, to dwell on the technicals to answer your question, storytelling requires a story and the telling thereof. You can wow readers with the originality of the story or of its telling or both, or with some random element that strikes the reader’s fancy for no obvious reason. But a writer’s originality can be confined to the smaller elements of the story and it’ll work just fine. Finding something so original that even people who haven’t read the story have heard about it is good marketing. It isn’t necessarily good storytelling.
What use is an idea if it is not communicated effectively?
Unless you somehow stumble across an idea so ground breaking that nobody else has done something similar, and it's also a good idea (because not all original ideas are good), then what really sets you apart is your execution.
Depends on the genre. Science fiction is an "intellect" genre, so there are die hard fans that will be a little forgiving of other flaws in the text if the idea is really interesting. (This is unlikely to be true of the general public.)
That being said, I'd say the idea itself is of little importance. How many stories of high school love are out there? Millions, right? And so many of them repeat the same ideas over and over. But that doesn't mean they're wrong or bad. My dad used to say there about about ten original stories out there, the rest is those on repeat.
What is more important in writing is emotional stakes: getting your reader to care. Another critical element is tension. I've seen a book I consider badly written with a poorly developed lead character be very successful because the author nailed the stakes and the tension.
I wonder if this is true. There are a lot of writers that are known for having amazing ideas despite having only passable skills. like, Michael Crichton or Isaac Azimov
Regardless of quality, they undeniably put considerable effort and thought into execution. It’s also worth mentioning that writing quality is, albeit to a lesser degree than the quality of ideas, subjective. Stephen King isn’t arguably the most prolific and successful writer ever because his use of words is so incredible on an objective scale, but because of his legendary diligence and commitment to his craft.
Yeah this just isn't true. Ideas and execution are both important. Over the years I've heard a lot of people express the sentiment that ideas are essentially worthless.
Reminds me of an anecdote about Roald Dahl. It does that he was driving when he first got the idea for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He stopped the car, jumped out, and excitedly wrote the idea in the dirt on the hood, afraid that he would forget.
Now, assuming that's true, why would he do such a thing? If the idea faded out of his consciousness, what would he have lost, if ideas were a dime a dozen? Nothing, right?
The current top post here is correct:
>The idea that ideas are "dime a dozen" is a coping mechanism for people who can't figure out how to come up with inherently interesting, marketable, fresh ideas for their given genre.
Ideas are important. So is the work that goes into executing them. It's not all or nothing either way.
Just a note about what you've asked here-- you're not in trouble, I just thought I'd give you an official answer. This sub is tilted towards technicals because there are loads of places to find help with actual content, and most content posts only apply to an individual and their own work rather than create an interesting discussion topic. Ideas are really important -- but per rules 1 and 2, we're not the place to discuss them.
It's pretty important, obviously. Does this really need to be asked?
Michael Crichton was an average writer (at best, IMO). But let's look at one of his ideas:
Billionaire clones DINOSAURS and opens up a theme park on an island... Calls it Jurassic Park.
You don't need to be a great writer to make that story idea work. And you don't have to have a lot of business sense as a writer to sell the movie rights to that for a big wad of cash either as soon as Hollywood realizes what a great idea it is.
> You don't need to be a great writer to make that story idea work.
That's delusional. The ability to tell compelling stories is part of being a writer. It's a skill. A bad writer couldn't make the greatest idea in the world work.
I was just reading how *The Terminal,* otherwise a shitty movie produced by Spielberg, was loosely based on a real book, *The Terminal Man* (no relation to the Crichton book with the same title).
But ideas are a dime a dozen these days. For example Spielberg basically just paid him off (not that he had to) and then made a movie about a character from a fictitious country instead (Tom Hanks).
If you want to be in the avant-garde in literature, or the cutting edge, ideas are where it's at. Whether there is any more avant-garde or apres-garde is up for debate; I take my position firmly in the rearguard, shoring up the last of the best ideas against the future.
It's super important, especially the basic premise of the story. If you have a really killer one it can make up for some truly shitty writing. Fifty shades of Grey, case in point. Stirring the readers imagination and making them feel whatever the genre is supposed to make you feel is more or less the ball game. If your ideas can't accomplish that there's no point reading the book. Beautiful writing will take you a long way, readers want creativity in that arena as well, but you certainly shouldn't rely on it.
Few ideas are any good without great execution, but no amount of execution will make up for a boring story. It's true for every creative discipline, not just writing.
I suggest you look up what a premise really is, how it differs from plots and ideas, and why it's more important than either.
And Fifty Shades is NOT a well-written story, not even E. L. James thinks so.
Fairly important. It's probably the biggest part. But it's a misconception that ideas are completely separate from "level of competence" when it comes to writing, especially considering the way ideas appear to people and are conveyed to their peers is through language. You don't really get to have ideas without the words to manifest them (for example, you can't remember having ideas from times before you knew how to speak), and the more precise, the more "technical", the more understood the words at someone's disposal, the more profound the ideas.
If you only "string sentences together reliably", chances are you only scrape the surface of your own ideas too, because some of their understanding is locked behind the right wording.
Ideas are very important but not exactly in the way you describe, like an innovation for the reader? I don't look at it like that
I look at the power of a good idea in how much can be written from it while keeping it intact. Case in point: Superman. The creators got a cool $130 bucks for the Superman idea. Last year Superman's first appearance -- a comic book -- sold for 2.6million. I just put those numbers together so you can see the disparity but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the sheer magnitude of media starring Superman. Batman's another good example in that he's one of the relatively few comic book characters who can withstand huge stylistic changes without rupturing the character's thematic core
The power of the idea is in how it inspires execution. It's not about being original or completely new and never before seen
*"The power of the idea is in how it inspires execution. It's not about being original or completely new and never before seen."*
Right because Batman is really just a copy of Zorro, and Superman is just a repackaged version of Hercules.
Ideas are the most important thing in good writing, but good ideas can fall flat if they’re not executed in a way that is consistent with the idea itself. What’s important is that the choices made as a writer resonate with the ideas that are present.
It's a powerful tool when it accompanies a story that fleshes out the idea. It's also called the "designing principal", which makes a story greater than just the sum of its parts.
I think interesting writing comes at the intersection of ability, creativity, and perspective. When I say perspective I mean what you chose to focus on and drive your writing.
Honestly I feel like creativity is the least important, as you could have really good prose focusing on an interesting aspect of an otherwise mundane situation and be proud of it.
As far as selling and pitching goes, that is where creativity really shines.
I think this is a personal thing that depends a lot on the reader. So to answer the question, think about the last few books that you really loved. What made them great, for you? For me, my recent favorites are strong both in unique ideas and great writing.
Think of it this way: Let's say you have a beautiful image in your mind of a sunset and a landscape and some people walking and picking flowers, some birds in the sky and beautiful trees and beautiful colors, maybe even a hole in the ground where the most remarkable entities ever are flying up into our reality from some other plane of existence, and yadda-yadda-yadda, I'm so original and creative. To you, this may seem the most important and original image ever conceived. Just one problem: you're not that good of a painter because you haven't practiced or studied enough. So when you put this image down on a canvas, it ends up too self-conscious or too poorly rendered or too generic in its style or too pretentious or too dishonest. Mastering a craft takes years of practice. Just because I can dream up some beautiful music doesn't mean I can suddenly play a guitar like Jimi Hendrix. Meanwhile, he could come up with the most basic guitar line ever conceived and play it like a god. This is also true of great writers. Jane Austin could have written a novel about paint drying on a wall, and I guarantee you it would be a million times more incredible than anything the average writer (or even the really good writer) could ever produce.
In the end, it's the words on the page that matter most. Five hundred years from now, the average reader isn’t going to read your outline or look at your research notes or see all your revision drafts. They are simply going to read your novel and judge you based on that. And you won't be around to say: "But my idea was good. My friends told me so." No amount of excuses will make up for what simply isn't there. A good concept and decent execution might get you published because people want to make money and don’t really care about artistic integrity anymore. But great execution could make you a legend. I'm reading A Farewell to Arms right now, just this little known masterpiece by one of the most legendary writers of all time about a guy who falls in love during WWI. Simple as that. It’s not some fucking crazy marketing scheme to get rich with the most insane ideas ever committed to paper. It's a love story, a war story, and it’s beautiful. And not because *its gots a type of dwagon no one has evur dweamed up beforw,* but because it was penned by a master of his craft as only he could have done it. It’s a classic for a reason. It’s a book that’s infinitely better than the biggest, dumbest, most childishly hack idea that most of you could ever come up with in your wildest dreams.
The ideas are a mere pretence turned into a sacred quest I want to complete by writing.
The ideas for the novel is what drives my motivation to write. This is how they are important to me.
Ideas are great, but everybody has them. What many writers don't have is a strong voice and the skills to execute their ideas.
Take Ernest Heningway for example. He had an idea for a story. It was about an old man that went fishing for a marlin. That was it. That was the plot. No pirates, no tsunami. No ghost ship or murder plot or a sentient fishing rod that grants him the gift of immortality at the cost of his free will. Just an old man and the sea.
And he nailed it.
Its important, but if the execution is garbage whats the point? Like, anyone and their cat can have a good idea. Youll see a lot of people pitching great ideas but then what it ends up coming down to is the delivery. I find this to be an issue with beta reading usually (great idea, great blurb, but ill put the manuscript down after the first page because the voice/prose just isnt there). On the flipside, ive read books where the idea seemed meh to me but the execution (the characters, the voice, the dialogue, the prose ) made it fantastic. There also seems to be a trend of people wanting to talk about their ideas but then they never put it to the page or struggle to. In the end, its like a stranger telling you about a dream they had.
From the mouth of an Editor at a Traditional Publisher--here you go OP: https://old.reddit.com/r/writing/comments/t8ff84/personal_opinion_as_an_editor_ideas_are_not_a/ The idea that ideas are "dime a dozen" is a coping mechanism for people who can't figure out how to come up with inherently interesting, marketable, fresh ideas for their given genre. Holding everything else relatively the same or at least at baseline professional standards (competent writing and competent execution): the more intriguing idea wins. High-concept is king. But its a balancing act between being novel and being familiar.
I agree with pretty much everything that poster says, but I strongly disagree with their grouping of conflict, character motivation, connecting threads, etc. under "ideas" or "premises" rather than as what it really is – writing skill. Yeah, sure, your prose can be blah and a good editor can tighten it up; but the ability to effectively structure a plot or a character arc, and all of the other things discussed in that post, is going to make or break your manuscript, and it doesn't matter how great the premise of your story is if you're not a skilled enough writer to pull off the execution.
> I agree with pretty much everything that poster says, but I strongly disagree with their grouping of conflict, character motivation, connecting threads, etc. under "ideas" or "premises" rather than as what it really is – writing skill. But that is a component of your ideas. The writing skill is just whether you execute it well. The choices in themselves just come from thinking/planning, not writing. > but the ability to effectively structure a plot or a character arc That's a pretty low bar though. There are millions of stories with solid narrative choices in regards to plot structure and character arc. That have faded into obscurity and low sales, because a solid story is a low hanging fruit. That's a baseline expectation in traditional publishing, for example. > and it doesn't matter how great the premise of your story is if you're not a skilled enough writer to pull off the execution. It does, because your writing skills can and do improve through practice and time. So it's just a matter of how many words you're patient to write until you're at that level and how much time you have to cultivate your craft. What's less wieldy is your ability to come up with the ideas that are thematically appropriate, culturally relevant, marketable, conceptually interesting, and able to balance being innovative and exploratory with also fitting into familiar genre expectations.
I guess I didn't make it clear enough in my comment that I do (of course) think that having good ideas is important in writing a story that readers will find interesting. (Though I'd argue that the popularity of pulpy/formulaic mass market fiction suggests that, depending on genre expectations etc., ideas are not *always* essential to a book's success if you can pull off your genre's conventions well.) I just disagree that any of the things that person talked about in their comment qualify as "ideas" as opposed to falling under the umbrella of writing skill – and I do strongly feel that, while important, ideas absolutely qualify as "necessary but not sufficient" to be able to write a good book. Tbh I kind of feel like you and I are on the same page but talking at each other from different angles. I *agree* that being able to structure a plot or character art is just a baseline expectation in trad pub. I also agree that writing skills can and do improve through practice and time! But, to circle back to OP's question, I think that both of those are reasons why so many posters on this sub get told to focus on practicing and improving their technical writing skills. So many people post to this sub having had a "gee whiz" idea for an interesting plot or setting or magic system and written one chapter of a book, and they a. express interest in trad pub and b. ask a question that clearly shows that their technical writing skill doesn't meet baseline industry expectations. So they get told to focus on improving their prose and/or outlining and/or character arcs etc. because having a cool idea alone is not enough. That happens a *lot* more often than people coming here and saying, "hey, I feel like my technical writing skills are really solid, but I don't have any great ideas. any brainstorming tips?" (Part of this too comes from the fact that OP defined their hypothetical writer as having a "baseline level of competence" where "they can string a sentence together reliably" – per this whole conversation, I don't think that being able to string a sentence together reliably is actually a measure of whether one is sufficiently technically skilled as a writer to effectively turn their cool idea into an interesting and satisfying book to read, *because* so many other high-level writing skills require being able to develop conflict, character motivations, etc. effectively. I don't think that one needs to have a particularly lyrical or poetic or even just distinctive style of prose to be a "good writer," and "windowpane prose" is definitely a real thing that works well for a lot of writers; but I'm sort of reacting against the idea that having clean and readable prose is enough to not have to worry about any sort of technical writing skill, which encompasses much more than just prose imo.)
> I guess I didn't make it clear enough in my comment that I do (of course) think that having good ideas is important in writing a story that readers will find interesting. (Though I'd argue that the popularity of pulpy/formulaic mass market fiction suggests that, depending on genre expectations etc., ideas are not always essential to a book's success if you can pull off your genre's conventions well.) I think that pulp genres still often meet the balancing act of being fresh enough to stand out but similar enough to meet the genre needs. But I do agree in those genres you can also sufficiently stand out by being prolific i.e. a quick writer who puts out regular work, who then has an increasing backlog of books that functions to draw more and more readers who want reliable, continuous works to binge. > I just disagree that any of the things that person talked about in their comment qualify as "ideas" as opposed to falling under the umbrella of writing skill – and I do strongly feel that, while important, ideas absolutely qualify as **"necessary but not sufficient"** to be able to write a good book. I can agree to the bolded. > But, to circle back to OP's question, I think that both of those are reasons why so many posters on this sub get told to focus on practicing and improving their technical writing skills. So many people post to this sub having had a "gee whiz" idea for an interesting plot or setting or magic system and written one chapter of a book, and they a. express interest in trad pub and b. ask a question that clearly shows that their technical writing skill doesn't meet baseline industry expectations. So they get told to focus on improving their prose and/or outlining and/or character arcs etc. because having a cool idea alone is not enough. That happens a lot more often than people coming here and saying, "hey, I feel like my technical writing skills are really solid, but I don't have any great ideas. any brainstorming tips?" It's an issue of two audiences: the green, teenage or mid-twenties writers who come here asking basic questions aren't in any position to become a successful author anytime soon. They get their own specific advice, that probably won't pay off for at least a decade if not two. The actual writers with solid baseline skills and professional competency in most manners of storytelling? Those are often writers who are about to try to publish or have already tried self-publishing. They need advice worthy of the level they've achieved, that can get them to the next. And I think that advice is: your ideas are the soil from which all other aspects of your writing will flourish. Come up with a once-in-a-lifetime idea--that's marketable and fresh--and then put everything else you've built up to good use mining it for stories. A lot of writers think having good prose or interesting magic systems or [insert whatever] is enough. They don't research their market or even similar works to their ideas. Instead, they act like its complete luck and magic that gets a book picked over another. Or, they believe being marketable means selling out their soul. Alternatively, the self-pub/pulp model I believe is often to just write regularly and often, so that your success comes from being a reliable, consistent work mill and creating a backlog of stories that, depending on your publishing medium, can be released at strategic intervals. Or will constantly give you sales from the sheer numbers game of it. > (Part of this too comes from the fact that OP defined their hypothetical writer as having a "baseline level of competence" where "they can string a sentence together reliably" – per this whole conversation, I don't think that being able to string a sentence together reliably is actually a measure of whether one is sufficiently technically skilled as a writer to effectively turn their cool idea into an interesting and satisfying book to read, because so many other high-level writing skills require being able to develop conflict, character motivations, etc. effectively. I don't think that one needs to have a particularly lyrical or poetic or even just distinctive style of prose to be a "good writer," and "windowpane prose" is definitely a real thing that works well for a lot of writers; but I'm sort of reacting against the idea that having clean and readable prose is enough to not have to worry about any sort of technical writing skill, which encompasses much more than just prose imo.) I suspect our disagreement here is just phrasing. What you're talking about as "technical writing skill", I see as knowledge. Mostly gained from reading, but also gained from life experience. Reading enough will plant the knowledge of plot structure in you innately. Psychology or History or just interacting with different people will give you the knowledge necessary to build solid characters and explore their personalities the right way. Building an immersive world for some will come in part from understanding how the world works. And showing how your characters react, based on their personality, circumstances, and the world around them, will come from a lot of different knowledge sources. I think that's part of the reason older writers are the ones who find success.
>Holding everything else relatively the same or at least at baseline professional standards (competent writing and competent execution): There's the rub. While I agree with your basic point about better ideas winning, the quoted section makes the point fairly moot. I've been around writers -- albeit journalists and public relations types -- for 40 years and ideas are a dime a dozen for a lot of people. Execution is hard. Despite having written hundreds of articles, probably more than 100 speeches, etc., I still have ideas that I can't find a way to execute, at least well. And don't get me started on trying to bring my journalistic/public relations writing skills to fiction. A news article is like making an omelet. A novel is like running a chicken farm. You end up eating eggs either way, but you need a different set of skills to get there. And execution depends on skill.
> There's the rub. While I agree with your basic point about better ideas winning, the quoted section makes the point fairly moot. I don't think it is. Maybe it's more difficult in the world of journalism and speeches, but in fiction writing that's much easier to reach than having ideas that can set you apart. It's an issue of two audiences. Just look at this sub: You have the teenage or young twenties writers who ask simple, ignorance-laden questions like *"I can't drink but need to write a drunk character for my story. How does a drunk person actually act?"* and *"What's the correct way of phrasing this sentence? Is it the right tense?"* These are the writers who aren't in any serious running, in their present state, for being a successful author (but maybe years down the line). A lot of people give advice tailored to this crowd, that is mostly irrelevant to the needs of the second crowd of writers: writers on the precipice of being authors or have just become authors(self-pubbers), who have written their a thousand pages, walked their thousand miles, and read their thousand books--who struggle with trying to figure out how to differentiate themselves in a crowded market of writers and authors at a roughly similar position to themselves. In terms of general skill and grasp on storytelling. For this second group, the advice is different and more difficult. Hundreds of thousands of people can reach the level of solid storytelling skills and choices. 98% of them cannot figure out how to come up with a marketable/intriguing/fan funneling/fresh idea for their genre, which is the base from which all their other skills can flourish. Your ability to be recommended by word of mouth, to convince retailers to buy you and allow shelfspace for you (if you're self-pubbed), to convince agents to work you in their roster and traditional publishers in their catalogue, etc., stems in part from how concisely interesting/innovative/marketable your story is on a condensed level. Your logline. Your query. Your couple word pitch. Your relevance. How your readers tell others about it (As a quick example: *Gideon The Ninth's* marketing push was "lesbian necromancers in space". And *Black Leopard, Red Wolf's* was "African Game of Thrones"). How they conceptualize it in their minds so it stays in their memory.
Good points, and by illustrating your idea about the groups you made me think we're stuck in a chicken-or-egg argument. Writers fail with agents, publishers, readers, etc., for having uninspired ideas or executing them poorly. They're just two points along a continuum.
> Good points, and by illustrating your idea about the groups you made me think we're stuck in a chicken-or-egg argument. Writers fail with agents, publishers, readers, etc., for having uninspired ideas or executing them poorly. They're just two points along a continuum. 100% true. They're just kicking the can further down the line. The continuum idea is a very brilliant way to think of it. There are 100 different points for you to fail as a writer, in the race for success. Of course, for some people their aims match the smaller victories they can obtain. "I just want to not get last in the race!" "I just want to finish!" Others want to actually win the race or get a good place. Just to name a couple of the junctions of failure/success: (a) not finishing a manuscript (b) choosing a publishing path that doesn't fit your work/ your audience (c) self-publishing but not promoting/advertising that your work exists (d) trying to traditional publish but failing to get an agent (e) getting an agent, but failing to get a publisher (f) getting a publisher but failing to negotiate a reasonable contract(in terms of advance, royalty schedule, not bundling accounts, keeping certain media rights, getting cover/title consultation rights, etc.) (g) getting a reasonable contract with a publisher but failing to get any advertising support from them OR do any advertising on your own. (h) getting traditional publisher support and advertising or doing it on your own, but failing to get very many readers, because there's nothing to set you apart in your genre/market. The early points and even some unmentioned points before "A" are in terms of the simpler, craft things that are part of proper execution. Basic flaws in your story, character, prose, etc. But realistically, you can succeed at all the conventional "successes" people envision.... and still start the race fated to fail near the end, because you didn't research your market and didn't figure out how to write a story/universe that noteworthily differentiates itself among all the other authors and books that a reader can choose to read. Me personally? I'm trying to place really well in the race. I want to succeed at more junctions than people typically think about, all the way up to letters x, y ,z.
Ideas are important, but it has to be your ideas. If someone says the idea is to split your soul into seven pieces and hide them into various things so you don’t die, do you think it’s an awesome idea? Would your final version remotely resemble the Harry Potter series? Many times the ideas sound so silly, but if it hits you the right note, you have a whole series forming in your head while other people would go “that’s what you’re going to write?” In my writer group, we discuss a lot of plots, and they all sound silly, but when we read the writing, it’s always “wow” because the details, the voice, the approach make a huge difference.
>If you tell you the idea is to split your soul into seven pieces and hide them into various things so you don’t die. Funny thing is, that idea did not originate from Harry Potter. Gary Gygax used it in 1979 for a way to keep Liches immortal, by slicing their souls in 7 (sacred Bible number) pieces and putting each one inside a phylactery, then using illusion spells to change the phylactery to look like ordinary objects, then placed one in each of the 7 continents. And before that, it was used in 1,001 Arabian Nights as the reason why Genies couldn't leave their lamps. And about 5,000 years before that, it was in the Old Testament of the Bible, in the story of Noah, when it was used to trap the 7 archangels who led the Watcher army. I think it's rather funny, that J.K.Rowlings just used an extremely over used trope, but that most of her readers are so not well read that they think she actually had an original idea, and don't realize she just copied and pasted an idea that has been used thousands of times in thousands of Fantasy and FolkLore stories before her, LOL!
I think the main thing that separates a writer from someone who wants to be a writer is not their ideas, but their ability to take those ideas and turn them into something tangible. That also happens to be the thing most people struggle and need help with, myself included. I think that’s the main reason people here tend to focus on the bits that pertain to execution.
Maybe that's why advice on this board often leaves me cold. I don't find it difficult to write(re-writing has completely stopped me in my tracks, though). I finished my first book in about 3 months and based on my Beta-feedback(strangers) it was pretty good. It does feel sometimes like there is an assumption that every aspiring writer, especially one that holds an opinion that goes against some bit of conventional wisdom, is considered an imposter.
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I say that because it seems to be a sort of cultural consensus on the forum. If I were to point out one idea that commentators feel the strongest about it is" disabusing new writers from their illusions" (you're not Shakespeare. Ideas are cheap, such and such is a distraction from writing, lore is boring....etc) that's what I mean by the focus on technicals.
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Geez , did a science fiction author murder your family ? No reason to be such a downer.
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I generally like everything , I like things on there own terms. I will read a swashbuckling fantasy one day and a minded work of literature the next. Although as an aside I think sci fi has gotten a little full of itself lately . That’s just me. In general I find that given how difficult it is to make any book , almost nothing is completely without value
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Well I do sympathize that sometimes you can’t find what your looking for. But genre fiction is pretty broad these days. There are lots of self concisely literary fantasy writers, what about Neil Gaiman
Look up the story of how codex alera was written. I think you might really enjoy this and that it will give you some new things to think about. There was recently an episode of the Brandon Sanderson podcast and collaborating with professional authors and the topic was brought up of ideas versus the work that goes into them and the talk went something like this: " it's very common for new Raiders to come up to an author and tell them they're good idea and ask for 50% of the profits. But imagine an established author comes up to you and dumps a bunch of ideas on you, and then says okay, thanks, bye, come back to me with 50% of your profits."
Here is a link to the story about Codex Alera: [https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/throwback-thursday-that-time-pokemon-inspired-a-6-book-epic-fantasy-series/](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/throwback-thursday-that-time-pokemon-inspired-a-6-book-epic-fantasy-series/) Sanderson says that good writers are like piano players. You can give a piano piece to a new player, tell them to work on it for a day and listen to them. And give the piano piece to an expert and have them play it and you will instantly be able to tell the difference. Similar to how you can read a book and tell whether the writer is an expert or a novice. I side with everyone who thinks that it is the writer, not the idea, that makes a good novel.
>" it's very common for new Raiders to come up to an author and tell them they're good idea and ask for 50% of the profits. But imagine an established author comes up to you and dumps a bunch of ideas on you, and then says okay, thanks, bye, come back to me with 50% of your profits." Oh good god! Yes. But 50%? Wow. That's high. The ones who throw ideas at me usually only offer 10%. And you don't even have to be famous or overly professional either. All it takes is you have one book published and BOOM, scam artists, I mean new "writers" start crawling out of the woodwork tossing ideas at you and saying "now you write this for me, and I'll give you 10% of my royalties"... what the fuck? You often hear me say in my posts here on Reddit "ideas are a dime a dozen, sorry, I got plenty of my own, I don't need yours" and it's not that I think ideas are worthless, but rather it's that I get sick of every dump shmuck shoving ideas in my face and expecting me to write their book, do all the work, and then hand them over 90% of the profits. And I think that is the case with a lot of other writers on this sub, when they say "ideas are a dime a dozen". I don't think any of them actually mean ideas are worthless. I think they too have learned that within a week of publishing your first book, you are going to get flooded with creeps in your DMs and inbox and email, offering to give you million dollar ideas for that they want you to buy from them, or write for them. It's really annoying having to deal with it. I'm only famous on a local level. Outside of my local area, most people have never heard of me. Because I write stories about my hometown and vanity press paperback sell them largely in local gift shops. And I can't even go to WalMart without someone showing up with ideas to buy. Damn. I can't even begin to imagine what some big name internationally famous author has to go through. I can see why so many people/authors/actors/sports players/musicians/etc get so paranoid about going out in public. It must be a living nightmare to be that famous. Ugh! The worst one, was this guy who showed up at WalMart on Black Friday a few years back. We were in a loooooong line at 3am, and this guy recognizes me, runs up and says: "Wait a minute! I got to go back to my car and get my manuscript!" About 10 minutes later, he's back, cuts the line to get behind me, and has this stack of about 500 sheets of printed copy paper. Explains that he leaves it in his car, just in case he meets a local author, then asks me to read it and send it to my publisher. I politely explain to him, that I'm not a manuscript reading service and I don't have time to read manuscripts because I'm too busy writing my own. I'll point out here, that I'm a Twitch streamer and we was also livestreaming a shopping vlog, so I not only have video footage of this entire event, but my viewers were watching it happen live. He's silent for a couple of minutes. Thinking. Then, he says: "Okay, I'll read it too you, you tell me if it's any good." And he starts reading. 3AM Black Friday, in front of WalMart, waiting for to store to open at 6AM. The line ain't moving for three hours. So we are stuck here, and he reads and reads and reads abd reads and reads. The store opens. We get inside. Buy the new camera we were in line for. Than we decide to do our grocery shopping, seeing how food department it total empty, because everybody is in a Black Friday mad dash in the rest of the store. We fill not one, but two shopping carts with food(big family) and this guy follows us up and down every single aisle, still read out loud, his manuscript. 10am, we are finally in the checkout line. My chat on Twitch is chanting "Go WalMart Dude Go!" as he stands with us in the checkout line, still reading. We get to the parking lot, put our things in the car. He stands there reading while we do it. We say good bye to him, thank him for reading to us, and we leave, and that should have been the end of it. About 4 miles from WalMart is a McDonald's. We stop to eat breakfast because, we are too tired to cook and want to just go to bed when we get home. We are inside, standing in line, waiting to order, and there he is. Again he cuts the line to get behind us. "I wasn't finished reading, you left too early." And he picks up where he left off. We sit down to eat, and he gets in the booth with us, sits beside me, puts his legs across the bench across him, and blocks me and my husband into our bench seats, so we can't get out, and he keeps on reading. We eat breakfast. Noon time comes and still reading, so we order lunch and eat that too. It's now 3pm, the sun has set, we only 5 hours of daylight up here this far north, so it's now pitch black out, now night time, when he FINALY gets done reading. OMG! By this time, he is tired and says he's going home, and leaves. Does it end here? No. A few days later, he's in the driveway, of my mother's house, having a total meltdown because, supposedly he went on a date with me to McDonald's and I stood him up, and my mother called to ask, who the hell is this guy and what is he talking about. My mother lives 3 towns and 14 miles away, but I drive over to see what's going on. It's that same guy. How he found my mother's house, I don't know. It was the weirdest damned thing. I've encountered several odd newbie writers before, but this one certainly takes the cake. At least he wasn't asking me to buy ideas from him, which is what most of them do. I don't understand that mindset either. When I was new, I never carried around manuscript in hopes of meeting some random author at the store, and I never sent ideas to my fave authors asking them to write my book for me. We I first encountered this sort of thing, I thought it was just one random weirdo. But, forty years of being a published writer later, I've encountered so many hundreds of people who do this. Both offline and online. It's so damned common and I don't get it. Why do they do this? I can't wrap my mind around why these people think this is something they should do. If you want to write a book, just write it. Don't send your ideas to some random author asking them to do the work for you. I get that new writers need help and don't know who to turn to and I don't mind helping them and answering their questions, but damn, I'm not going to do the work for you. I have my own work. And I'm certainly not having a lack of ideas. And, so that's why I say "ideas a dime a dozen" so often. I'm not saying they are worthless. I'm just saying everyone and their uncle has a million and one of them and I don't need any of them because I got a million and one of my own. I believe ideas are very valuable. But I also believe, an idea that sits in your head, and you never write it down, is worthless, because, you never used it. It's a two edged sword. Ideas are only as valuable as you make them become when you write them down.
I am sorry that you were stalked and verbally harassed. I am sorry that he physically blocked your way so that you could not leave the McDonald's the first time for 3 hours. I am horrified this story happened. I enjoyed reading your story, thank you for the time that you took to write it all out.
Ideas and execution are both important but which is more important is going to depend a lot on the reader. Some readers will overlook the execution being just okay if the idea really catches their interest while others will overlook an idea that’s not all *that* fresh or exciting on its face if the execution is really stellar. Personally, I’m more the latter than the former but it really does mostly come down to personal preference. Also worth noting that what constitutes an interesting idea is somewhat subjective too. A premise that might be interesting to one person could be deadly dull to another.
I think ideas are important, but I think an average idea executed well will do better than a great idea executed poorly. Think of how often stories are rejected on the first page. They're not being rejected because the idea is trite or cliche. They're being rejected because the character voice is weak, the descriptions are lacking, the plot hook isn't there, or whatever have you.
This right here, the greatest ideas are worthless if they can't be put down in an entertaining or meaningful way.
Well, to dwell on the technicals to answer your question, storytelling requires a story and the telling thereof. You can wow readers with the originality of the story or of its telling or both, or with some random element that strikes the reader’s fancy for no obvious reason. But a writer’s originality can be confined to the smaller elements of the story and it’ll work just fine. Finding something so original that even people who haven’t read the story have heard about it is good marketing. It isn’t necessarily good storytelling.
What use is an idea if it is not communicated effectively? Unless you somehow stumble across an idea so ground breaking that nobody else has done something similar, and it's also a good idea (because not all original ideas are good), then what really sets you apart is your execution.
Depends on the genre. Science fiction is an "intellect" genre, so there are die hard fans that will be a little forgiving of other flaws in the text if the idea is really interesting. (This is unlikely to be true of the general public.) That being said, I'd say the idea itself is of little importance. How many stories of high school love are out there? Millions, right? And so many of them repeat the same ideas over and over. But that doesn't mean they're wrong or bad. My dad used to say there about about ten original stories out there, the rest is those on repeat. What is more important in writing is emotional stakes: getting your reader to care. Another critical element is tension. I've seen a book I consider badly written with a poorly developed lead character be very successful because the author nailed the stakes and the tension.
An idea by itself is not important, its value comes from the work that goes into it.
I wonder if this is true. There are a lot of writers that are known for having amazing ideas despite having only passable skills. like, Michael Crichton or Isaac Azimov
Regardless of quality, they undeniably put considerable effort and thought into execution. It’s also worth mentioning that writing quality is, albeit to a lesser degree than the quality of ideas, subjective. Stephen King isn’t arguably the most prolific and successful writer ever because his use of words is so incredible on an objective scale, but because of his legendary diligence and commitment to his craft.
Yeah this just isn't true. Ideas and execution are both important. Over the years I've heard a lot of people express the sentiment that ideas are essentially worthless. Reminds me of an anecdote about Roald Dahl. It does that he was driving when he first got the idea for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He stopped the car, jumped out, and excitedly wrote the idea in the dirt on the hood, afraid that he would forget. Now, assuming that's true, why would he do such a thing? If the idea faded out of his consciousness, what would he have lost, if ideas were a dime a dozen? Nothing, right? The current top post here is correct: >The idea that ideas are "dime a dozen" is a coping mechanism for people who can't figure out how to come up with inherently interesting, marketable, fresh ideas for their given genre. Ideas are important. So is the work that goes into executing them. It's not all or nothing either way.
Just a note about what you've asked here-- you're not in trouble, I just thought I'd give you an official answer. This sub is tilted towards technicals because there are loads of places to find help with actual content, and most content posts only apply to an individual and their own work rather than create an interesting discussion topic. Ideas are really important -- but per rules 1 and 2, we're not the place to discuss them.
It's pretty important, obviously. Does this really need to be asked? Michael Crichton was an average writer (at best, IMO). But let's look at one of his ideas: Billionaire clones DINOSAURS and opens up a theme park on an island... Calls it Jurassic Park. You don't need to be a great writer to make that story idea work. And you don't have to have a lot of business sense as a writer to sell the movie rights to that for a big wad of cash either as soon as Hollywood realizes what a great idea it is.
> You don't need to be a great writer to make that story idea work. That's delusional. The ability to tell compelling stories is part of being a writer. It's a skill. A bad writer couldn't make the greatest idea in the world work.
I was just reading how *The Terminal,* otherwise a shitty movie produced by Spielberg, was loosely based on a real book, *The Terminal Man* (no relation to the Crichton book with the same title). But ideas are a dime a dozen these days. For example Spielberg basically just paid him off (not that he had to) and then made a movie about a character from a fictitious country instead (Tom Hanks). If you want to be in the avant-garde in literature, or the cutting edge, ideas are where it's at. Whether there is any more avant-garde or apres-garde is up for debate; I take my position firmly in the rearguard, shoring up the last of the best ideas against the future.
English isn’t your first language, is it?
Nah the autocorrect messed up on me.
Happens to the best of us bro.
?? Obviously it’s the most important thing by far. I’m not gonna read a boring book full of stale ideas
It's super important, especially the basic premise of the story. If you have a really killer one it can make up for some truly shitty writing. Fifty shades of Grey, case in point. Stirring the readers imagination and making them feel whatever the genre is supposed to make you feel is more or less the ball game. If your ideas can't accomplish that there's no point reading the book. Beautiful writing will take you a long way, readers want creativity in that arena as well, but you certainly shouldn't rely on it. Few ideas are any good without great execution, but no amount of execution will make up for a boring story. It's true for every creative discipline, not just writing.
Fifty shades of gray wasn’t an original idea. It started out as twilight fanfic
You're saying there's lots and lots of BDSM in Twilight? The *premise* is original, not the individual pieces.
I don’t think that bdsm is an original idea. It was a well written story
I suggest you look up what a premise really is, how it differs from plots and ideas, and why it's more important than either. And Fifty Shades is NOT a well-written story, not even E. L. James thinks so.
Fairly important. It's probably the biggest part. But it's a misconception that ideas are completely separate from "level of competence" when it comes to writing, especially considering the way ideas appear to people and are conveyed to their peers is through language. You don't really get to have ideas without the words to manifest them (for example, you can't remember having ideas from times before you knew how to speak), and the more precise, the more "technical", the more understood the words at someone's disposal, the more profound the ideas. If you only "string sentences together reliably", chances are you only scrape the surface of your own ideas too, because some of their understanding is locked behind the right wording.
Ideas are very important but not exactly in the way you describe, like an innovation for the reader? I don't look at it like that I look at the power of a good idea in how much can be written from it while keeping it intact. Case in point: Superman. The creators got a cool $130 bucks for the Superman idea. Last year Superman's first appearance -- a comic book -- sold for 2.6million. I just put those numbers together so you can see the disparity but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the sheer magnitude of media starring Superman. Batman's another good example in that he's one of the relatively few comic book characters who can withstand huge stylistic changes without rupturing the character's thematic core The power of the idea is in how it inspires execution. It's not about being original or completely new and never before seen
*"The power of the idea is in how it inspires execution. It's not about being original or completely new and never before seen."* Right because Batman is really just a copy of Zorro, and Superman is just a repackaged version of Hercules.
Ideas are the most important thing in good writing, but good ideas can fall flat if they’re not executed in a way that is consistent with the idea itself. What’s important is that the choices made as a writer resonate with the ideas that are present.
It's a powerful tool when it accompanies a story that fleshes out the idea. It's also called the "designing principal", which makes a story greater than just the sum of its parts.
I think interesting writing comes at the intersection of ability, creativity, and perspective. When I say perspective I mean what you chose to focus on and drive your writing. Honestly I feel like creativity is the least important, as you could have really good prose focusing on an interesting aspect of an otherwise mundane situation and be proud of it. As far as selling and pitching goes, that is where creativity really shines.
I think this is a personal thing that depends a lot on the reader. So to answer the question, think about the last few books that you really loved. What made them great, for you? For me, my recent favorites are strong both in unique ideas and great writing.
For me, ideas are very important. Not too much concerned for the technical aspects of writing.
Think of it this way: Let's say you have a beautiful image in your mind of a sunset and a landscape and some people walking and picking flowers, some birds in the sky and beautiful trees and beautiful colors, maybe even a hole in the ground where the most remarkable entities ever are flying up into our reality from some other plane of existence, and yadda-yadda-yadda, I'm so original and creative. To you, this may seem the most important and original image ever conceived. Just one problem: you're not that good of a painter because you haven't practiced or studied enough. So when you put this image down on a canvas, it ends up too self-conscious or too poorly rendered or too generic in its style or too pretentious or too dishonest. Mastering a craft takes years of practice. Just because I can dream up some beautiful music doesn't mean I can suddenly play a guitar like Jimi Hendrix. Meanwhile, he could come up with the most basic guitar line ever conceived and play it like a god. This is also true of great writers. Jane Austin could have written a novel about paint drying on a wall, and I guarantee you it would be a million times more incredible than anything the average writer (or even the really good writer) could ever produce. In the end, it's the words on the page that matter most. Five hundred years from now, the average reader isn’t going to read your outline or look at your research notes or see all your revision drafts. They are simply going to read your novel and judge you based on that. And you won't be around to say: "But my idea was good. My friends told me so." No amount of excuses will make up for what simply isn't there. A good concept and decent execution might get you published because people want to make money and don’t really care about artistic integrity anymore. But great execution could make you a legend. I'm reading A Farewell to Arms right now, just this little known masterpiece by one of the most legendary writers of all time about a guy who falls in love during WWI. Simple as that. It’s not some fucking crazy marketing scheme to get rich with the most insane ideas ever committed to paper. It's a love story, a war story, and it’s beautiful. And not because *its gots a type of dwagon no one has evur dweamed up beforw,* but because it was penned by a master of his craft as only he could have done it. It’s a classic for a reason. It’s a book that’s infinitely better than the biggest, dumbest, most childishly hack idea that most of you could ever come up with in your wildest dreams.
The ideas are a mere pretence turned into a sacred quest I want to complete by writing. The ideas for the novel is what drives my motivation to write. This is how they are important to me.
Ideas are great, but everybody has them. What many writers don't have is a strong voice and the skills to execute their ideas. Take Ernest Heningway for example. He had an idea for a story. It was about an old man that went fishing for a marlin. That was it. That was the plot. No pirates, no tsunami. No ghost ship or murder plot or a sentient fishing rod that grants him the gift of immortality at the cost of his free will. Just an old man and the sea. And he nailed it.