How do you come up with and develop ideas?

[Orangesandbananas]

I'm finding it difficult to progress beyond short pieces of writing from prompts.

I have ideas for novels that are just a starting point, but then I struggle to properly develop them into a full story or outline.

Would you mind sharing your process for developing your initial ideas into full story ideas?

It'd help me to understand how other writers go from initial spark to developed story idea.

Depends very much on the genre. If you gave an example I could tell you what I'd do with it.

The ideas I come up with all seem to be magical realism, or surreal.

So I think of some unusual concept, I don't feel ready to share my ideas yet, so I'll use a fake example. Let's say I decide I'd like to write a novel about a woman who discovers a pair of magical shoes that can take her anywhere she wants to go. Well then I'd feel excited about my idea but stuck on how to further develop it. I ask myself what's her character flaw, what is her goal, what will she learn on her journeys in the magic shoes but my brain then goes blank and I can't think of the actual story that will happen to her.

I'm curious to hear how other people take that initial idea and think of all the other ideas to turn it into a story.

Okay I get you. What I'd do is maybe imagine some people in your life and what they'd do if they ended up with the magic shoes or whatever the idea is. Like try to ground the idea in some concrete reality. Also another thing that may really help is to develop the villain of the piece first and their motivations as it gives you a mission for the main character. Like... Maybe the villain is the owner of the shoes now dead, that the woman doesn't know about. When she starts using the shoes many things start to go wrong in her life because the dead woman is displeased but she has to use the shoes to rectify the problem so she's in a catch 22.

Thanks NotNow, it's interesting to see what you did with the initial idea.

I'm wondering if my struggle is because I'm thinking concept first rather than character first.

I managed to write a short story a few months ago that just flowed out, it was a ghost story, it was super cheesy and I didn't like it that much but at least it was a piece of finished work!

My ideas for novels are all too complicated and then I just get stuck in the ideas stage and never start writing. So frustrating!

I always start with a setting and put a character in that setting.

This is from Emma Darwin’s excellent blog, part of a new series aimed at first-time novelists:

emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2020/03/always-meant-to-write-a-novel-this-series-is-one-way.html

Start from the end and work back

Verily I like this approach. I often start with an idea about the end of a story. One story I wrote the last scene and worked backwards - this was an exercise on an advanced CW course too.

I like to use mind maps for different aspects of the story, develop character, settings, plot ideas and I don't have to use every idea but sometimes I make links.

So magic shoe example... Shoes - Are they comfortable? Does she get blisters? What were her favourite shoes and why?

What does she know about stories of magic shoes, what's her experience of magic in general. In you world are there many magical items? What attitudes are there?

Anywhere she wants? Are there limits to you magic (with magic bonus point if there's a big drawback or limit that will impede her)? Where are her dream locations and why?

You build the world as you understand her better.

But there's no one way. Read examples and make it work for you. I've tried Hilary Mantel's pin board, JK Rowlings scene grid and a few others. You know what works for me - Lists. I love lists so I write a list of aims for the scene, who I want to develop, what I want to show. As I add the element I tick it off. (I do like the pin board though)

You might find this helpful.

I've written 13 novels in the last year, all published, 2 top 100, 6 top 500 and the rest top 1000 bestseller on Amazon.

I've never actually started a book knowing the full story. That seems like an almost impossible idea to me.

What I do have is a general sense of the story idea.

From the story idea I start to think of characters that would be good with the story idea. You say you have trouble with fears etc... have a look at:

The Emotional Wound Thesaurus
The Negative Trait Thesaurus
The Positive Trait Thesaurus

That'll get the ideas flowing.

But what you actually want to do is get the characters on the page talking and interacting as quickly as possible.

Start with an interesting situation in your characters normal life, and then the thing that takes them from their normal into the "new normal" of the story.

Don't make the mistake of thinking you must know every little detail before you start. You can add all that in later. The video should help explain what I mean

I write children's stories, unpublished, for my dc's enjoyment (and mine)

I've found the best approach for me seems to be to start off with the characters formed and a germ of an idea-sometimes just a place will do.
Then start writing.
I write approximately one chapter (around 2k words) a day, read through the previous chapter, and occasionally go back and alter an earlier one to fit in with what I've just written. I spend the next day thinking about how it is going to go, then write it in the evening. If I really can't think how they're progressing, I write a filler chapter (which normally will end up cut) and it normally gives me a slightly different angle from which I can think of the next chapter.
This seems to neatly give me a story of between 40k and 50k words.
That's pretty perfect for NaNoWriMo.

It works for me best when I know the main character well. That means I usually equate it to someone I know.

I always thought you had to plan thoroughly. I guess that's a throw back to English essays. So I'd spend ages working out exact plan, and then get thrown by finding the characters didn't do what I'd planned.
So the first one I really wrote, I did a vague plan. I had about 3-4 chapters planned and approximately where they went in the story, and wrote it round that.
The next one I wrote was my first NaNoWriMo. I only decided to do it on the 30th October, so had no time to plan at all. I literally sat down and wrote it without knowing each day where the next chapter would take me, and found I quite like writing like that.

There are two issues with this: I find that the day I've had influences what I write. For example the weather-if we've had pouring rain, then the story tends to have pouring rain.
The other issue is that my family complain I go terribly vague and tend to forget unimportant interruptions like cooking dinner.

Lots of interesting approaches here, thanks so much for posting.

I enjoyed watching that video and I'm interested in the idea of writing into the dark so might give that a try.

I also found Emma Darwin's blog useful, I definitely need to not let the censoring side of my brain kill all my ideas (it's having a field day doing that lately).

It's definitely not working for me trying to plot and outline before starting so I'll try these other methods. I'm organised and I LOVE the idea of planning ahead and knowing my novel idea is sound before writing it, BUT it's not working at all so maybe (annoyingly) I have to write without planning so I can discover my story that way.