Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/20107
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Take your criticism down A LOT of notches.

Instead of struggling on that One Great Idea you can't get, and dismissing everything you come by as crap, pick a painfully generic plot, add one simple, standard trick, and just start writing.

Pick any of fairy tales, even the most generic one, knight saves a princess from a dragon. Add one simple, trivial modification: "In Space". Or "On the Internet". Or "From the Dragon's perspective". Or "The Princess doesn't like it." Or "The Dragon is the Princess." Whatever to move away from the -totally bland- into -trite-.

Then start writing. And if ideas come, apply them. Change stuff. Let the plot wander wherever it wills. If they don't, just keep writing that generic stuff. Usually, they will come, sooner or later.

My recent story went like this. Pick: Spielberg's 'E.T.'. Twist: The alien has a quad-digit IQ (or more), and mastery of mathematics. The beginning is quite generic. Then the alien decides to obtain funds to build the phone to call home. How to build massive funds quickly? Through playing on the stock market. What are some risks associated with it? Getting caught up in the thrill of the gamble.

"That escalated quickly" would be an understatement.

Original score: 1