“I’ve got this great idea for a book. You write it, and we’ll split the profits 50/50.”
Writers get that pitch a lot. And when we do, it’s hard not to bust out laughing.
Because it immediately gives away that the guy making the pitch has never made art for money.
Why? Due to the popular misconception about ideas’ importance, what they are, and where they come from.
Where ideas come from: Some are lifted from books, movies, TV, etc. and I file the serial numbers off and recombine them. Some I put serious effort into devising from scratch and developing.
Some do just come to me. This happened with few of my more popular characters.
What most laymen call “ideas” are actually managed influences combined and developed in appealing ways and properly executed.
Influences + juxtaposition + execution = speculative fiction “ideas”.
Most non-writers tend to overestimate the importance of ideas. Pick up any book, turn your television to a random channel, or look out the window. You’ll find a hundred concepts that could be the seed of an SFF novel. Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera sprang from a bet that he could write a book based on the two worst ideas a panel audience gave him. The crowd came up with the lost Roman legion and Pokemon.
Writers must be readers. If you finish a book and say, “I could never come up with an idea like that!” Chances are you don’t read enough fiction.
Ideas are easy. The world is overflowing with them. Execution is the most vital part of the equation by far.
The synopsis of every SFF story sounds dumb because it’s just the pure idea without the execution.
A short, hairy-footed gentleman goes on a cross-country trek and returns.
When someone says “I could never think of an idea like that,” nine times out of ten he means he couldn’t execute it as effectively.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but there’s a lot going on behind the scenes of my writing–linguistic techniques I use to deliver the story’s ideas for maximum effect. People call my stuff layered and dense. They’re right, but only a few folks have caught on to what’s happening beneath the surface.
But that’s just me. You don’t have to get down into the paragraph, sentence, & word-level weeds like I do. Just read extensively in your genre, manage your influences, & work hard to hone your execution.
Make my award-winning Soul Cycle part of your reading list, and add the tools I mentioned to your author toolbox.
Taking cues from Gundam, Macross and other famous anime mecha shows, Brian Niemeier weaves a fast paced and violent plot filled with fleshed out characters and awesome ideas that never fail to entertain the reader.
You see the same thing in other creative professions too. Case in point, spend a bit of time perusing Upwork or Fiverr. Interspersed with legitimate freelancer jobs (and more than a few semi-obvious “I’ll pay someone to do this class project gigs) you’ll find plenty of entries that boil down to “I’ve got a great idea, I just need an artist/programmer/entire engineering team to help me execute on my vision.”
Which, okay, sparky little Upwork poster, maybe. But when Unity is a free download, and AI art bots can crank out stuff that’s at least serviceable for prototyping, how about you at least spend 6-12 months building a prototype to see if you’ve got something workable first, THEN start looking to build out a team, rather than coming in with a brilliant idea, no budget, and no clue how to make things happen.
Most people who make those kinds of pitches crave validation but are too lazy to put in the necessary work for it.
Hearing people like that tends to remind me of Micheal Keaton’s character in Night Shift.
“I’m an idea guy. Sometimes I get so many ideas that I can’t even fight them off!”