Coming up with ideas

[luckykaa]

Perhaps the place I'm working is sucking my spirit dry, and that's why I'm not coming up with any good ideas.  Except I am.  I have loads of ideas kicking about but none of them seem to suggest an actual story. I have settings.  I have characters  None of the characters really fit any of the settings.  None of them  want to do anything.

Part of my problem is that I want to be too clever.  I enjoy writing conspiracy thrillers and YA fantasy stuff.  But I've done that before.  Twice.  Knowing you can write a 50000 word novel in 30 days takes the challenge out of it.  I need a new challenge.  I need to prove to myself that I can do something else.  I need something extra to make things harder. 

Aiming for a higher word count is not an option.  I need a challenge in addition to the word count.  One that I'm forced to stick with and the 50k words as checked by Nano's word fairy will confirm that I've achieved.  both the 50000 words and the additional requirement. 

What would be a good challenge? 

Should I take on the "Where the hell are my pants" challenge from a couple of years back?

Comments

[ingaborg.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it would interest you, but there is a writing challenge I'd quite like to try myself if I ever do any creative writing.

Whenever a character speaks, try to ensure that the reader will know who is speaking, just from what they say. Ideally nothing so obvious as a silly accent. But perhaps one character will always speak tersely, another will use long complicated sentences, another might always sound tetchy, somebody else might be apologetic etc. If I ever do this I will try to go for really simple characteristics initially, just to get the hang of it.

Of course this may be blindingly obvious and an unnecessary suggestion! But I have read a LOT of professional, published works in which all the characters seem to speak in exactly the same way, and as a result they all seem like clones of the author.

[luckykaa.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if it is blindingly obvious or not but it's an excellent idea, so probably is:) One thing I do want is some decent character stuff. This sounds like a good way to force myself.

[chess]

You could write one of my ideas for me, I have too many and need to pick one ;).

[luckykaa.livejournal.com]

Really I'll come up with something I like if I give myself an hour or so with a notepad and just scribble ideas down.

If you have anything to throw into the melting pot I'll scribble that down as well, as long as you have no objection to my subverting or entirely ignoring it.

[lordofthewheel.livejournal.com]

do an ngoing story that is 150,000 words and do it over three nanos, it makes it much harder to plan out but also makes it more of a realistic length for a novel, and is certainly a challenge...

Re: My thoughts

[luckykaa.livejournal.com]

Hi, Sally.

Well, not sure if it's clear from context here but this is for the nanowrimo challenge (http://www.nanowrimo.org/). The basic idea is to spend a month writing a 50000 word novella.

I'm not quite sure whether or not it counts as "recognitition", but since I could attempt this challenge any time, I guess the recognition there matters. Whether the nanowrimo word counter has validated my word count has definitely been my criterion for success in previous years.

Still, while recongition is important for success, I don't think that's the only thing that matters. I'd certainly consider it a success if I was a punblished author, I'm mainly about setting and achieving goals.

That's my initial thought on the matter. I'll probably add a little more when I've had more time to consider the question.

[masterofapath.livejournal.com]

One thought would be to try having a main character who is significantly different to your normal choice -  I found trying to make a leading lady convincing quite hard last year.

You could go with a cultural/religious shift, a different gender, or even a significant mental or physical disability of some type.  The challenge is to make your story and character convincing and apparent, while not feeling forced.