Progression of Story Ideas & Concepts

[Deleted member 76176]

So when I was looking through my hoard of story ideas, I noticed how different they had become over time. A few years ago, back when I was still into action fantasies, I had a brilliant universe in mind that I wanted to write once I had writing experience. But if I see this in today's light, I wince every time I read it because, well, "wow! That's an amalgamation of ideas, some stolen, that doesn't tell anything unique about it!"
Cringe, to say the least. Some of them were almost fanfiction based on novels I'd read, though some are still worth pursuing.

The other intriguing thing I observed was the evolution of story themes. These days, when ideas emerge, one theme I seem to emphasize is the sensation of growth with hint of secrets. And the events and characters are drawn from my personal irl experiences unlike before. It's not a self-insert, however.

So let me ask you this: do you jot down your story ideas in a journal or something similar? If so, how have they changed over time?

 

[georgelee5786]

I did. I even wrote out a prologue for the original story. It was an isekai originally. The current version cut out almost the entire original cast or remade them, changed the plot, changed the villain, and generally just sucks less. The biggest change to the plot was that the MC was born the son of the Emperor rather than son of a lord and become Emperor.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

Me Planning Out My Story:

 

[Kureous]

So when I was looking through my hoard of story ideas, I noticed how different they had become over time. A few years ago, back when I was still into action fantasies, I had a brilliant universe in mind that I wanted to write once I had writing experience. But if I see this in today's light, I wince every time I read it because, well, "wow! That's an amalgamation of ideas, some stolen, that's doesn't tell anything unique about it!"
Cringe, to say the least. Some of them were almost fanfiction based on novels I'd read, though some are still worth pursuing.

The other intriguing thing I observed was the progression of story themes. These days, when ideas emerge, one theme I seem to emphasize is the sensation of growth with hint of secrets. And the events and characters are drawn from my personal irl experiences unlike before. It's not a self-insert, however.

So let me ask you this: do you jot down your story ideas in a journal or something similar? If so, how have they changed over time?

I keep everything in my head until I write...

 

[J_Chemist]

I follow the same steps that I take when I design a game. I start with a high concept, develop a Plan of Action and an Outline, then I go into the finer details usually of what I want the story to be. I outline the start and the end, and then I write a prologue chapter.

I have around 30 different books like this, unwritten and in the concept stage, all I could probably develop into actual stories/books if I found the motivation to do so, but none of them are actually fun enough to write to the level that my current series is.

My 10+ year older stories are very heavily Mecha-based, but I lacked the mechanical knowledge required to properly write them. I gradually shifted to war-focused novels with military/PMC elements, then further shifted to fantasy based stories with combat and broad world building. I still enjoy the mil-sim elements and find it easy to insert IRL knowledge but it's honestly boring when it's your job, too.

I tried Rom-Coms like 3 times but their such a slow paced story and very intricate when it comes to the Characters, so I find them difficult to really write out. I do want to write at least one, though. Maybe in the near future. I will forever blame Sailus for it because he mentioned it once and now the idea is in my head.

My bread and butter has always been action scenes and violence focused stories, so I've kept that general theme in all of my books but as I grew up, the surrounding themes like romance, world building, adventuring, and even my characters matured and developed.

 

[l8rose]

For the most part, my method of writing and planning has remained the same. I don't generally plot out my entire story, just the key points I need to make and elaborating as things go on. Some of it changes based on readers' responses while other things are legit shower thoughts that make things so much better.

I used to just use microsoft notepad (and excel briefly) but I use plottr now. It makes it a lot easier for me to keep track instead of trying to scroll through lines and lines of notes. Even the notes I write in that gets changed a bit but at least it's a framework I have to build off of.

 

[Deleted member 76176]

I follow the same steps that I take when I design a game. I start with a high concept, develop a Plan of Action and an Outline, then I go into the finer details usually of what I want the story to be. I outline the start and the end, and then I write a prologue chapter.

I have around 30 different books like this, unwritten and in the concept stage, all I could probably develop into actual stories/books if I found the motivation to do so, but none of them are actually fun enough to write to the level that my current series is.

My 10+ year older stories are very heavily Mecha-based, but I lacked the mechanical knowledge required to properly write them. I gradually shifted to war-focused novels with military/PMC elements, then further shifted to fantasy based stories with combat and broad world building. I still enjoy the mil-sim elements and find it easy to insert IRL knowledge but it's honestly boring when it's your job, too.

I tried Rom-Coms like 3 times but their such a slow paced story and very intricate when it comes to the Characters, so I find them difficult to really write out. I do want to write at least one, though. Maybe in the near future. I will forever blame Sailus for it because he mentioned it once and now the idea is in my head.

My bread and butter has always been action scenes and violence focused stories, so I've kept that general theme in all of my books but as I grew up, the surrounding themes like romance, world building, adventuring, and even my characters matured and developed.

Really fascinating!

 

[Deleted member 1244]

So let me ask you this: do you jot down your story ideas in a journal or something similar? If so, how have they changed over time?

Yeah,
Used to just have a pocket size book,

Use phone now and beam it into Google drive

Change? Nah, notes are just as mad yesterday day as they are 8 years ago.

Quote:"what if one of the lovers, Romeo or Juliette survives the ending? BUT! They are now undead? Frankie? Vampie? Or zombie?"

Presumably I meant Frankenstein's monster.

 

[LilRora]

I don't write most of my ideas down in any detail, but I did start some and I remember a lot of them. Recently I generally write down some notes on Trello if I have an idea, or on my phone.

I think one thing that changed the most for me is the scale. At first, I wanted to make something grand and really long, and I still somewhat do, but not nearly to that degree. Now my stories and ideas are much more local, so even if they are placed in a huge, expansive world, my characters are smaller (or at least start out smaller) and are primarily concerned with what's happening close to them for at least over half of the story.

Also, in terms of genres, for me it was more or less fantasy -> sci-fi -> cultivation -> high fantasy -> supernatural, and I'm still in the supernatural. Aaand they were progressively getting more and more original, which is probably expected.

What hasn't changed much are probably my character designs. I like monsters and I like cute girls, and sometimes I combine those.

 

[MatchaChocolate69]

When I'm not too lazy, I open a notepad on my computer and jot down the ideas swirling in my head, but often they're so condensed that they reduce to brief sentences or words. Reading them after some time doesn't help much, in fact.
I enjoy doing it, though, trying to figure out what the heck I meant. A kind of enigma with myself.

Example:
Military Correctional Institute

Oreum - Radioactive mineral from the meteorite

Generally, I tend to keep everything in my head, but I'd prefer to be more organized in this regard.
Laziness is a bad flaw. I imagine there's also a circle of hell for the lazy.

 

[MajorKerina]

One thing I try to keep in mind whenever I write used to have one idea which stays the same through all drafts. Things can still evolve and good writing is where you don't know where it's going to go on any given day but you're willing to think on your feet and fuse things together so that they look like you intended them that way all along. My big series The Cerberus Saga (just over 1 million words on here). Had points of change and points of solidity for each installment.

I always knew there was a company that does sketchy things throughout the multiverse. Then I decided well what if the ones we know are just a shell for something deeper and then where does that lead. Basically it's asking questions of your story and not leaving anything certain for sure unless it's a few things you have absolutely decided and for me it's often characterization. What I hate is where a character is retconned as being secretly good or secretly evil or something like that. Installments take place all over a timeline and the surprise for exactly when is something I've had fun with because there are stories that take place way earlier than they may seem and they're like oh my gosh that character is the character who is one day going to become so-and-so. Filling in those gaps in clever ways. And each story has a particular theme like the first one was all about sacrifice with elements of love. The second one I knew the guiding theme was going to be FAMILY. Then the third one was humanity versus monsters. The fourth one was about memory. The fifth one was about beginnings. And the sixth one is kind of a mash up of all of those as like a concluding piece for the set of stories.

I think I really love is that I took something dumb and made it epic. Husband forgets all the time to leave the toilet seat down for his wife becomes an epic story. Kid finds a weird rock on vacation. Guy drives a volleyball team at night. College student finds a weird ray gun that alters reality. Three friends go on vacation to another universe. Six people who barely know each other go to a creepy supernatural lake.

My problem coming up is that I've decided to create sequels to each story and that's gonna be a lot of lore I have to remember for each so I need to figure out a way that the story is basically reset without it being reset so it's easier for me and there's a couple multi-verse tricks here and there but mostly little time skips.

my big problem is my muse is very inconsistent about when they decide to give me really cool stuff to work with. Typically it'll just be like well and we're gonna go to the truckstop and we're gonna talk and shit I don't know something will happen. And I have to work with that and figure out based on my own effort rather than some inspiring scene delivered from the heavens.

Having a plan helps but having a sense of how to throw the characters against each other is the best.

 

[TsumiHokiro]

Sometimes I'll write a first draft of the idea, others I'll draw a mind map linking different concepts, mostly I keep them inside my head maturing until they become something worthy of doing the other two. I'll revisit even things I have already "penned" and work on again.

 

[Sylver]

I don't write down my ideas, nor do I outline them for the most part. I have the ideas in mind, and I know the beginning and end of the story. The adventure is part of the excitement for me, getting to explore what happens along with my readers (in theory)!

I do, however, write down chapter outlines. There is a difference between them, because it is not uncommon for me to change the direction of the chapter based on new ideas that come through.