I have now cursed you with never having an excuse for bad ideas ever again.
You are welcome!
Simple Physical Ideas:
Birds.
Trees.
Carpentry.
Simple Abstract Ideas:
Happiness.
Pain.
Spin.
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» Ideation: A Guide To Making Good Ideas Out Of Nothing
This is the discussion related to the wiki page Ideation: A Guide To Making Good Ideas Out Of Nothing.
Ideas are important for everything.
Not just SCPs but tales, too.
(And GoI-formats.)
This is a very helpful guide.
Simple Physical Ideas:
Puppies
Petunias
Puddings
Simple Abstract Ideas:
Confusion
Transport
Afterlife
Compound Ideas:
Pudding Afterlife.
Transport Puppies.
Concrete Ideas:
The afterlife that puddings go to once eaten.
Puppies that are used as a system of mass transit.
Do not start writing until you have finished conceptual development.
How am I supposed to figure out what needs development until I start writing and encounter problems? That can be a tip, sure, but it's hardly an axiom.
This is how to expand based on the abstract intentions of an idea.
Use human universals.
So like, literally the lowest common denominator? That's how you write popular articles, not articles with literary merit — the most enthralling writing I've seen builds on particulars, which might not appeal to everyone, but it's a better path than "pain and loneliness are bad, upvotes to the right". Not to mention that there isn't actually much in the way of "human universals" as there are just particular cultural/class/etc. biases (and if you think you can reliably distinguish between the two, statistically, you almost definitely can't).
How do we construct a good idea?
From the ground up.
First, start with some simple ideas.
Now, combine one abstract and one physical idea.
This constructs a compound idea.
There's a plethora of ways to come up with SCP ideas, all of which can have advantages over this one. What about taking an emotion or a memorable experience and embedding that in an SCP? What about contributing to/expanding on site lore? What about playing with a trope? What about telling a story? What about exploring an intellectual concept? What about just plain weird creatures? I use my own SCPs because I know how they were written.
The technique you describe can work, but it's mostly good for establishing a lot of oddities on their own little islands — nothing really outstanding conceptually. Every one of the approaches I listed is, in my opinion, invaluable, and they deserve as much attention as your way of doing it. I would not want a wiki dominated, or even populated largely, by ideas produced with the approach suggested by this article. They get kinda samey after a while.
And since we're in the business of putting out axioms, here's one from me: Don't develop a concept or start writing until you feel attached to your idea. I can't tell you how many things I have developed, partially written, and scrapped because I was never really invested in what I was writing, and they fell flat or I ran out of steam. Telling people that they can make good ideas out of nothing sounds like a great way to induce burnout.
Also, let's see how many of these 'concrete ideas' in the comments section actually turn into articles. Just to figure out the wheat:chaff ratio.
if your reading this your gay
I would love to read an essay detailing your techniques.
However, I do not think they are distinct from mine.
What about taking an emotion or a memorable experience and embedding that in an SCP?
This is taking an abstract idea and applying it to a physical one.
What about contributing to/expanding on site lore?
This can be done as part of concrete conceptual development.
What about playing with a trope?
This can be done as abstract conceptual development.
What about telling a story?
Stories can emerge from idea development.
What about exploring an intellectual concept?
This is an extensively explored abstract idea.
What about just plain weird creatures?
This is an unusual physical idea.
This essay sits under very broad umbrellas. It uses the broadest of possible terms. I consider the content of this essay to be the boiling down of all of the techniques that you described into a single process, which is easier to succinctly communicate than a hundred different ones.
Of course, this can be implemented in a hundred different ways. But fundamentally, I consider them to be subsets of the broad techniques described here.
So like, literally the lowest common denominator? That's how you write popular articles, not articles with literary merit - the most enthralling writing I've seen builds on particulars
The very next section of the article describes expansion based on the physical form of an idea, which is designed to build on the particulars.
This essay sits under very broad umbrellas. It uses the broadest of possible terms. I consider the content of this essay to be the boiling down of all of the techniques that you described into a single process, which is easier to succinctly communicate than a hundred different ones.
Ugh. No. I start from all of these places that you say I'm getting to through this technique you're describing, and then fill out the particulars as I need them, including the combination of things that you list as -the- starting point. They are fundamentally different paths to getting and developing ideas, and every path has particular kinds of ideas that typify it.
No way of getting ideas is value-neutral, and we lose something by trying to collapse them all into one. Expressing other methods in terms of your own wouldn't actually prove anything even if you did it properly, because this isn't math.
Moreover, I object to making good ideas out of nothing. If you don't have an idea, don't write a damn SCP. This isn't a publishing house, and nobody here has a contract to poop out an article every so often. SCPs written for the sake of writing something are typically bad. I know this because I've spawned ideas and written articles for the sake of having something to post.
The very next section of the article describes expansion based on the physical form of an idea, which is designed to build on the particulars.
Taking a broadly relatable concept and elaborating upon a particular manifestation of it isn't really what I'm talking about. Better work comes when people take something they've actually experienced, with its details and nuances, as the basis for elaborating upon an idea. Of course, those experiences might be influenced by (or even largely characterized by) your "universals", but we're not here to reinvent the wheel. Everybody's had experiences that left some imprint on them, or even just stand out, and these are what they should use to write articles, not things that anybody could experience.
if your reading this your gay
Creation needs no purpose beyond the joy of seeing something exist which did not beforehand. I create things because I enjoy it; one of the greatest pleasures in my life is reinventing the wheel…or envisioning a world without wheels.
No way of getting ideas is value-neutral, and we lose something by trying to collapse them all into one. Expressing other methods in terms of your own wouldn't actually prove anything even if you did it properly, because this isn't math.
Speaking as someone who does this sort of thing for a living, combining and conflicting approaches is vital to the creative process. It is in fact math, and it's multiplication, not division. Nothing is lost by mixing methods; everything is gained.
Some ideas are found like driftwood, needing only slight reshaping to become beautiful.
Other ideas begin as standardized planks of dead lumber, and end as something unique.
Still others begin as seeds, and are lovingly grown into a pleasing form.
All, however, require the same thing: seeing the raw potential for creation in the materials you have on hand, and acting to shape that potential into something new.
I can't tell what you're trying to say here. Could you rephrase it?
if your reading this your gay
A map can show you many roads to the same place.
It can also show you new places you can take a familiar road to.
… yeah, no, my patience for this style of writing is at its limit. Hit me up when you feel like being direct and using fewer line breaks.
if your reading this your gay
I don't know why you're acting like the primary purpose of this essay is to generate idea when it clearly states multiple times that it's mostly concerned with refining them. Also, acting like you can't be "attached" to an idea that you sat down and deliberately generated/refined is fucking stupid.
Also also, yours and rando's techniques still boil down to the same basic principle: taking what's been done before and combining/tweaking it in new ways. Rando describes some of the ways you can do that in a very broad, modular way.
I think I'm more on the side of Scantron here.
This isn't a stance against the essay, necessarily, as I have a professional interest in more people engaging in metacognition. I'm also glad for any exploration of writing technique which might help new writers on the site, on the off chance they end up reading this (or other essays).
I just don't think that the methods described here align with my writing process in a useful way.
(Collapsing fit the folks who want to scroll down for word combos.)
Do I engage in narrative expansion and pruning? Absolutely. But do I think I'm at the point where I need to remind myself of how to do such things in explicit terms? Not really. I know I display some writer's hubris there, but that's what reviewers are for.
I'm not saying I'm Michelangelo and you're teaching me how to chisel, either, I'm saying I'm a passable writer and these are abstracted perhaps beyond usefulness. For example, combining physical and abstract concepts can generate ideas, but the only ideas I've had that are interesting enough to make it, both in terms of my caring enough to write then and others enjoying enough to upvote, come from experience and insight. These usually start with a vivid mental image or salient thought based on a random juxtaposition of multiple pieces of culture/knowledge/personal experience that pops into my head, as the human web-of-associatons memory system is wont to do. Then me trying to figure out how to turn it into a compelling story.
Can that action fit perfectly within your abstract framework? Sure, but it also fits perfectly into "lifting the fingers to press keys in sequence in a sandbox page." That doesn't mean the framework provides insight.
All that said, I think the only thing I entirely disagree with is ths:
Do not start writing until you have finished conceptual development
If I understand the essay, my methods of combining in new ideas and scrapping bad ones, often with feedback, are all covered by your methods, and I know you try to specify shortly after that the perfect is the enemy of the good, but this is a very forceful but also unfortunately vague statement. It's not really clear what you mean by "conceptual development," and if it's meant to be the whole process described by the essay, I would sure as shit never write anything.
I have the crummiest time coming up with ideas.
Let's give this a shot:
Water
Sunlight
Wall
Vexation
Somnolence
Synesthesia
Water Somnolence:
1) A lake that makes you want to fall asleep when you swim in it.
2) A sapient tributary that suffers from insomnia. (perhaps because of that incessantly babbling brook?)
Sunlight Synesthesia:
1) A vivid feeling of being slowly immersed in a viscous choral music caused by the sensation of sunlight on one's eyelids.
2) Candies that taste like sunlight.
Wall Vexation:
1) An unusually frustrating physical barrier.
2) A bizarre medical condition that makes you literally shit bricks when you worry excessively.
1) A lake that makes you want to fall asleep when you swim in it.
A way to expand upon the abstract intentions of this idea would be to focus on a fear of drowning - when you fall asleep in a lake, you're probably going to die.
I once wrote a scip about an abysmally deep lake inhabited by the living corpses of telepathic mutant children conceived by a comet that are inimical to all natural life and, having twisted their semi-dead bodies into frighteningly elongated and monstrous forms over centuries of pure rage, seek to drag as many living things as possible to the same agonizing half-death that they were sentenced to by their parents upon birth - but are only able to do so when they are temporarily freed from the unnaturally dark depths of the lake by the passing light of the comet that fathered them.
…
It didn't work out.
You should revisit that one some time. It has potential.
2) Candies that taste like sunlight.
"Marjory Stewart-Baxter, you taste like sunshine dust!" - Salad Fingers episode 2, "Friends"
I'll be real honest, I'm kind on the fence about this whole subject.
I'm from the school of thought that "concept-centric" writing doesn't really matter all that much. Don't get me wrong that killer concepts don't exist, but they absolutely pale in comparison to the context supporting them when the execution is on point.
This is exactly why I preach, "Bad ideas don't exist (and by extension, neither do good ones)" Both fall flat under the failure of poor execution regardless of the idea. This is a fundamental occurrence. An idea at face-value means next to nothing without the architecture of context supporting it.
Really the exercise of just making up concepts seems pointless to me when you could be working on the meat of what that idea means. This seems like the tail wagging the dog version of writing. Not to say that good conceptualization doesn't help or is not important at all, but the writing shouldn't be "concept-centric" which is what I see as a pitfall to new writers on almost a weekly basis.
Staff Hate Him!
Find out how 1 writer made all the ideas with one simple trick
This is the reason why we need a way to upvote comments.
Upvoted, but uneasily. I feel like this is a good way to generate good ideas (out of many, many different ways) but the article presents this method as the only way to get a good idea, discounting any other good ideas acquired through other means.
The way you presented things that are not at all universally true as being axiomatic in the beginning of the essay sapped it of any authority it might have had. You might not have tagged it "guide," but you're purporting to teach people something with this, and if you're going to do that you have a certain obligation to not lead the reader down the garden path.
The stylistic choices here also strike me more as being affected and fishing for meme status than they do as having a legitimate reason to exist. So rather than being put in the proper mental space to receive the message you're trying to get across, I'm instead rolling my eyes at a writer who is way too charmed by their own cleverness.
I'm not certain that there should be any sort of guide on how to come up with ideas. If there is to be one, I'm certain that this is not it.
I'm not certain that there should be any sort of guide on how to come up with ideas. If there is to be one, I'm certain that this is not it.
Yeah, I'm kind of getting this sort of vibe too. I definitely don't agree with this page being titled as "Guide".
Trust me, this guide nails everything you learn doing creative work as a career. It's all about following, as Kalinin put it, the garden path.
And that first section is 100% axiom. There is no such thing as perfect. That way lies madness; I've seen it happen to good artists and flat out break them. It's one of the single most important things anyone interested in seriously pursuing creative arts has to learn. Bad is unacceptable. Good is adequate. Perfection is impossible.1
Footnotes
1. You want proof, I'll point out the mistakes in the paintings of the great masters.
You want proof, I'll point out the mistakes in the paintings of the great masters.
I wouldn't mind you showing me a few of those, actually.
And that first section is 100% axiom
Do not start writing until you have finished conceptual development.
Right off the bat, no. I can't claim as you do to be in a career based on creative output1, but strictly from my experience writing on the wiki, there have been many occasions where a piece has developed as I write it. Sometimes, after you get words down and the form of something emerges, you change your mind. Ideas get rearranged, concepts evolve, the piece changes as you write it.
Maybe this isn't true for many other people. But it's been true for me, and I feel comfortable enough with my body of work at this point that I can say that it's been one of many different ways to do something successfully. So as an axiom? No. This is far from universally true.
Do not assume that your idea is finished.
Your idea has to be finished at some point. Otherwise you don't stop. This depends heavily on what you and I and everyone else considers to be "finished," which is a philosophical concept that we can talk at great length about. In my view, perfection does not equal completeness does not equal quality does not equal good. There's plenty of room to disagree on that. There isn't solid ground to pick one specific interpretation of this question and declare it to be absolute.
There is no such thing as a finished idea.
See above.
To pursue the total completion and perfection of ideas is madness.
Without a definition of terms, this is a useless statement. You can't proclaim truths in the manner that the author is doing without putting in the work. Your life experience may present many affirming examples. But that's not the same as proving it. And certainly not the same as excluding all other possible interpretations.
Once you understand the process, you will never run out of ideas.
I could continue poking holes throughout this section, but this the culmination of my issues with this essay. It's purporting a universality that doesn't exist, and it's specifically promising readers a specific result that it has no right to claim. "Do this, and you'll never run out of ideas"? That's a hell of a claim that I don't see being backed up in any discernible manner.
I wouldn't mind this piece nearly as much if it were offering one possible path to whatever it is that Randomini is claiming to offer. To present it as universal truth sticks in my craw the same way that any other falsehood sticks in my craw.
Footnotes
1. Though some would disagree with that definition
I can say with truth that I have been paid professional rates for my writing, and I definitely have published work that conceptually developed after I started writing it; I have an article that changed focus significantly after I sold it!
/forum/t-1951470/ideation:a-guide-to-making-good-ideas-out-of-nothing#post-
page revision: 1, last edited: 02 Apr 2021 15:16
