THE ORIGINAL IDEA
by Bob Mayer

Bob Mayer writes science and action thrillers under his own name and the pen names Greg Donegan, Robert Doherty, Joe Dalton and Bob McGuire. He has over two million books in print and is published in ten foreign countries. Area 51: The Mission was a USA Today Bestseller.

The Original Idea is an excerpt from Bob's The Fiction Writers Toolkit -- You can visit Bob Mayer on the Internet at Bob Mayer

 

The original idea is the foundation of your novel. When I say idea, I don't necessarily mean the theme, although it could be. Or the most important incident, although it could be. It can be a setting. When I say idea, I mean the first idea you had that was the seed of your novel. All else can change, but the idea cant. It might be a place; a person; an event; a moral; whatever. But you did have it before you began writing and you must remember it as you write. If you don't, your story and style will suffer terribly. You should be able to tell your idea in one sentence. And repeat it to yourself every morning when you wake up and prior to writing. Knowing it will keep you on track.

A TEST: Write down the original idea for your book in one sentence. OK, maybe two. If you can't do it, then you need to backtrack through your thought processes and find it, because you had to have had it. Everything starts from something.

So, the above isn't very clear? OK. In one of my early novels, the original idea was an action: What if Special Forces soldiers had to destroy an enemy pipeline? That's it for Dragon Sim-13. Not very elaborate, you say. True. Not exactly a great moral theme. Right. But with that original idea there was a lot I could do and eventually had to do. I had to change the target country after the first draft. But that was OK because I still had the original idea. I had to change characters, but that was fine too, because it didn't change my original idea. I had to change the
reason why they were attacking a pipeline, but again, OK-dokey because-- you got it-- the original idea was the same.

The author I mentioned earlier who received the two million dollar advance for his first novel said it all began with an idea: What if a man sitting in a Paris Cafe sees someone who had played a significant role in his earlier life but he hadn't seen in 20 years?

Think of all the possibilities that simple idea allows, but also think of the start point it gives you. He doesn't say who it was the man sees; he doesn't even say why the man is in Paris in the first place; heck, he doesn't even say who the man is-- is he a spy? A tourist? You will have plenty of latitude after you come up with your original idea; in fact, I always find the finished manuscript turns out to be quite different from what I had originally envisioned, but one thing is always true-- that original idea is still there at the end. For my first original idea, I made it as simple as possible for me to write the story because when I was in the Special Forces my A-Team had run a similar mission on a pipeline. Since I had a good idea what would happen in the story, I could concentrate on the actual writing of the novel.
And it needed every bit of concentration and even then was barely readable. I've sat in graduate literature classes and heard students say: "The author had to have a moral point in mind when they wrote that book." I'm afraid I disagree with that. Many authors do. Some authors, though, write simply to tell a story started by that original idea, which indeed might be a moral point, but sometimes is a story that they wanted to tell and the theme developed subsequently. I've seen in the library several books about Stephen King's novels, where the authors dissect his books and look for various images, themes, etc. etc. I can just picture King lying in bed with his wife reading passages out of these books and having a hoot at what these people said he was trying to do, when he himself knows what he was really doing. Which was usually just trying to tell a story.

A moral or theme does always appears in a book by the time it is done. Go back to what I said about the subconscious. No matter what expectations or thoughts an author has when they start writing, a lot more appears in the manuscript than they consciously expected. Now, after you have that original idea you should spend a lot of time wrestling with it and develop some feelings and thoughts about it. I now try to look at my main characters and determine what will happen to them emotionally, physically and spiritually as they go through the story. Who are they at the beginning of the story and who are they at the end?

This is an example of being aware of what you are doing. I said above that not all authors have a conscious theme when they write a novel, but experience has taught me that it is better to have your theme in your conscious mind before you start writing. It might not be your original idea, but it will definitely affect your characters and story. The reason it is important to have a theme in mind is because people want to care about what they read and the characters. If there is some moral or emotional relevance to the story they read, they will become more involved in the story and enjoy it more. Even if the reader doesn't consciously see it either.

Using "What if" can be very helpful to clarify your original idea, and also-- as we will see later-- when you try to write your cover letter and synopsis for submission. "What if a housewife realizes her life is empty and decides to change it?" Not very specific you might argue, but the specifics will come out later. You have the original idea that will allow you to drive from a start to a finish. John Saul at the Maui Writers Retreat runs a seminar called What if? where he has writers put their one sentence up on butcher paper and analyzes it. Make sure every word in the sentence means something. For example: What if Mary has to stop a band of terrorists. Whats wrong with this? What does Mary mean? How about a housewife? Stop a band of terrorists from what? How about assassinating the president? This gives us: What if a housewife has to stop a band of terrorists from assassinating the President. The second what if is better than the first one.

Sometimes the original idea could even be a way to tell a story, rather than the story itself. Telling the same story from two different perspectives, usually presents two different stories. For example, an original idea is What if a person with limited mental capacity interacts with the world? In the film A Dangerous Woman(films work the same way.) shows normal, everyday life with the main character being a such a woman who always tells the truth. Boy, you want to talk about someone who is dangerous. Think about it. The film is an excellent portrayal of our society, but the original idea was the different perspective. What was Forrest Gump about? Wasn't it the main character's perspective that made the story, rather than the actual events? Whenever I watch a film or video I try to figure out what the original idea the first screenwriter had. For example, in the movie True Romance written by Quinten Torrentino, there is a scene at the end where there are four groups of people in a room all pointing guns at each other in a classic Mexican stand-off. Rewatching the film, I can see the entire movie driving to that one climactic scene in the mind of the writer. In an interview, Torrentino said that was the original idea-- he didnt know who the people with the guns were; where the room was; why they were in the room; whether it was the beginning, end or middle of the movie; what the result of this stand-off would be; etc. etc.-- he just had this vision to start with.