I could also call this post pushing the envelope. Or being crazy. Being original, being different, how to make your work stand out. I’m a great admirer of ideas that are just so wild, so unbelievable, that I have to step back and wonder how the author thought of it. I wonder if some authors have a natural talent for coming up with the outrageous — and then making me believe it. I wish I could do that. I have to work at it.
Several years ago, I came across guidelines for a theme anthology that sounded so cool: All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories. I decided I really wanted to write a story for it. I wanted it to be big and cool and fun. Because dude, zeppelins! But this also came along at pretty much the lowest emotional point in my writing career to date. I had never sold a story to a theme anthology. I decided I was terrible at writing about themes. I just couldn’t come up with any good ideas. I spoke to one of the editors about this. He told me, “Don’t go with your first idea, or your second idea. Go with your fifteenth or seventeenth idea.” Here’s why: your first few ideas are probably going to be the same ideas that lots of other people come up with. Those are the ideas floating in the general cultural awareness. Zeppelins! Hindenburg! Steampunk! Those are the obvious ones. So you have to dig deeper.
The next day, I was at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum (this was all taking place at the World Fantasy Convention in Washington, D.C.), thinking about what I could do for the zeppelin anthology, and saw a display of pressure and space suits. And I had a revelation. The guidelines for the anthology didn’t say the story had to be about zeppelins, it had to be about lighter-than-air craft. The display of pressure suits reminded me of my favorite story from aerospace history: the record-breaking parachute jump of Captain Joseph Kittinger from 102,000 thousand feet. From a helium weather balloon, a lighter-than-air craft. I decided I would write about Project Excelsior, and I could almost guarantee that no one else would think of that idea. My story would be fresh, original, and very cool. My story, “This is the Highest Step in the World,” sold to the anthology, and I couldn’t have been more pleased.
This is just one way of pushing the envelope. This also works with plot. When you’re trying to figure out what happens next in the story, don’t go with your first impulse, your first idea. Because that’s the idea that’s on the surface of your brain, that’s been absorbed from everything else you’ve read and seen in movies and on TV. That’s the idea that’s going to be floating in everyone’s forebrain, and there’s a chance it’s going to end up seeming cliche and familiar. So go farther. What else could happen? Then, what else? What’s the strangest thing that could happen next? The silliest? The most tragic? What could happen that would actually subvert some of those familiar tropes? What if your heroine’s love interest isn’t the obvious alpha male? What if the climax of the story isn’t a big fight scene or courtroom scene, but something else?
This is where brainstorming can be an author’s most useful tool. You may come up with 10 ridiculous ideas for every usable one. But then you may take a second look at one of those ridiculous ideas and decide it isn’t so ridiculous. It’s outrageous, maybe. But it may also be the thing that really puts zing in your story and makes it stand out.
Which brings me to my voice. I have a little voice in my head that I suspect comes from the same place as the voice that tells me not to put my elbows on the table and not to swear in front of my parents. The polite voice, the conventional voice. When I’m writing, coming up with a new plot twist or idea, this voice will say things like, “Oh, you can’t possibly do that, it’s too outrageous, no one will believe that, it’s too weird.”
When I hear that voice, I know I’m definitely on the right track, and I should definitely use that idea. The first time I noticed that voice? When I decided to name my werewolf main character Kitty, and the voice said, “Oh, you’ll never get away with that. It’s outrageous.” But how could not go with the outrageous? I did, and it worked.
Be outrageous. Use the seventeenth idea instead of the first. Don’t be afraid of going big.
