So I’ve decided to start a new project, but this time, in an attempt to stick to the task and not abandon it in my cemetery of ideas, I will be posting blogs about my progress and the methods in which I work to keep myself inspired and spawn new ideas.

What with today’s pastiche climate, I’ve found original concepts are downright impossible to come by, and this is something that I struggle with constantly. Whenever I come up with an idea for a story, I would notice similarities to other works I had either read or seen in other media and this aspect can be very off putting and to be honest, downright depressing.

Pushing through that barrier is something needed to be done in order to actually put pen to paper and create something new. I had to get a couple of things through my skull. Firstly, I’m probably not going to come up with an original concept. Fine, I get that. There are millions of people with millions of ideas being generated a day, this is something I just have to get over. The internet, full of cats and porn as it may be, allows just about anyone to share their ideas and get something “out there” into the social medium.

Secondly, and this is more important, not every story will turn out the same. It’s the meat on the bones of a concept that will separate you from the rest. Find your decent concept, be original as you can, create an awesome story with the details you surround it with.

There is a lot to be seen in formulas for writing, for example: Boy meets girl, falls in love, she’s involved with someone else, crisis ensues, crisis is averted and they live happily ever after. I’m aware that this is very basic and cliché trope, but think of the hundreds upon thousands of books that follow a similar narrative. That’s not to say that these aren’t thrilling reads if that is your favoured type of story, but what I mean is that it’s the details, the path from A to B that you can run wild with, and shouldn’t let the fear of being unoriginal stop you from writing. This topic makes me think of the seven basic plots, but I think I’ll cover more ground in that in a later post!

So here I go, blank word document open, a butt load of tea ready and my ipad on repeat of that one song that inspired my prologue. Every now and then I may put up a snippet from this story and see what people think. If you like it, that’s great! If you don’t, even better. Tell me what you think I’ve done wrong in a constructive way and help me get better!