No Such Thing as an Original Idea

The Six Neighborhoods of Tropes *

Science Fiction is a genre that puts a premium the Original Idea, but I think its worth clarifying what exactly that is, especially for writers.

Often, after I get a kernel of an idea, I go over to TV Tropes to see how it's been handled in other places. If you don't know, TV Tropes is a massive wiki that catalogs storytelling conventions and devices across all sorts of creative and popular media. But be careful! It's dangerous territory. Every article links to several others, creating a maze more labyrinthine than anything Daedalus could have imagined. Seriously, that picture on the top is a map of TV Tropes links. According to Uther Dean,
TV Tropes will Ruin Your Life. So, consider yourself warned.

I don't shy away from this kind of thematic research, because, as Solomon said:  

That which has been is what will be,
That which is done is what will be done,
And there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9 NKJV

And I find this comforting.

When I'm working up a new idea I find it useful to see the dozens, sometimes hundreds, of approaches to an idea (trope) that I'm working with. I'm not there to steal, though there is nothing wrong with stealing if you do it right. Austin Kleon has written a whole book about how to Steal Like an Artist.

by Austin Kleon

And filmmaker, Jim Jarmusch explains it much better than I can:

"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.”"

No matter what you're creating, it's not about coming up with an Original Idea, because it's not really about the idea at all. It's about the idea + you.

Take any old idea that's been expressed a million times over and dig deep inside yourself, find and reveal your own personal, human experience of it, and people will call it "original."

Jean-Luc Godard

* In the information is beautiful, but the subject tangential to this post category: check out this multi-part study about the nature of information on the Internet, using TV Tropes as its model. Here's the opening quote:

"HP Lovecraft popularized a certain type of malevolent force, something so massive and powerful and unconcerned and out-of-scale with humanity that we could not even understand the whole of it.  Instead, his characters would–before inevitably going mad–only experience a small portion of these beings, typically some kind of horrid extrusion into our reality.  There is much that these Eldritch Abominations have in common with the kind of massively peer-produced content that floats like icebergs in the Internet."  

Prompt Me!

I am girding myself for my September folly of writing a Story A Day. I have been wanting to write more flash and this meshes perfectly with my flash fiction tutorial with Cat Rambo (or hopefully it will!). I have a few ideas waiting in the wings. I'm really not worried about coming up with ideas as they do seem to multiply the more I write. That said I will not risk being unprepared on some September day when life is crazy and I feel like throwing in the towel. Here are some of the things I use in general and will have on hand next month.

The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field. Each short chapter is by a different flash fiction writer or editor. One of the strengths of this book is that it presents a multitude of approaches to thinking about and writing flash fiction. Every chapter has a writing prompt at the end.


I've always been fascinated by the Tarot and find the cards particularly well suited to fantasy ideas. Tarot for Writers is a fun and useful book for working with the deck for story-making. If you want to delve deeper into the Tarot Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Book of Tarot by Rachel Pollack is one of the best


Every weekend io9 posts its Concept Art Writing Prompt, which is both visual and genre friendly. Also, I have several camera apps loaded onto my iPod, which have been woefully underutilized. I will be taking more pictures and using at least a couple for prompts. If I get a good story out of it I'll have an illustration built in.

Brainstormer is a beautiful little app and I've been using it for a while. Mostly when I have a random 10 or 15 minutes to write but am away from my desk and computer. I'll pull this up, give the iPod a shake, pull out my pen and journal and go from there.

Rory's Story Cubes is marketed as a game for kids. I have it as an iPod app and have played it with my girls. At first I found the images a little limiting but that only made me realize that I shouldn't be quite so literal. Using it as directed is a good way to practice coming up with beginnings, middles, and endings.

Poetry Spinner I think I've made my feelings about poetry clear. This app is inspirational and you should have it on general principles. You never know when you'll get stuck in the doctor's office waiting room or at the bus stop. For writing, I find a good poem has so much going on that it can suggest any number of stories and/or characters.

TV Tropes   Pick two or three random tropes and join them in a story. Beware the site is labyrinthine and oh so inviting. Roll out some string on your way in so that you can find your way out with enough time to write. Oh, they have an app too.


There are quite a few writing idea generators, but my favorite is 7th Sanctum, both for it's ample list of generators and for its sense of whimsy. Their newest generator is a SF Tarot card generator. With a couple clicks I got: Six of Trains, The Artificer of Space Stations, Eight of Singularities, The Android of Cogs. The story just about writes itself!

Chaotic Shiny is new to me but I can't wait to explore their categories such as: culture, people, places, names, accessories, evil, plot/writing, and silly.

Creative Writing Prompts.com also has a lot of material and I like how you can scroll over the number blocks like your playing an enormous game of concentration.

Story A Day posts prompts year round every Wednesday called "Write on Wednesday." During story challenge months she promises to post a prompt every day. I've signed up for them and will see how they are.

I think I'm ready. September is just around the corner. Wish me luck!

Fairview 619

My Story Fairview 619 is now up at Revolution SF, which is exciting as it's a great site with lots of interesting things to read.  

With this story, I wanted to take a well-worn science fiction trope and see if I could make it new again. So of course I went to TV Tropes and looked up their brain in a jar page. There are also some elements of the ghost in the machine and smart house. Oh, TV Tropes I could wander your corridors forever...

For me, so much of writing is about discovering new meaning in the familiar things that surround us. Taking something old e.g. received knowledge, cliches, tropes and trying to make it new again, forever changes how I think about whatever it was that I started out with.