

“Where do you get your ideas?” by Charles Stross - zzkt
http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=24831

======
DarkShikari
I've found that writing is a lot like programming.

For a skilled programmer, programming is easy. Designing a complex system
might be hard, understanding complex programs may be hard, and designing
algorithms may be hard, but the actual act of putting the concepts into code
should be pretty easy.

For a skilled writer, writing is easy. Designing a complex, believable plot,
characters the reader can empathize with, a detailed universe, and so forth,
can be quite hard, but the actual act of putting it onto paper is easy. Of
course, as any good writer will tell you, once you've written it down, there
are another hundred revisions to go before it's actually ready, a dozen of
which will involve a complete rewrite. So you have to be able to put thoughts
to paper quickly. Also, at least personally, I've found that I have a short
attention span with regards to writing: there's a window of a few hours
between when I have an idea and when my mind wants to throw it away, and I
have to get something passable written in that time.

When I get an idea for a short story I can often write out 5000 words in a
couple of hours. But going from that basket of words spurt out at 3:00 AM to a
publishable story would take far, far, longer.

One interesting bit of advice I've heard is that aspiring authors should start
with fanfiction--because that allows them to work in an existing detailed
universe with existing characters. This lets them get practice _making writing
easy_ so that when it comes to actually creating a setting from scratch, they
don't have to worry about writing it down. This is much like programming--by
the time you're doing serious work, it's expected that coding itself is
second-nature to you.

Also, a good read for any HN user interested in writing (especially Sci-
Fi/Fantasy) is the classic Turkey City Lexicon:

<http://www.sfwa.org/writing/turkeycity.html>

~~~
randallsquared
_as any good writer will tell you, once you've written it down, there are
another hundred revisions to go before it's actually ready_

Not necessarily. Some writers write publishable first drafts, at least some of
the time. Heinlein famously started out thinking that rewrites weren't worth
his time (though he still did some on at least some stories).

~~~
tricky
There is a mention of this in "On Writing Well" where Zinsser tells a story
about speaking at a conference along side an author who was able to write
publishable first drafts.

Sure, they're out there, but the skill is extremely rare.

~~~
wallflower
> Practice writing. Write every day. If you are a top-notch computer
> scientist, you probably read technical papers nearly every day. You are a
> writer too, so practice.

<http://www.dreamsongs.com/RPGWritingBroadside.html>

------
cturner

        Ideas, hah. The real challenge in this line of work is
        being able to weed the productive ones from the chaff, to
        decide which you’re going to spend the next six to nine
        months turning into something that people will pay for.
    

It's so true. I remember hearing about both Buffy and Heroes, "how can this
not be completely and utterly rubbish" and yet they turned out amazing (well -
one series of Heroes, at least). The pitch for Lost is: a bunch of damaged
goods people crash on an island. As time goes by we learn more about them via
flashback. Weird stuff happens.

------
jokermatt999
I find this post some what interesting, but I'm disappointed he didn't go more
into depth on specific examples of what inspired him. I've been reading
Accelerando (<http://www.accelerando.org/> It is quite nicely free, and I
highly recommend it), and I've been fascinated by how many ideas he managed to
cram into there. It's an excellent book, but it's so dense with ideas I find
myself only able to read it in short bursts so I can wrap my head around some
of the ideas it discusses.

~~~
ph0rque
Reading Accelerando was like taking drugs for me... I had a buzz that lasted
about a week after I was done.

------
eli
Ze Frank on the subject:
<http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/07/071106.html> (sorta)

------
russell
OK Hackers it's our responsibility to inspire Charlie. He said so. I
personally liked book 2 of the Merchant Princes and Accelerando, but that's
not really inspiration.

I recommend his blog <http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/index.html>
because of the discussions of ideas.

------
zandorg
I find the machine you use dictates your writing habits. I've used many
different computers/keyboards over the years, and I find it helps.

------
ableal
The canonical SF answer is "Mail order from Schenectady, New York", not
Poughkeepsie. Stross also got the author of the quip wrong, but I can't get my
memory to produce the right one (I saw it in print many moons ago).

P.S. Seems Stross was right about the source. I remembered Barry B. Longyear's
It Came from Schenectady. He explains:

<http://www.sff.net/people/bblongyear/ItSchenectady.html>

<http://www.sff.net/people/bblongyear/ICFSFF.html>

