The idea (almost) doesn’t matter.

I’m starting to think of writing being like starting a business: the (initial) idea isn’t important, but the execution is.

I’ve run a business before. I started, grew, and sold a consumer electronics company. I know what the value of an idea is – precisely $0. I also know the value of an idea brought to life, which is significantly higher.

For anyone that’s business-minded, like me, look at it this way – the product cycle of a story is an extremely time-condensed (if it’s a short story) version of the product cycle of starting a company.

1. The idea is formed
2. You start implementing the idea
3. You change your approach (pivot) based on contact between the idea and early users (in this case, you)
4. Iterate, iterate, iterate
5. Release the final product
6. Get feedback
7. Implement feedback on the next product

If you think about it this way, whatever idea you have right now does not matter.

It doesn’t matter because it’ll change as you write it. It doesn’t matter because the next story will be better. It doesn’t matter because (ideally) a year from now you’ll look back and think how embarrassingly bad it was anyway, compared to what you’re writing now.

I just wrote a story that had a weird premise (spoilers ahead). A woman is choosing between two men vying for her affection. She makes them dance off, picks a guy, and then proceeds to brutally decapitate and consume him. Why? She’s following the mating rituals of a praying mantis, because her genes are spliced with one.

Did the idea start off this way? Nope. It started as a question. “What if a man had to choose between two women, and the other one suffered a horrific fate?”.

Obviously, the idea evolved. As I was writing it, I happened to see a praying mantis on TV. I thought about writing the story from the point of view of a praying mantis, revealing it as a twist at the end. With mantises, the woman is the one choosing a mate. So, I re-wrote the story from the woman’s point of view.

Then I thought – “why not make it an actual woman choosing between human males, but with a mantis-like process, and the whole thing is a gene-splicing experiment?”. Thus, the story idea was fleshed out and finalized. It practically wrote itself from that point.

The lesson here is, again, the initial idea does NOT matter. I changed the story twice before I finalized it.

However, to get there, you have to actually start. Pick an idea, no matter how bad, and start writing about it. I guarantee a better idea will come along on the way.

I’m going to be posting a weekly set of story ideas. Hopefully these will be helpful to anyone who is stuck at the starting line.