I’ve been writing this science fiction short story for a little while, now, and I think I’m about 3/4 finished with the puke draft*. I’ve been reading a lot of science fiction for fun, because that’s where my head is right now (Lightspeed Magazine and the Expanse series have been delightful companions, as was the most recent Twelve Tomorrows) but also for inspiration, because that’s where my head needs to be right now.
So when I’m not actively writing this story, or thinking about what I’m going to write next in it, my brain is kicking around lots of other ideas that I are interesting to me, like What if future humans built a ring around Earth, sort of like Ringworld but smaller, and the story was told from the point of view of the last generation to live on the planet? It turns out that this has already been done, which is both reassuring — Hey! My good idea was so good someone already did it! — and frustrating — Shit! My good idea was so good someone already did it!.
I have learned not to talk about things that are ideas, or share details of works in progress, because it’s a great way to bring the work to a screeching halt for me, but I have this idea for a short story (like, very short, just a couple thousand words) that I like so much, I have just decided right now in this very instant that I will not reveal what the idea is, and will instead write it out and make it a story.
So now this is a much shorter and less interesting post than I thought it was going to be when I started.
*The puke draft, as defined by my friend and mentor Amy Berg (who created both my role on Leverage and Eureka), is the draft you write first, where you just puke up everything onto the page, without stopping to fix stuff or redo stuff. I add to this the following: you go all the way through until the story is done, and then you can go back and start washing away the puke to leave behind the yummy undigested morsels of delicious story.
When it comes to stories sometimes it’s not about the idea but about the character and message. Pretty much every idea has been explored to some degree in some way, originality comes from how you explore the idea in your own unique way. Good luck.
I agree with the above comment. Just because someone else has already done the idea you thought of does not mean that they did it in the same way you imagined it. Write it anyway.
Beautiful ending to this post, very nicely done. 🙂 Are you going to share the new very short story here by any chance?
I haven’t decided where it’s going to go. I may submit it to a couple editors I like, and see if they’re interested in publishing it, or I may put it up as a pay-what-you-want thing. Either way, I’ll make sure anyone who wants to read it knows where to find it.
Wil, before L. Ron Hubbard founded Scientology he was a science fiction writer.
One short story of his that I remember was about a group of astronauts who land on what they believe to be an asteroid only to find out later that it was actually the body of a worm. Maybe a little like “Encounter At Far point” with the jelly fish-like creatures that Doppler Zorn imprisoned.
Hope you’re doing fine and having a nice evening.
That seems similar to Donald Wolheim’s short story “Umbriel” (1936), about the Uranus’ moon of the same name: “[Umbriel] is really a gigantic dead animal, who came to die in an orbit around Saturn. The protagonist, an astronaut, discovers huge worms appearing from the ground, and he concludes they are eating the flesh of the immense corpse. Before he leaves he realises the worms have metal collars, which mean there is a species of intelligent beings living in the interior of the corpse, and they are the worms’ masters.”
[Off-Topic] Do you have any plans to campaign for Bernie during these primaries? It would definitely help turn-out the young nerd vote.
I like Ms. Berg’s description – very apt! I recommend the writing method of NaNoWriMo (http://nanowrimo.org/) for getting the word vomit out. Definitely helps to be under time pressure while puking your manuscript. 😉
If you are captivated with the story and it inspires you – write it! Similar and equally great things occur in nature and in humanity all the time. Cubism was invented nearly simultaneously by two artists.
Something in the story will interest you and you’ll dive into it and pivot and all of a sudden the story will be about that thing or character, its history or future or the impact it had on that ‘other’ thing that just occurred to you as you were working through the plot.
You are the fertile verge, compadre, and the story is in there beckoning to you 🙂
Was it … Hemingway maybe? Someone asked him what made a writer great. He answered: “About six pages a day.”
This reminds me of the script I wrote for STNG (Star Trek was one of the few TV shows that would take scripts from the public). I had finished the script which involved Geordi getting duplicated via a transport malfunction (of course) and then a watched the current episode at the time where Riker was duplicated. Stomach fell. Anyway, in the end I was convinced mine was the better story, so I added it to the pile. I did learn a lot about writing TV screenplays, but not sure that will ever come in handy again.
Did NaNoWriMo this year, and still left with a partial story. Every word counts towards the final story.
That “puke draft” analogy is… disgusting. And hilarious. But mostly disgusting 😀
What an evocative and disturbing idea… Puke draft. Then wash away the gunk… Saving the best of what is essentially nasty… Literally laughed aloud. As for the good idea having been done once already, so what your idea and story is still your own, finish it out anyway is my unrequested advise.
As a side note just wanted to say I really enjoyed the paranoia game video on YouTube. You are awesome Wil, please never stop making gaming appearances, whether with G&S, or independantly.
You inspire me as a person, both in your professional life and what you share of your personal life. Having grown up with Wesley, and now acquainting myself with Wil, I am proud to be a minor league fanboy. Enough gushing for now, have a stupendous day/night (as the case may be).
Anne Lamott calls this the “shitty first draft.” “Puke draft” works too!
And Debbie beat me to the punch about AL’s shitty first draft concept. Dang. 🙂
Yes indeed, never share a story idea. I see dolts do it in online writing forums a lot, under the guise of asking “is this a good plot?” I always think, “Way to give away your idea, boss.” And yes, it’s frustrating and disappointing to realize an idea has already been done. But it happens, unless you have the time to read every book ever written.
Writing about writing is ironically one of the fastest ways to stop writing anything else. It’s a lesson I’ve just relearned in the past couple weeks when working on building the blog haulted all progress on my current puke draft as you call it. The best of luck writing your latest idea.
As I’ve seen so many others say it in writing – write it anyway. Yeah, someone’s done it before. So what? The basic story? Sure. The take on it? Not so much. A perfect example is Spider Robinson’s “Star Dance” trilogy. The last book in the series is basically Arthur C. Clarke’s “Childhood’s End”. But the entire feel of Robinson’s is 180 degrees from Clarke. Yeah, someone might have written your idea. But did they write it in your voice, so to speak? Does reading their version shut down that voice that says “Someone should …” because they did exactly what you would have? If the answer is no, then write your version.
And to think I originally started to write this comment to agree with the first draft description of ‘puke version’…laugh
I agree, Keith. I had a hard time writing my book before I read a blog post by Rachel Aaron – she said basically the same thing you did. Doesn’t matter if you came up with a plot you love and then discovered there were three other books out there with the same basic plot – they weren’t written by YOU. They won’t have the same characters, voice, or plot twists, and probably won’t have the same ending you will give yours, so write it anyway. I wrote like crazy after that. 🙂
Generally I find that talking about my writing is usually instadeath for my inspiration, too. The only exception is when I’m actually cowriting something with someone, in which case talking about it gains this quality of the me and my co-author constantly egging each other on to make it funnier and more ridiculous. That’s how we wound up deciding the supervillain school in our book series we’re working on has laser crabs defending the moat.
But otherwise, usually suppressing the urge to talk about it makes you focus on putting it in a form where people can read it.
There seems to be this limitation that is somewhat unique to scifi/fantasy, and that is that an idea can only be used once.
Consider this:
You want to write a romance story, about a girl who meets a guy, but then that guy doesn’t seem interested, and then he is so it’s all OK, but then the girl discovers that maybe she isn’t, but then she is?
Go for it.
Doesn’t matter that it’s been done before, just do it.
versus
You want to write a sci fi story where this strange thing happens, and some people react to it?
Woah there buddy. That’s kinda similar to THIS story over here where some other strange thing happened and people react to it. Sure the strange thing is different, and the reaction is REALLY different, but you better think of something else cos that’s not original.
People seem to dismiss that sci fi, good sci fi in particular, is often not really about the sci, or even the fi, it’s more about people. It’s about how we, as a group of people might deal with a situation, or it might be an analogy for something that is happening, or it might be something else entirely. But if you condense it down to just the facts that happen in the story you’re doing it, and the genre, a disservice.
So the chances of you, as an author, telling the same sequence of events AND telling them in the same way AND having the same thing to say about them as someone else who has written something before is really quite small.
TL:DR write the stories you want to write. Let them out. Make them exist. If you really feel you need to, evaluate at the end of it if it’s too similar to something else that’s out there. But don’t let that get in the way of the art you’re making.
Oh man, been there, cried that. Every writer has.
As others have said, write it anyway. At worst it’s a learning experience for you. At best it becomes its own entity, separate and distinct from others’ takes on the same idea. There is room in the universe for this story.
What do you call it when your dog eats your puke-draft then shits out a new one? And is that an improvement?
Have you heard about the term Flash Fiction?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_fiction
How universal! I habitually experience the same phenomenon is science–it was either published in the 1960s or just last week. sigh. Revel in the shards of self-validation while you can!
That’s gross. You’re right, of course. But…….gross.
That was the most disgusting alliteration I have ever read.
Write the story anyway; someone else might have had the same idea but yours will still be your own execution. If writers stopped writing because someone else beat them to the concept, there would be very little to read…
Hey Wil, I very recently picked up the Expanse series too. I’m on book 5 and can’t get enough. Also love that the authors live here in my lovely home state of New Mexico. Keep doing what you do pal!
“What if future humans built a ring around Earth, sort of like Ringworld but smaller, and the story was told from the point of view of the last generation to live on the planet?”
Ah fucking hell. (Dumps 300 typed pages into trash bin, throws typewriter out window, opens bottle of gin.)
This is exactly the post I was waiting a good long while to see. I can’t wait to read your next piece of fiction.
I love your puke draft definition. I also love Anne Lamott’s Shitty First Draft. https://wrd.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/1-Shitty%20First%20Drafts.pdf
Whatever the scatological juice, that first draft will always shows me what my story isn’t. Then, like an excremental Michelangelo, I can keep chiseling away at the chunks until the real story floats starts to appear. I love this process.
+1 for “puke draft” even though I suppose it was Amy Berg that coined it…so you may pass along my +1. My biggest challenge in writing a story is thwarting my inner Perfectionist Demon who seems to place way more value on the First Draft (TM) than is probably warranted. Maybe it’s just a simple mental trick, but referring to that initial attempt as a “puke draft” feels like giving yourself permission for it to suck…which I think is an important step in ever actually finishing anything.
Oh. My. God. Puke draft. That is such an awesome idea. Seriously. I’m in the middle of writing something but I keep stopping to edit. Puke draft. I’m going to try that.
The idea of a Puke Draft is a lovely one, and an idea that would help a lot of authors to get their work done. Often, when writing I get hung up on so many ideas that I don’t know which one to do. Then when I do start writing one, I’m constantly correct myself to the point I no longer want to work on it. Doing it without looking back gives such a refreshing feel of “I’m done, it’s finished.”
So what’s the name of the story about a ring around the Earth told from the perspective of the last generation to live on the planet? It’s an intriguing idea, and I’d love to read it.
Just write your story bro. You aren’t copying anyone. Your work will be 100% original, because its yours. Plus when you are done you will be that much stronger as a writer.
I’m an author of about 90 books (I’ve lost count), all of them published. I learned a long time ago that no matter how great an idea you have, how original you think it is, someone will have thought it, done it. It’s inevitable. I have many theories why, but would take too long to post it here. I learned that it’s not the cool idea (that you know at least one other person will already have had) but what you do with it. It’s the characters and their outlook on your setting / plot / time period / whatever, and what you’re trying to use the plot / setting / cool idea to say that makes your stories unique and uniquely by you. In other words, don’t worry about it and just write. 🙂
Most of my short stories are around 2000 words; i’m writing one a week at the moment, all loosely related and none of them particularly readable at the moment. I love the phrase puke draft, thanks for that, it’s definitely going into my vocabulary now! All the best.