章 16: How to think of a topic for your novel – Create something ridiculous and make it sound plausible
Author: 314
On the topic of writing something original, I've written several articles previously teaching newcomer authors how to create, especially on how to modify and slightly innovate based on other authors' established works. Today, I would like to introduce another method. That is, to create something ridiculous and then make it seem plausible. Or, another way of saying it is to first make a mistake, then refuse to admit it, and use the "mistake" in your story.
Specifically, we should first randomly come up with an idea that's outside of the box, which doesn't adhere to common sense. Just randomly make something up, saying something or some things that are obviously wrong, then trying to think of a method to make it sound reasonable. This includes story elements that are obviously unscientific.
Here's an example. Maybe in your story, the sun rises in the west, which is obviously illogical. Still, we can try to find explanations to make it sound "reasonable." For instance, maybe there was a cataclysmic event in the galaxy that caused all sorts of unnatural phenomena to start appearing, including the Earth's rotation reversing, gravity becoming distorted, Earth's creatures going almost extinct, and humanity on the verge of being destroyed… This naturally leads to a story about a devastated future.
Here's another example. Let's say that "Today is the seventh day after I died." This is obviously abnormal, since if I'm dead, how could I possibly still be able to say that out loud? But in order to make it "plausible," we can think of various explanations. For instance, the most direct explanation is that I'm now a ghost, and that this sentence was uttered by my soul. In that case, this will become a novel about the mystical, and then, perhaps I can go and investigate my own cause of death, find the murderer, and take revenge…
Of course, it doesn't have to be something mystical. Perhaps I faked my death and funeral. Then why did I do such a thing? Who did I want to fool? What type of trap was I planning? If you keep thinking along these lines, there will be endless possibilities, such as battles between rich families, commercial rivalries, or even martial arts getting involved. All such things are possible.
You could even give it a xianxia twist, saying that I was searching for the path of immortality and wanted to cut all connections to the mundane world, or that I wanted to fool the heavens into thinking I was dead…
All of these brainstorming ideas actually came about from an author's error, by saying that some other character's death was the main character's death instead.
And in order to make this unreasonable event become reasonable, a new train of thought for your story's plot will appear on its own.
That's because stories are all based on conflicts as well as on what is out of the ordinary.
Of course, this type of random mistake might not be so easy to find appropriate explanations for. And even if you find an explanation for this mistake, that still might not make it a worthy topic to write about. But, so what?
Writing isn't a test where each question has only one correct answer. We can definitely just do trial and error. Just try randomly saying ridiculous things and then somehow attempting to explain them to see if they can somehow wondrously become new topics for your story. If it works, record it, and if it doesn't, just discard it and think up another ridiculous idea.
Water flows upward; my grandfather died when he was five years old; my dad is younger than me by three years; my girlfriend is eight meters tall; I ate 2000 kilograms of food yesterday; I sleep on an eighty square meters bed; I have three eyes; my cat wants to eat sweet and sour pork today; today is the 33rd day of the month…
It's simple enough to come up with all these ridiculous sentences. Among them, most of them will be completely useless and discarded in the end. Still, there will also be a few that can become incredibly interesting storylines if you flesh out the settings well enough.
Of course, there's no need to make ridiculous ideas so aimlessly. We could instead try making them while targeting a specific topic, or even a specific direction while trying ridiculous ideas one by one.
For example, let's limit the genre to martial arts, and the specific topic to the main character's meridians. What ridiculous things can we come up with?
What abnormal situations could possibly befall the main character's meridians?
He has no meridians in his body at all; he has more meridians than the normal person; his meridians flow in the opposite direction; his meridians are all clogged; his meridians are incredibly weak; his meridians are as leaky as a net…
Obviously, none of these are the typical outstanding talent that you see in main characters. They're more like characteristics of a piece of garbage who can't even cultivate. However, we can try thinking about how to turn such a trash setting into treasure in creative ways.
For instance, maybe your main character has no meridians and can't store internal energy. Then how about giving him the ability to directly communicate with the heavens and the earth, which means he has an advantage on everyone? Or, if his meridians are incredibly weak, how about this meant the main character will learn unparalleled mastery of internal energy control, where nobody else can control internal energy as precisely as he can…
When extrapolating these ideas step by step and then eliminating the ones that aren't useful or explainable, then deleting the ones that are too cliché or not wish fulfillment enough, then all that remains will naturally be the new topic that we need.
And if you delete things but find out that you have nothing remaining in the end, then that's fine as well. Isn't it possible to just make something else that's equally ridiculous?
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