Let's shake hands with our ideas

"My sister is currently dating a guy who met her through her “Hot or Not” profile. And I’M the asshole for thinking that’s really funny."  Commenter on random blog I found, somewhere in the comments here. (And how is that for lazy citations?)

Random blog clicking from today's time wastage.  The above cracked me up.  And I couldn't help but think it was an interesting starting point for a character. 

Do you ever do that?  See something that suggests there is a kernal there, an idea-in-the-rough, and so you consider it and see if you can make it work, make it develop into an idea or a character?  The above really suggests a lot about the personality of the speaker, and I'd have to say that it's a guy speaking, and he's got a rather self-aware sense of humor, and can laugh at himself.  I also imagine him to be 20-something and educated, rather GenX or slacker in appeal, and he probably has a skateboard in his closet somewhere.  Best of all, I find I want to know more about the guy, and I rather like him already. 

Am I reaching too far with those assumptions?  In analyzing the actual person who wrote this, definitely.  But the process of developing ideas is that you have to springboard from someplace;  so anything that arrests your attention like that should be heeded as something that might be useful or important. 

I suspect that when people claim to find ideas difficult to come up with, they are too prone to brush away stray thoughts and disregard the instincts that make me go all "Ooooh, shiny!" and start chasing butterflies.  They probably get a lot more stuff done than I do, though!

And a cool site about warfare of the future for your science fiction or post-apocalyptic writing thought processes.  I think I got this one from John Scalzi.  I am too lazy to look it up, though.  It's one of those kind of days.

Comments

[fairyhedgehog]

Brushing ideas away - that's my problem. I think it started when I was very young and didn't want to want things too much because I wouldn't get them. The trouble is, once the habit is started, it's hard to stop!

[writtenwyrdd]

I have gotten into the habit of doing that with art, not with writing. I think that we wreck outselves via that habit, crush creative impulses adn dreams. It's vicious, that's what it is.

[Bernita]

My "best" ideas come from random "shiny."

[writtenwyrdd]

Random shiny is very very good to me, too.