A Writer’s guide to Picking, Plucking and Plunging

Finding ideas is one thing, making them work…

I AM Words
Aug 28, 2017 · 6 min read

It’s one of the most common questions to be asked as a writer: Where do you get your ideas from?

Sometimes I wonder if inexperienced writers, or non-writers, think that we have a secret website, a well in the garden, or a store cupboard where we keep stocks of ideas next to post-its and staples. Answers to this question are so subjective and dependent on each writer’s approach to writing that it is not only near-impossible to answer, it might actually be counter-productive.

There is also a kind of assumption that “ideas” are one thing and “writing” is another. That’s to say we collect up a bunch of ideas like the butter and flour for baking, put them into a bowl, and then rub them together into those lovely little breadcrumbs. Add some water and, hurrah for pastry! Writing happens! Simple. Right?

Not quite — because as soon as you bake that pastry there is no going back.

Writing Ideas: Picking
Ideas can be found anywhere and at any time. Often you don’t take the whole of something, but rather just a part. It’s a bit like picking your nose, or picking at the unknown speck on the wall, or picking the sticker off the apple you want to eat. Sometimes it is done consciously, sometimes the mind wanders off to do some thought foraging of its own. Whether it is a character, a verse, a line or just a piece of dialogue — even some back-story — it’s the little details that matter. Picking is done with the finger-tips or the nails.

Writing Ideas: Plucking
I think of this more like plucking feathers from a bird (best to do when it’s dead). These take your whole hand, you whole grip and tug. They are pieces of a whole — the wing, for example — which you take in parts and put back together to make something new. Ideas that you pluck work okay on their own, but it isn’t until you put them together that they get stronger. For example, here are some feathers:

  • Character A’s wife is pregnant
  • Character B is going to rob a bank
  • Character C is sharpening a knife he’s going to use to murder someone.

But here is the whole wing:

  • Character ABC is sharpening the knife he’s going to use to kill the man who made his wife pregnant. That man is the getaway driver for the bank robbery, and he’s the one that our man is going to frame for the whole bank job. He then kills him to make sure there’s no way he can defend himself and put the heat onto our man. In the mean time, our man is never going to tell his wife he knows the kid is not his — he’s in it for the long game and wants to see if she will own up. If she ever does, he’ll kill her, take the child, and using the part of the cash the cops never did trace from the robbery to start a new life.

And here’s the other wing:

  • In a heated argument the issue of paternity comes up. The wife tries to bluff our man by flippantly saying that maybe they want a DNA test. He calls her bluff and says okay. She allows him to go ahead with registering the test and sending it off. Before it comes back, he overhears her on the phone to her sister planning to take the child and runaway before the results come back. So…he kills her.

Writing Ideas: taking the Plunge
You’ve picked the stickers, you’ve plucked the feathers, and you’ve made the wings. It seems like your collection of ideas are beginning to fly. And that is when you must do the very opposite thing: take them for a plunge. Go the opposite way and dunk them head first into the ocean, because if you can try to drown them and yet they still survive, then you know they are truly strong.

  • He attempts to cover up the death of his wife, playing all the part necessary to show his shock and upset at her disappearance. When her body is found the police struggle to build a case against him because most DNA evidence is a circumstantial link — of course, they were married, after all. The one wayward piece of DNA evidence is the paternity test that comes back. The man had tried to keep that detail secret, but the police get access and discover the results.
  • The fact that he is not the father throws up a potential motive for murder. It also throws up a new suspicion as for the context of the death of the bank robber who died, and when the DNA of the child matches his, our man suddenly finds himself as prime suspect in both murders. So he runs, kidnapping the child.
  • Eventually he is caught…and it is only the love for the child that prevents him doing anything to harm her. Our man is caught and goes to prison.

If you’re lucky enough, the idea doesn’t drown…
If you can pull it off, the picks of details, the plucks of narrative, and the plunge of the whole story might even get to fly again:

  • In the second story, years later, when our man is freed from prison, he seeks his grown daughter (who is not really his daughter). She now has a daughter of her own. But our man has amassed a great many enemies in prison, and finding his daughter only brings that bad attention to her doorstep. We quickly find ourselves deep in the midst of an abduction scenario — the little girl is abducted. The police launch a full case. (We’re picking and plucking ideas here from a well known film…*)

If you pick, pluck and plunge again…
A whole new story and twist can happen:

  • By the end of the story it turns out that the kidnapping has been orchestrated from the outset…by the daughter — the mother of the girl. She used her own daughter in a false abduction and ransom case as revenge for the murder of her mother and father, knowing that our man’s conscience would drive him to want to make amends. She gets her revenge, and our man gets to learn what she had done as he lies bleeding out from his wounds. In the end, our man dies, and the police are satisfied that it must be connections from his criminal past who caused it all. So they leave the daughter, and her little girl, in peace.

Destination matters more than origin
People often worry too much about where to get great ideas from. The real trick — or “skill”, I suppose — in writing is not where the ideas come from, but where you can take them. You can pick at the smallest ideas; you can pluck the finest feathers; and you can build the finest wings. But if you don’t know how to fly; or to ride the thermals, hot and cold; and handle the plunges as much as the flight, your story will never be going anywhere.

If you like the story idea above — I’ll let you have that one for free!


Find out more about my debut from my website.

*Part of the idea details picked from Man on Fire.

In As Many Words

Inspirations of writing, music, art, poetry, and more…

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I AM Words

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Self Publishing brand of @colinwardwriter, author of fiction, poetry, theatre and professional content.

In As Many Words

Inspirations of writing, music, art, poetry, and more…

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