Where’s the story?

Yeah, great idea, but what's the story?

Have you heard that before?

For me ideas are easy.

If you ask me to come up with 10 ideas about squirrels then I could do it pretty quickly. But they’re not all going to turn into stories. Some of them aren’t robust enough and some of them go nowhere. Out of those ten ideas, one might - might - be worth exploring.

For me ideas are cheap. Stories, however, are not. They’re expensive in terms of time and thought.

An idea is often just a thought or a suggestion. It has a whisper of a story but no more than that. Or it’s a subject area or an interesting character or one event.

People often pitch these as stories. I’m still guilty of it sometimes, usually about something or somewhere that I’m passionate about. I know there will be stories within it but I haven’t taken the time to find them. If I ever find myself listing ways about something is interesting instead of talking about how I’m going to approach it then I’m pitching a subject area and not a story.

So here are some questions  to help you get started on turning an idea into a story. I call this the 4 Cs:

• Who’s the main Character and what do they want?

• What’s the main Challenge they have to face?

• What Change will happen?

• What’s the Constraint (usually  to do with time or place or length or type of story)?