When I was in college, I got myself a job right there on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, where I packaged up stuff and got it ready to be mailed out to that company’s customers as quickly as possible. It’s not like it was Amazon or anything, but they prided themselves on being rather swift with their deliveries. And I was getting paid, so I had food and groceries and stuff that I needed to survive...and it worked out. However, let me tell you younger guys out there, you don’t know what ‘broke’ is until you go to college! LOL! Omigod...the best thing you learn after high school is how to struggle and ignore a hungry stomach! Trust me on this!

Anyway, the buses and the trains in downtown are some of the best in the country, and run regularly no matter what. But they cost money. Money that adds up pretty quickly. So I knew where I had to go and what time I had to be there...so I started walking to work every single day. It was like...a thirty to forty five minute walk there, and after being on my feet all day...it was a thirty to forty five minute walk back to the dorms. Exhausting, yes...but I took my Walkman and got my tunes together to take my mind off of the trip, and streets were always full of cute boys and tourists, so my city pride kept me going from one day to the next.

But after about a month of doing that...I began to carry a pen and a pocket notebook with me. That’s where this practice of mine came from. Because I started having ideas for stories, movies, TV shows, etc during these long walks, often fueled by the music that I was listening to, and the people that I saw walking all around me. The atmosphere was filling my head with so many ideas that I just couldn’t contain them all and remember them for later. I still have that notebook, but I couldn’t tell you how many awesome ideas I might have forgotten before I started writing them down in the moment. I remember when they first opened up the dock on Navy Pier for people to walk through and all, and I would sit on one of the benches and just write all of my ideas down in that notebook and try to get them down so I wouldn’t lose them all. And this was BEFORE Comicality! By a few years, at least. This was while they were still building the Ferris wheel and building spaces for the shops inside. Had I been writing Comsie stories at that time, I might have filled up too many notebooks to carry with me all at once. Hehehe!

The goal was to come up with a brand NEW idea that I had never seen before between the time it took me to leave the dorm and walk to work, and then another one between leaving work and getting back to the dorm. A new idea...a new concept...new characters...twice a day, five days a week. My brain just sort of adapted to that level of thinking, and I started absorbing everything around me and keeping that mentality going as a matter of habit. And to some degree...I think it’s still there. As Morpheus would say, “It’s like a splinter in my mind”.

Here’s the issue though...

Every idea isn’t a tasty burger. Hehehe, or as I like to think of it.

You have to look at all of your spontaneous ideas, even if they appear to be absolutely brilliant from a certain perspective, and see if they’re a ‘burger’...or NOT a ‘burger’. And this is the subject of the day. Because sometimes, the most incredible concepts don’t always make for the best stories. Don’t take your ideas and throw them away, as you might find ways to create great fiction out of those ideas later on. But for now, let’s focus on trying to determine the difference between a burger and nothing burger. Cool?

The idea for “Gone From Daylight” actually came from one of many trips to a Pier much further North, but Navy Pier was clearly visible from there, and I called it “Midnight’s Child”. Justin was a heroin addict, who was now going to learn the meaning of life by becoming a vampire and being forced to take human lives in order to feed...and he was seeking out a group of vampires who were running a night club and could psychically absorb the life energy they needed from the dancing crowd, draining their lives without their knowledge. A skill that had to be learned over time through meditation and training to keep from drinking blood. That was my initial idea for the story, and like I said...this was a few years before the Comicality stories came about. Things changed, the details morphed into something that was much more ideal for the story that I wanted to tell, and ‘Taryn’ became a love interest that changed the entire vibe of the whole story. Not that my original ideas were all that terrible, and might have worked out just fine...but I felt MUCH more connected to this new version of the series, and I think I made the right decision in switching out the old ideas for the new ones. Why? Because the old version didn’t taste like a burger to me. That’s why. And by standing my ground on those changes, “GFD” has become one of the most insanely popular stories on my website. And I love it!

But when I look back at my original notes for the series...they were actually pretty thin. There really wasn’t a lot to build off of in the long run. It might have made for a decent short story, or possibly two or three chapters of me doing something different from what I usually do...but nothing like the saga that it is today. There’s no way I could have carried that concept for more than a few chapters without it becoming tired or weird in ways that I wouldn’t be able to fix later on. That’s not to say that the “Midnight’s Child” idea is completely off the table and won’t ever get written. In fact, I’ve been thinking of resurrecting the idea to somehow tie into the “Gone From Daylight” lore further down the line...which I think would be really cool! But the point is...I had originally allowed the idea of a sweet concept get in the way of me wondering whether or not it would make for a good story. Which is fine when it’s just scribbled down in a mini notebook, but it’s different when you invest some real time and energy into writing out an actual narrative and making it more concrete and permanent. This is a problem that will not only show up later in your writing, but it can end up damaging your whole project and cause it to collapse in on itself if you’re not careful, or it might even cause you to abandon it altogether. So, like...DON’T! K? Hehehe!

This reminds me of many of the Saturday Night Live skits that were fun to see on television and giggle over every now and then...and then they tried to make a movie version out of them. And they were, more often than not, pretty terrible. Hehehe! Because the premise and the concept was created for a five minute cold open and that was it. It wasn’t meant to be stretched out over a period of ninety minutes. It doesn’t really matter what the story is that you craft for it...the skit itself can’t last very long without wearing thin and running out of things to say. There are only so many ways to tell the same joke before it gets tiresome. The same goes for action. The same goes for drama. Even the hottest erotica has its limits. So, when you start taking notes and you feel like you’ve got this really awesome idea for a story...examine that idea and the most important parts of it...and think of it like the punchline of a joke. How long can you keep this joke going before it wears out its welcome? And if it does...do you have enough other situations going on to fall back on and round out the rest of the story? If the answer is no...then that’s not a burger. Keep the notes, and come back to it when you have more to say with your project.

If I was writing a story about an assassin, there are many different adventures that I can add to my story and many different secrets to be revealed. But it can’t just be all action and intrigue for the sake of action and intrigue. He finds something out, he fights, he wins. He finds something else out, he fights, he wins. You can change up what’s going on in the scenes from time to time, but the concept remains the same. ‘He finds something out, he fights, he wins.’ And stories that cling to that formula don’t last very long before they get stale on you, and on your readers.

What motivations are you working with? What hidden twists might you have waiting in the wings for your main character? What’s going on with their backstory, and how did it set him out on this path? What are the stakes? What does he stand to gain if he wins? What does he stand to lose if he fails? Allow these ideas to beef up your burger and swirl around until becomes satisfying enough to pen a really cool story from beginning to end and have it actually go somewhere. If the end of your story drops you off at the same level as where you began, then you’ve wasted a potentially great story. Always a no no.

Basically, when building and smoothing out a story, I think it’s our job as writers to ask ourselves all of the questions that the readers are sure to ask once they settle in and get invested in the narrative. If we come up with very few answers, and they don’t really feel like they connect in any significant way...then your going to end up writing a very brief and simple concept, and then try to stretch it out and give it some meat by adding a lot of unnecessary ‘fluff’ that doesn’t mean much and doesn’t go anywhere in terms of giving the rest of your story some depth. Either it’s worthy of a lengthy or medium sized story, or it’s not.

The other option is to break the story concept down into a much smaller piece and concentrate it on a single situation or a moment in time. Go for the short story instead. I have a couple of ebook compilations called “Daydreams & Lullabyes” on my ebook page (https://imagine-magazine.org/store/comicality/) where I did exactly that. One quick, short, story that takes place during a single moment in time. Those ideas fit perfectly in the space that I’ve given them, and then I make sure to end the story where it needed to be ended. Making them any longer than that dilutes the overall effect. I’d much rather have a contained experience than a bloated snoozefest, you know?

Anyway, I’m hoping this was some much needed food for thought, and that all of you future works turn out to be the thick and juicy burgers that they deserve to be! Hehehe! Hungry yet? Keep those new concepts coming! You never know when you might find the project that will become your personal opera! Have fun! And I’ll seezya soon!