On May 30, 2026, Kasie and Rex took on Ideas. Here are the show notes:

Topic: Ideas are Not Stories reprise

Agenda:

• Quick catch up
• What is an idea?
• How to get from thought to product
• Why product is king

Segment 1

This week we’re hitting a classic topic, one that usually gets Rex and I rolling our eyes, that of the story “idea.” Here’s the thing about idea, most people have them. They’re kind of everywhere. So we’re gonna talk about that piece first. But the difference between a writer and everyone else is actually writing that idea. And the difference between an author and a writer is working that idea until it’s a shiny, polished, rejectable piece of literature.

Building off an old, old episode from July 29, 2023, this is “Ideas are not Stories” revisited.

So where do ideas come from? Look around, man, they’re everywhere. Some of our recent ideas came from …

The last show reference this New York Times link that has prompts for personal writing. 

You can also Gemini that question, “Where do ideas for stories come from?” and it’ll tell you:

• Personal experience – where have you been, who have you been with, what happened?
• Observation – what did you witness? What if it had gone differently?
• Daydreaming and boredom – have you ever let your mind wander? Made up backstories for people or places you’ve seen? Imagined the boundaries of things like dreams or physics don’t exist?
• Researching and science – weird historical facts, strange occurrences (crop circles? Shooting stars?) can instigate ideas
• The “what if” game – what if the ground was lava? What if the earth stopped turning on its access? What if the sun was losing its energy?

Writers in the Storm has a post on ideation. Check out their thoughts here.

Segment 2

I recently told a book conference that if they have one book and that book isn’t selling – not to agents, not to publishers, not to buyers – then they should write another book. Too often authors fall in love with their own work and stop generating new products. 

But how does the idea become a product? Some of the best ways to move that idea into the space of published work are …

Draft it. We say this all the time, just sit down and write. Don’t wait for inspiration, put fingers to keyboard or pen to paper and start writing. This is also the “freewrite” method of prewriting where you just let the story flow. I used to hate when my teachers would tell me the freewrite wasn’t the draft. Of course it’s the draft. No one’s starting over after we have 300 words of perfectly good ideas on the page.

Outline it. So maybe you have a good opening scene and you want to know where it’s going. Start with the end of the story and outline the thing. They end up HERE. How did we get there? Then question your way back to the beginning. Remember that every action should be a Because of, then this set up. Meaning, because his aunt and uncle were killed by the empire, then Luke feels like he can leave Tatooine and chase his Jedi dream.

Talk about it. Only kidding. This is the best way to kill your idea. Telling other people about it 1) is not actually writing it and 2) takes the steam from the engine, the blast from the rocket, the enthusiasm from the project. Don’t talk. Write.

Segment 3

So you’ve written it, now what? Idea become stories and stories become books when you decide to make them available for others. We’ve covered the traditional paths to publishing before:

• Find an agent, have said agent query your book to publishers
• Find a publisher that accepts submissions, send your query to the publisher
• Find a self-publish assist company and start the process of budgeting and organizing your project
• Learn what you can about self-publishing and organize the project.

The last two are more budget-heavy, the first two are more networking and luck-heavy. Some nontraditional but becoming more popular paths:

• Set up an online place (a blog) and serialize the work – this is how Andy Weir wrote The Martian. This is the free version.
• Use an online publishing platform to publish the work – Wattpad and AO3 are the two most popular ones, just know they’re full of fan fiction and might not be the right fit for your memoir. This is also free, mostly, but they have contests and things you can use to boost the attention to your work.
• Use Substack to publish and monetize your work – this is a platform that allows you to charge people a subscription rate or a per-post rate to read your work. While you might begin earning right away, it’s a business and you’ll want to be sure you’re meeting your readers (customers) needs or they’ll unsubscribe. Chuck Palahniuk of Fight Club fame is doing this now.
• Contests and magazines – submission process-heavy but can stack some publishing credentials on your name.

Bottom line? There are dozens of ways to get your work out there and noticed. But it’s got to be good work to be successful. So focus on the craft, getting better at writing. And the rest – publishing, marketing – will come.