Sometimes having a great idea for a story can be both a blessing and a burden. The blessing is that a great idea immediately sparks interest and curiosity in the reader. The burden is that it sets an expectation that has to be fulfilled. You don’t have to do as much to get a reader to start reading a story that is based on an interesting idea. The challenge will be to get them to keep reading.
Also, great ideas work well on blurbs and it tends to capture the reader’s imagination instantaneously. Here are some examples:
- What if the moon breaks into seven pieces? (Seveneves – Neal Stephenson)
- What if someone’s hallucinations can give them real information about the world around them? (Legion – Brandon Sanderson)
- What if the superheroes were the bad guys? (Steelheart – Brandon Sanderson)
- What if the whole of humanity becomes infertile? (Children of Men – PD James)
- What if there’s a science that can accurately predict the future? (Foundation – Isaac Asimov)
- What if all murders can be predicted and thus prevented? (Minority Report – Philip K Dick)
- What if a superflu kills most of humanity? (The Stand – Stephen King)
- What if someone’s dreams can affect reality? (The Lathe of Heaven – Ursula Le Guin)
There are many more examples, so the list is not exhaustive. I had fun thinking of the examples though. And it shows that certain questions or ideas are enough to spark great curiosity in readers.
When I come across an interesting idea in a book I always wish that I was the one that came up with it first. Great ideas make for great stories. But a great idea can be a bit of a burden because when you stumble on a great idea, you really have to do it justice. The idea is only a part of the story. The entire execution has to be at the same standard—at least. When the execution is off, it doesn’t matter how good the idea was. I remember slogging through stiff dialogue in Foundation and thinking: there’s no way I’m reading the second book.
Conversely, when the execution actually exceeds expectation, then the story becomes a true masterpiece. This is true of Seveneves. The moon breaking into seven pieces has catastrophic consequences for Earth since these seven pieces will start to crash into each other and break into even smaller pieces. This tendency is exponential and will eventually have dire consequences for life on Earth. By the way, this is a hard sci-fi novel—so the science of this is legit.There are no tech advancements that’s beyond human capability—another reason why this story is so mind-boggling. Stephenson worked within the constraints of our current capabilities, or close to it.
But the novel is not just about the moon breaking into seven pieces. There’s a large cast of compelling characters and Stephenson’s writing is great. But I think the thing that made this book so memorable for me was that there are so many ideas that completely blew my mind. The story explores ideas of survival in space, genetics, evolution, and human corruption. I’d heard him say once that he’d spent quite a number of years thinking about and writing the novel. It shows. There are layers of complexity built into the story. Seveneves is not only one of my favourite Stephenson novels but one of my favourite sci-fi novels of all time. In conclusion: Stephenson did the idea justice.
So, that’s the challenge with great story ideas: you have to do them justice. I spent many years writing and re-writing Chasing the Sun because I thought that the idea of a group of space travellers chasing a sun on a desert planet was a cool idea. I hope I did the idea justice.