I have wanted to write ever since I was young, however I had a slight problem with the thought of people reading what I have to write, incase it was silly. Now I have a head full of stories , one of which is based on my grandfathers war I just wondered how you know if your idea is a good one and would people really be interested in what you have to write?
Be passionate about what you’re writing. If you don’t find it interesting, no one will. And get over the embarrassment thing. If you overanalyze any famous work, it always comes off sounding silly.
I am very passionate about what I am hoping to write about, I have even spent the last few years researching things to the degree that I feel like I have lived through it. You are very right i need to overcome the embrassment and just write.
Chicagoliz is right - Never worry about whether people will like what you write - just make sure you love it - think of Dr. Suess - a grown man writing about a cat in a hat? think he discussed that at cocktail parties - Or A.A. Milne writing about his son's stuffed animals coming to life ( Winnie the Pooh ) - No idea is silly, it's the execution of it that will determine whether it's silly or brilliant.
Don't worry too much about the quality of an idea. Ideas, in themselves, are not good or bad. It's ALWAYS how well you write them. There are thousands, if not millions, of stories of young star-crossed lovers out there, but Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, and that's the standard. There are millions of war stories out there, but relatively few classics of war literature, ranging from The Iliad to All Quiet on the Western Front to For Whom the Bell Tolls to perhaps some newer ones I haven't read. There are millions of "hero's journey" stories out there, but relatively few classics. The ideas are all the same, but we remember the ones that are well-written. They're the ones that become part of our culture and part of our collective memory. James Joyce's Ulysses is considered one of the great classics of twentieth-century literature, but it basically deals with a guy wandering around Dublin for a day. If Joyce had said, "Hey! I have an idea for a novel! A guy wanders around Dublin for a day! What do you think?" everyone would have said he's nuts. (Some people think Joyce was nuts anyway, but that's another discussion.) The fact remains that Ulysses is a classic, still in print ninety years after it was first published and seventy-one years after the death of its author. It's still studied in universities and literature students are still writing Ph.D theses on it. Write your idea well. No matter what it is, it can be made into a classic work if you have it in you.
Your idea is fine. No, I don't know what your idea is, but it doesn't matter. What matters is how well you can present it to the reader. Therein lies the challenge.
ditto that! a good writer can make a bestseller out of the worst idea, while a poor writer can bomb with the best idea ever...
I heard a good story about bad ideas mentioned on a writing speech for youtube once. The book Codex Alera was the one, where a horrible idea turned into a really good book. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Alera
