Idea Development

[CW Brown]

What inspires your idea is not the same as what inspires you to write—they are two separate entities. I use entity in the sense of inspiration being a living, breathing creature;something that exists and has a soul that can be blessed or damned.

My idea for "The Balance of the Seventh Column" originated from a screenplay I wrote the summer after I graduated high school. The screenplay was titled "Moral Authority" and the plot was about a Maine filmmaker who is gunned down in Los Angeles. The twists and turns of the plot lead to the capture, escape and eventual death of a studio executive who didn't want to see the individual succeed at his art. That story in particular came to me after reading about a Maine filmmaker who was mugged and killed in San Francisco a few years earlier; however, the circumstances of that incident were of no interest.

After I returned to the east coast from Vancouver, I decided that I wanted to rewrite my little mystery and integrate some changes that I had made notes of during my time at film school and brief return to Maine. The major change was the renaming of the lead character to Michael Steiger. It was the name of someone I had met briefly while in Canada and thought it had a nice ring and audibly described who the hero of this story should be.

I didn't get to do much development for while, as 9/11 happened and with the country going into the red zone, my family had been pressuring me to get a job in Portland to help pay for food. It was a rough year and I eventually opted to move to New York City (a story all its own). It was in New York that I decided to get my arse in gear and sit and rewrite this monster. The ideas were all there, piled up in my head and in millions of little notes and what I didn't have I'd end up finding in some of my old manuscripts that I knew I wouldn't do anything with or stories that had been started but never completed.

This would be the novel I would complete, for the idea was grand and I knew that I had all the information I needed at my fingertips. Your idea may, but most likely will not, come this way. It will come or has come and you may or may not know it yet. It's up to you to figure it out.

Posted with permission from EricNorcross.com
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