I don’t know about you, but sometimes when I’m writing I get all caught up in plot points and “things to do” that I forget to… well… have fun.
Don’t get me wrong, I still think plot points are important. I’ve talked about story structure before and how its framework can actually give us more freedom to have do cool things with our stories. And knowing what elements to include in a strong story is good to follow through on.
But also… fun is important.
“Shinies” means fun. It’s the story pieces that make you smile when you see them. They’re the nuggets of a book that you just can’t help but love.
The shiny bits may mean any number of things for different people: awesome costumes, zippy one-liners, fire-breathing dragons, explosions, breathtaking worldbuilding, that double-cross twist no one saw coming.
But whatever they are- let’s not forget to put them in our stories!
Filling Our Stories With Shinies
It’s worth taking a few minutes to identify what “shinies” means for you.
What story elements resonate with you? What makes you smile?
It reminds me of a concept from Austin Kleon’s book Steal Like An Artist when he talks about constantly observing things around us and collecting/stealing things we like. These things we collect then feed back into our own art.
A great time to do this is during the revision process when we look back over our work.
Related reading: Why Revising Your Novel Can Mean Filling It With Stuff You Like – NaNoWriMo Blog
Don’t Be Afraid To Use Up Shiny Ideas
Sometimes we might be afraid that if we use up all our good ideas then we won’t have any more.
Thankfully, creativity is more like a running stream than a finite well that can run dry.
Not just a stream, but a living thing that keeps growing; because the more creativity we use the more we get! We need to trust the process and the magic of writing.
As Maya Angelou said, “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”
Don’t Be Afraid Others Won’t Like Our Shinies
It can be easy to second guess our writing, to worry it may be too ridiculous, weird, or dark for others to understand or appreciate.
But here’s the thing, readers love ridiculousness too.
Yes, we want to keep our readers in mind. But we don’t need to “tone it down” or make it a copy of other stories out there out of fear that others won’t appreciate us. Instead, think of readers who are out there just waiting for your own brand of shiny.
Some of the readers may not appreciate our shinies, but others are craving them.
At the end of the day, filling our stories with shinies means filling it with things that we like.
It means remembering what we love about stories and using it in our writing. It means creating things that make us smile.
Yes, we want to keep our readers in mind. And yes, we still want to write good stories… which may mean we can’t always use every single shiny idea in one story.
But let’s not forget to have fun.
Let’s make sure we don’t overlook what makes us love stories in the first place.
We write because we dream impossible dreams. We write because we have stories in our brains that want to be told.
Let’s have fun telling them.
