need idea (moderate ranting) (1 Viewer)

[idling fire]

How do people just come up with ideas for their major works? My teacher thinks that a critical response would be the best option for me, but I am yet to think of anything that sounds even remotely like the beginning of a thought process that could lead to an idea. The rest of my class - "I'm doing this this and this because of this and that." "My idea is this and I'd do this for this." "Blah blah blah..." Teachers - "You should try to develop your ideas on... blah..."

Alas! If only an idea was present to begin this development. I've looked at a couple of other people's critical responses and their main themes. It all seems so profound to me. I'd rather someone just assigned me a text so I could get on with it. None of this thinking, lack of decisive action and guilt for not getting anywhere. Grr...

How did any of you come up with ideas?

 

[Kabbasi]

Yo, clearly you must be good at it if your teacher recomended it. I'm opting away from the critical response but i would suggest you do something on on of teh books that you actually like. If you probe around these boards you'll find some really good samples of other peoples major works, critical responses included. Someone i remember memorably did a response linkning The Simpsons to Shakespeare. Genius. So i suppose you should play to your strengths and find a text from class or in general that you really liked. Good luck. And as for the fact that everyone else has their idea; i guarantee you that half of them will switch pretty soon. So don't panic about not having an idea yet; i have 7 ideas but they all need alot of work (Video, btw) and I'm sure I'll totally panic and add about eighty more.

I got my ideas by reading the newspaper and cutting out anything that I liked the look of. then at the end i looked at everything and sort of got a few ideas. I would definitely recommend that! :wave:

 

[glitterfairy]

Grand ideas are all very well, but ultimately it all comes down to how well you can WRITE these ideas (aka bringing concepts to life).

When in a pickle I'd start with three different (random) ideas, even if you think they're stupid ones. Make sure you have variety. Then, write 500 words on each one. Which is most interesting? Then come up with three new ideas based along similar lines from that one you liked best last round, and so on and so forth. You may or may not find *the* idea through this method, but you can at least get a feel for what you naturally/instinctively like to write about.

 

[case88]

well, i did a critical and had, i think, six other people in my class who also did critical responses and i'm sure that their "complex" final products stemmed from highly simplistic starting points. Don't worry too much about starting out with a complex idea.
although my final essay was still really insipid compared to some of the intimidatingly intricate works in the showcase, i personally thought it was entertaining and fulfilled my purpose (or maybe i was just biased?).
just find a concept and develop it instead of waiting for a developed concept to come to you.
anyway, good luck

 

[glitterfairy]

intricate/complex is not equivalent to "good"

^ nice points, case88

 

[idling fire]

Thanks Kabbasi, glitterfairy and case88. I'll certainly take your ideas to find an idea into consideration. ^^

Guess I'll see what i come up with.

 

[slinkysezzy]

Hey there,

I go to a pretty laid back school (there are only 4 people in my EE2 class) so we don't actually have to hand in our proposals until next term. I had a problem on the other end of the scale - so many ideas, so few major works. A lot of the girls in my class however had no ideas whatsoever. Our teacher gave us what I thought was fairly good advice. I'll repeat it here for you.

She told us just grab a massive bit of paper and write down everything that interests us, like books, every thing we've liked in english, hobbies, anything. It didn't matter how stupid we thought it was. And also, if we thought of it we had to commit it to paper, even if it was REALLY dumb. So then we kinda looked over these pieces of paper and tried to work out how we could make each of the ideas into a EE2 major work.

I know this sounds both cliche and obvious, but she told us that we should write about something that we're passionate about. So even if your passionate about something that's obscure or supposedly "not-intellectual" enough.

Anyways I hope that helped a bit.

See you

Sara