
Recycling isn’t limited to trash and newspapers. As a fiction writer, recycling ideas, settings, plots, and even characters can be a useful tool. I write. A lot. And I have a long catalog of writings and ideas that have never seen the outside of my computer or imagination. Sometimes those ideas/plots/characters go on to be in one of my books or short stories. But sometimes they don’t. Sometimes something will be written or planned out that just isn’t going to make the cut for public viewing. So what happens to those ideas and characters that never become more than my own personal stable of ramblings?
Sometimes they’re just trashed. Ideas that didn’t work, characters I never really got into, settings that weren’t anything special. They fall by the wayside – they’re 86’d along with the rest of the unfinished (or sometimes finished) story. But other times, I recycle them.
Maybe…