From Idea To Empire: The Art Of IP Development

Getting ideas flowing is the first step in any Intellectual Property (IP) development process. It is a skill that you will constantly find yourself returning to at every step of the development phase for every little thing (i.e. story ideas, scene ideas, character ideas, location ideas, backstory ideas, weapon ideas, dialogue ideas, etc.). Therefore, it is important to have a system in place for recording, storing, and managing all of those ideas. This part of the IP development framework will outline a system for doing just that.

Gestation: Managing Ideas

“Complexity is a symptom of confusion, not the cause of it.”

–Jeff Hawkins

Working with students and independents, as well as with professionals, has really helped me fine tune my ability to identify disorder. Over the course of a week, I’ll hear quite a few ideas that my friends and colleagues run by me for review. Here the objective is to communicate their grand vision in as few words as possible. If their idea sounds interesting, I’ll start asking them essential questions about it to help them flesh it out more.

However, one of the problems that often occur at this stage of ideation is the lack of direction and purpose. It seems that the visionary has less of a grasp on their idea and more of a sense about the emotions, feelings, and awesomeness of their idea, even though they have yet to conceive a solid premise for it.

An example of this would be someone telling me they have a great idea for a game about ants. I say,”Cool, how does it work?” The usual answer is “I dunno. Maybe you build colonies or ‘something like that’. It just seems like an interesting thing to make a game about.” Fair enough. The idea is just something they have in mind; it has yet to be seriously considered for further securitization and development, never mind being written down.

Like wisps of smoke in a room of open windows, many good ideas are doomed to dissolve into thin air due to people’s unwillingness to manage them (most of the time it’s just pure laziness). But as most things in life, this symptom stems from their unfamiliarity with the concept. Simply put, no one has ever told them to write their ideas down or given them a valid reason for doing so. Here I intend to not only convince you of its validity, but to give you a structure to help you through the process.

The four phases of managing an idea are: Recording Ideas, Storing Ideas, Categorizing Ideas, and Making Ideas Accessible.

Recording Ideas

Inspiration, if you recall, is one of the most fundamental factors in developing an idea. However, inspiration alone does not lead an idea to total fruition. Sometimes when you have an idea, it will come at the strangest times in the strangest places and you really will not have time to consider it in depth. Writing it down when you have it, however, is one of the ways to salvage it and allows you to constantly be reminded of it every time you see it. This simple act will eventually lead to its full development.

By writing the idea down, this at least assures you will not lose the idea; it also allows it to re-inspire you at a later time. Even if you are not sure how you can put it to use yet, simply record it anyway. Ideas have the power to change as you’re perspective changes; an idea you wrote down several years ago could seem trite or brilliant to you now, based on your constantly varying perception of life.

Wherever you are, no matter what you are doing, you must arm yourself with a pen and something to write on. Ideas ambush. Sometimes they raid. If you are not prepared, you may lose the chance to capture those rare instances of genius forever…

I usually keep an index card, some sticky notes, or a folded sheet of typing paper and a standard ink pen on me at all times. Even in instances where, for some reason, that’s just not possible, or I forgot, then I will find one in my immediate area (dinner napkins or receipt paper from the store are satisfactory) should an idea strike.

In certain crafts this can be a trickier task. In music, for instance, I can come up with a great melody in my head, but I may have no formal way of recording it (assuming that I don’t know how to read or write sheet music). A digital voice recorder is a great tool for situations like this. But for those without one, you’ll need to find more creative ways for scribing such ephemeral ideas.

In the past, I would call my house and sing the melody on my answering machine and then as soon as I got home, I would play the notes on my keyboard and store them there for later review and expansion. There are always ways of getting your ideas onto the page; do your best to find them.

Storing Ideas

While paper napkin sketches are ok for capturing an idea when it comes, you will eventually find yourself overwhelmed with scrap sheets of paper that chaotically spew from every desk drawer orifice. Thus establishing a central repository for your many inspirations becomes the next concern.

Tools such as a digital recorder or a keyboard are technologies that I welcome. Not only do they allow you to record new inspiration, but they also give you the means to organize and preserve many different instances of it.

Unmanaged Ideas…

For most ideas though, a standard notebook is suitable for compiling all of your material. It has pages that you can quickly index and it is also easy to categorize and mark sections off with sticky tabs or notes. If you are an artist, a sketch book is a great equivalent. Word processors or blogs are just as fine a place to compile ideas; their flexibility and accessibility can save lots of time when you get into the development process.

The thing to be careful about with digital idea compilation is to make sure that you constantly back up your material with multiple copies being stored in different locations. There is little worse than losing seven years of great ideas due to a computer crash or losing a CD-ROM case with all your backed up material in it; both of which I unfortunately had to experience.

Idea Notebook Preparing For Compilation.

There are a few things that you should consider about your idea notebook when you buy it—mainly its quality and ease of use. A one-dollar, spiral bound notebook from the grocery store is probably not the best way to go. I suggest finding a nice, tightly bound composition notebook that has durable paper and can hold ink well —such as a Five Star Mead notebook. You want to be able to preserve your ideas for life, right? Well then, spend the few extra bucks; it’s an investment.

Once you have your idea notebook, personalize it to your tastes. I suggest at least writing your contact information on the inside cover just incase you leave it somewhere (which you shouldn’t, because that would be a form of child abuse). Start fresh with an idea on the first page, or feel free to have an introduction to the book; maybe you want to compile specific ideas in it. I tend to name my idea books and give them introduction summaries that I can always return to and laugh at later on.

Categorization

As you compile your ideas into your notebooks, at some point you’ll want to begin categorizing them.

When I first started out, I made the mistake of assuming most of my ideas were unique and unrelated, so I never thought of categorizing them in general terms. Safe to say, it would take me forever to rummage through my notebooks and find generic things such as character name ideas.

Discernable patterns exist in all of nature, especially in thought and ideation. You simply have to pay attention to the overall collection of ideas you are shelling out and create a vocabulary for categorization that works for you, based on your personal thought process.

I try to keep my process as simple as I can, heading each idea with a light bulb and a marker such as “Character Idea”, “Name Idea”, “Scene Idea” etc. This allows me to quickly flip through my idea notebooks and find specific information. If there are certain types of information you constantly find yourself looking for in your idea notebooks, you can color code them with pastel highlighters (when you get to that point you know you are deep into IP development @_@).

Compiled and Categorized!

Another helpful thing to do is to draw a checkbox beside each idea. Whenever you use an idea from your notebook, mark it off. This will prevent you from reusing the idea again later on (which is a surprisingly easy mistake to make when you have to pump out ideas in high volumes). The same goes for when you are transferring your ideas from the scraps of paper into your idea book; check off the scraps with the ideas that you have already stored so that you don’t compile them more than once.

Categorizing your work will help save you time and energy in the long run so get into the habit ASAP. Here are a few more examples of categories I use in my books:

• Story Instance Idea- a specific character, object, or event interaction that takes place in a story (e.g. Character A gets publicly betrayed by Character B, who was in cahoots with Character A. Character A has to deal with the situation in a witty way to get out unscathed). I usually get these types of ideas from observing real life interactions between people. Having this tag allows me to quickly record it for later use in a story.

• Dialogue Idea- snippets of dialogue I occasionally hear in my head or maybe while sitting next to a group of people at a restaurant (e.g. “Who works for money? I come here just to hang out with you guys.”)

• Game Mechanics Idea- ideas for gameplay systems (e.g. Continuous Fighting RPG: In battle, even if the player is not pressing anything, characters fight in a pre-scripted manner and actively move around. When the player enters attack commands, they are seamlessly weaved into the scripted fight sequence.)

Again, take care to design categories based on your own needs.

Making Ideas Accessible

Beyond categorizing each individual idea, after enough experience, you will begin to similarly categorize the major elements of your project. This can take place through the use of templates, naming conventions, and a general set of standards you develop for quickly sifting through, revising, and presenting assets. The collective effort you put into managing ideas at this level is what I call idea accessibility.

An example of this would be a document template for your story/game bible. You may have developed a very specific structure to help you store and reference information about your characters, world, dialogue etc. This structure could be easily conveyed to another person and give them the means for accessing and interacting with essential information on the project.

Document Template.

Another example could be something as simple as a folder hierarchy system you devise for quick and easy navigation through complex levels of detail. This is all part of managing and organizing an idea, just at a higher-level.

Folder Hierarchy.

Idea accessibility is a more intermediate level concept that you will most likely not begin to use until you have worked on a few projects and gotten comfortable with your craft. It does deserve the mention, however, and you will clearly see how it comes into play during the IP construction process.

Applying structure to chaos creates beauty. The more scientists explore nature in the realms of the infinitely enormous and immeasurably minuscule, the more they concur with this theory. In our haste to comprehend and accomplish, we too must take time to explore and try to embrace the order in all things; especially in our own creativity.

You have now learned to care for the concepts you create and soon you will see that those very creations will, in turn, begin to care for you.

The foundation is set! The next post will carry you into the murky depths of IP development and construction only to show you how clear things are beyond the fog.

-Sage