Gabrielle Edits

“Low-hanging fruit” is a common metaphor you’ll hear in writing circles, in reference to coming up with ideas. The lowest-hanging fruit on any tree are the easiest ones to reach and therefore the ones that get picked first. For writers, the metaphor usually suggests that the ideas you come up with first, or most easily, are going to be ideas that other people have had.

I’ve often seen it recommended, when writing short stories targeted for anthologies with specific themes, that writers reject the first five ideas they come up with. As the thought process goes, these are going to be the most obvious, easiest choices — the “low-hanging fruit”; the story ideas that everyone else will think of, too.

But it’s also said that “low-hanging fruit is the low-hanging fruit of metaphor.” (In addition to sounding potentially, well… Follow the link.) It’s an easy metaphor to use; a simplified way to think about something that may not actually be so simple or straightforward.

People are different, and people’s minds work differently. We don’t all have the same likes and dislikes, and we don’t all follow the same trains of thought. It would be pretty boring if we did. So, I don’t entirely buy the low-hanging fruit analogy when it’s applied to story ideas. I don’t believe that all people are going to strike upon the same idea as easiest or most obvious. There are too many variables between individuals. Between general life experience, what you’ve read or seen recently, a personal association with the topic, one person’s low-hanging fruit is not necessarily the same as another’s.

I’ve read a lot of queries for novel-length manuscripts over the past three or four years. I’ve also looked at anthology submissions, and I’ve talked to other anthologists. Trends emerge in submissions. This fascinates me, because it’s not usually popular media or current events that seem to have influenced writers’ ideas. And the ideas I would think of as “most obvious” are not always the ones that are most represented.

When I target a story for a particular anthology, I do think about the approaches that I think other writers are most likely to take. But, there’s a flaw in this: Unless I seek out other writers who are preparing stories, and poll them, I have no idea what kinds of things a given topic will make other people think of. I have no way of knowing whether I’m avoiding the trend, or second-guessing myself right into the middle of it. Maybe everyone is avoiding that ripest, most obvious apple and going for the second-ripest one. Maybe the obvious one is what the editor wants; if no one else is going to go for it, maybe picking it would give you a better chance.

You see, I hope, how this line of thinking can work you into writers’ paralysis if you’re not careful.

If you’re submitting to a second (or later) volume of an anthology on a particular theme, you can read the stories in prior volumes to make sure that you don’t reinvent them. That will help somewhat; you’ll be able to see trends in the earlier stories and do something different. Sometimes editors will tell you what they don’t want to see. But that still doesn’t help you out against all the other people who’ll be submitting for the new volume right along with you.

My advice: pick the fruit that looks most appealing to you.

When Ed Greenwood and I approached writers about When the Hero Comes Home, I could almost always see it in their eyes — there would be a spark of an idea that came to mind instantly, when writers heard the theme; something within them instantly surfaced, inspired. When that happens for you, take that and nurture it; tease it out until it’s the best story, and best expression of the theme, that it can be. Think about what other writers might be reaching for, yes, but don’t let it be your consuming worry. Go with the idea that inspires you, that you can put your own personal spin on. It’s that spark of you, that twist of something different, that will make your story rise to the top, even if a dozen others attempt the same theme. If you don’t write what you feel, if you focus instead on trying to predict what will be original and what will trend, you risk boxing yourself into a corner where you can’t write anything at all, for fear it won’t be the right thing. Since you can’t know what other people are going to be writing, the most effective thing you can do is write your story in your way. Put your voice and heart into it.

When all the fruit is harvested and taken to market, no one will know the order in which it was picked.

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