Turning a Bad Idea into a Good One

Bad ideas are everywhere; the jet powered wheelchair, the inflatable dartboard, the flatulence deodorizer, and Superman III just to name a few. Even geniuses stumble—farting and belching in the Star Wars universe... come on! The funny thing about a bad idea is that somebody has to think it is a good idea initially.

When I was eleven, what I thought was a brilliant scheme to make a quick buck ended up being a colossal mistake. Every summer Mom would raid our closet for outgrown clothes and toys that had become dust collectors. She’d slap a piece of masking tape labeled with either a nickel, dime, or quarter onto it and place them in a rummage sale. Two days later, we carted the unsold items to Goodwill.

One such summer, my “brilliant” thirteen-year-old brother observed that none of us kids made a dime off Mom’s rummage sales, even though the majority of stuff sold belonged to us. After an emergency meeting with my older brother and my twin, we approached Mom. She agreed that if we helped and if we gathered our own stuff to sell, we could keep the money. A nickel here, a dime there and soon all three of us would be rich. We tore through our bedroom. Yes, all three of us shared a room. I won’t lie. It got messy. The first items I sorted through were the piles of dirty laundry on the floor. Curse Mom, I thought. I could have sold my old Smurf underoos for a nickel if she hadn’t labeled my initials onto the tag. Unfortunately, all of our socks had a J, an E, or an M inscribed on them in permanent marker. I ruled out selling underwear and socks.

Aha! My taekwondo trophies. Who wouldn’t want one of those? I piled them into a box and carried them out to the garage. Out strutted my older brother with a superior grin cemented on his fat face. He slid my trophies aside and set up a display of our duplicate Star Wars action figures; Stormtroopers, Snowtroopers, Star Destroyer Commanders, Hammerheads, Walrus Man, Jawas, and Tusken Raiders. Who needed five R2 D2’s anyway? At a dime apiece, those action figures flew off the table as if Obi Wan Kenobi himself were using a Jedi mind trick on our customers.

An hour later, we replenished our stock. Out came toy X-wings, TIE Fighters, sandspeeders, and a Death Star play set. BOOM! By the end of the day everything Star Wars had been sold. Even the Boba Fett I received from a third grade gift exchange was gone. It felt weird to step into our room and not see the Millenium Falcon dangling from the ceiling or the stacks of Topps Star Wars trading cards strewn about the shelves. The five or six dollars in my grubby mits helped soothe any pain the sight of a Star Warsless room may have caused my eyes. I don’t recall what I bought with my share of the money—no doubt important stuff like candy bars and soda—but what I do remember is how jealous I felt years later when my buddies set up a shrine to their childhood Star Wars collectibles. I also felt like a chump shortly thereafter when I thumbed through a toy collector magazine and saw the current value of those toys we had sold for pennies. If only my brothers and I would have thought more about what we were doing that fateful summer day back in 1983, I could have saved the hundreds of dollars it took to rebuy some of those items. The bad idea of selling our toys for a measly fifteen bucks could have evolved into a big-time moneymaker just by waiting a decade and a half later. We could have fetched a handsome sum by auctioning those vinatge Star Wars collectibles on eBay.

See what a little foresight can do for an awful idea? For a writer, bad ideas spring up all the time. They may hinder a character’s potential or even ruin the plot. Those ideas may be bad for that particular story; however, after careful consideration and planning, those bad ideas may work wonders for a writer’s next character or project. It takes time and effort to transform a bad idea into a good one. The key is recognizing that an idea needs more work. If I would have taken a moment to reflect upon how losing my favorite toys would make me feel instead of being blinded by the almighty buck, I might still have my entire collection to share with my sons.

At least I learned a valuable lesson. You can bet I’ll never sell my Jar Jar Binks collectors cup or my Darth Maul T-Shirt. Who knows, maybe I’ll draw some inspiration from my youthful mistake. There is a story idea in it somewhere.