Writing Excuses Season 10, the podcasted master-class, continues with this exploration of that critical second step: what do do once you’ve got an idea that has story-legs.

(Note: When we say “two weeks ago” over and over, that’s just bad math. You haven’t missed an episode.)

We talk about our various approaches to this, many of which center around finding the person or people who are most affected by the thing our idea conjures into their world, but that’s really only the very beginning of it.

Using last week’s five story ideas (or five new ones): Take two of them and combine them into one story.

Take one and change the genre underneath it.

Take one and change the ages and genders of everybody you had in mind for it

Take the last one and have a character make the opposite choice.