Fiction writers share a lot with those inventors. It's not hard to get inspired by a great concept, to take it to your table or tool shed or cellar and do some brainstorming, and even to start putting the story on paper, but eventually, many of us lose traction. Why? Because development doesn't happen on its own. In fact, I've come to think that idea development is the No. 1 skill an author should have.

How do great authors develop stunning narratives, break from tradition and advance the form of their fiction? They take whatever basic ideas they've got, then move them away from the typical. No matter your starting point-a love story, buddy tale, mystery, quest-you can do like the great innovators do: Bend it. Amp it. Drive it. Strip it.

From The Classics

Chuck Palahniuk is on record as saying he drew heavily from The Great Gatsby to create his novel Fight Club. I've read both books (multiple times) but would not have perceived that parallel. He said, 'Really, what I was writing was just The Great Gatsby updated a little. It was 'apostolic' fiction-where a surviving apostle tells the story of his hero. There are two men and a woman. And one man, the hero, is shot to death.' Palahniuk took a traditional love story set in the high society of America's Roaring '20s and transformed it into a violent and bloody tale of sexual obsession, cultism and social disruption, set in a rotten world. He bent the ideas behind Gatsby into something all his own.

The next time you get a great idea for a story, don't stop there. Bend your initial concept, making it more unique-and more powerful-with every turn:

Get out of your head and into your pelvis. Give your characters inner yearnings (sexual or otherwise) that they don't understand and can't deal with cognitively. Palahniuk took his idea for an apostolic main character and gave him an unnamable urge, a gland-level longing that drives him to pretend to be a cancer patient and participate in support groups where hugging and crying are not only OK, but expected. Breaking the taboo against exploiting nonexistent pain does more than give the character relief: It moves the story forward in huge leaps.

Brainstorm who your own characters might be by starting with their motivations. Let's say you've come up with the idea that your main character is an insomniac who needs chocolate to fall asleep. Take that urge and bend it into something else that would be totally disquieting to anybody but your protagonist. Wouldn't it be more compelling if she has to, say, shoplift an expensive item precisely one hour before bedtime?

Break away from familiar parameters.

Most authors write characters who have backgrounds similar to their own, at least with respect to class, education and money. Throw that out. Write billionaires, bums, addicts, the hopeless, the heroic. Give them crappy, selfish habits, resentments, grudges. Mix traits. Make feral creatures out of urban sophisticates and urban sophisticates out of feral creatures.

Add insanity.

The key to making a character believably and compellingly crazy is to give him a way to rationalize his behavior, from the slightly weird to the outrageous. Is your character actually nuts, or is there something else going on? How can anybody tell? Crazy characters wind up needing a lot of resources to keep them out of trouble and can have a major impact on everybody else. Have fun with that.

Question Convention.

Use existential questions to bend the life lessons your readers think they've already learned: What is suffering? What is pleasure? What is a waste? What is worthwhile? Can something be both, or neither? Invite your characters to reject common wisdom and look for answers themselves.

Brief Encounter is a British film adapted from Noel Coward's play Still Life. It's the story of two quiet people who meet and fall in love in spite of being married to others, but then, conscience-stricken, break off the relationship before it really gets going. The small, exquisite tragedy resonated with the genteel, romantic codes of conduct valued in pre-war England.

But then along comes Tennessee Williams with his play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, a love story that has similar themes at its core, but rips us away from any semblance of civilization. Could Williams ever amp drama! For one thing, he knew that a story about noble ideals wouldn't cut it any more. Setting his play in the emotionally brutal melange of the postwar American South, he slashed into the secret marrow of his protagonists and antagonists alike, exposing the weaknesses and delusions that bind people together on the surface while tearing them apart below decks.

Take the essence of your story, and amp it:

Add characters and pile on the emotion. Playwrights used to limit the number of characters in their stories, not wanting to overcrowd the stage. But when Williams crams six or eight people onto the scene at once and sets them all at one another's throats, we get a chance to feel their emotional claustrophobia and unwanted interdependence. Amp up your action by adding cunning, vindictiveness, jealousy, fear of exposure, stupidity, even death.

Make even minor characters fierce and elemental.

Consider Mae and Gooper's five children in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, who lesser authors would describe (boringly) as 'brats' and leave offstage. Before you even see them, you witness their havoc (ruining Maggie's dress) and listen to Maggie call them 'no-neck monsters.' You don't even have to meet them to fear them. Then Williams gives them stage time, every second of which makes you squirm with discomfort.

Expose internal bleeding.

The deepest, most painful wounds are the invisible ones humans inflict on one another and ourselves in a hundred ways: betrayal, selfishness, abandonment. Strive to write characters who feel vulnerable to pain, whose secrets are so close to the surface that they can't afford to be polite. Put in a truth-teller and watch the inner flesh rip and sizzle.

Create blood ties.

Kinship is story gold. Take your pick of, and take your time with, its darker aspects: scapegoating, favoritism, jealousy. A blood link can instantly heighten any conflict. Why? Because kinship is the one thing in life you can't change or walk away from. Make your characters learn this the hard way.

Many great modern stories spring from the same seeds as old folk tales.

The subjugation of young women, for instance, is not only one of the oldest oppressions, it's one of the most pernicious, hence, it still resonates with audiences of all sorts. We first meet Cinderella in the scullery, a slave to the rough demands of her stepmother and older stepsisters. When Cinderella tries to take some initiative to improve her situation, she's squelched and punished. (I might add that the step-relationship is especially lush ground for storytellers, given the schizophrenic strength of the half-kin, half-stranger link.)