• Writing

    MICE: The Idea

    "idea" © 2005 by Tony Dowler
    "idea" © 2005 by Tony Dowler

    I was listening to a recent episode of the Writing Excuses podcast. It’s about Orson Scott Card’s M.I.C.E. quotient.

    M = Milieu (Setting, but S.I.C.E. doesn’t spell anything useful.)
    I = Idea
    C = Character
    E = Event

    Good stories will have more than one of these present. Novels may have all four. But one will usually stand dominant above the rest.

    I was thinking about this as I was driving to work the other day listening to a totally different podcast (Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing). They were talking on that podcast about whether published authors ever give negative book reviews.

    And I got to thinking about what makes even a book I wasn’t overly enthused about worth reading all the way through.

    I can forgive a lot of things, but I think Card’s M.I.C.E. quotient is a pretty good indicator of what I won’t forgive.

    In this post, I’ll talk about Idea, because it’s what came to mind first, and I think it’s the most unforgivable deficiency in these genres when it’s not there. Subsequent posts will deal with the other three components.