At the risk of repeating myself, I've never had an original thought in my life. It has all been done before. I subscribe whole-heartedly to the concept that if you steal from one person, it's called plagiarism. If you steal from a lot of people, it's research.

Looking for an original topic for an article is pointless: to steal another quote, there haven't been any original ideas since Aristotle. Personally, I think Aristotle's idea theft is just undocumented. Trying to come up with original ideas is a waste of time.

Thus, I don’t look for original topics when I propose an article. I look for topics that have been successful for other games or topics that fill a need.

However, you still need to interest both the publisher and the reader. Readers don't necessarily want to think that they’re reading filler. They want something new, something that will add entertainment value to their game. In order to give them that (and give a publisher a reason to think that your work is better than mine or somebody else's) look for the new point of view of the same old topic. Mix it with one or two other things you haven’t seen it mixed with.

In order to achieve that, you have to be familiar with the market. The odds of you proposing something that has been done are very good if you don’t know what the market has already. Spend time browsing the new release shelf at your local game store. Subscribe to publisher mailing lists and find out what they're releasing. Visit news sites to find out what's being reprinted or revised.

The Secret of My Success

What I usually do when scrounging for an article idea is look for a lack that comes up during game play. My last 2E article for Dragon was on the topic of universal skills. How do you determine a non-thief's chance to climb walls or hear a noise? After 25 years, D&D either didn’t have basic rules for these things, or they were scattered across different books and hampered by "optional" status.

My hit-miss ratio at Dragon was terrible—they probably didn't buy 2/3 of the articles I submitted (and still printed about 20 of them, which should tell you something). However, I've gotten better. Instead of trying to force a magazine to buy what I want to write, I write what the readers buy. I don't often miss with a topic these days. (Execution is a different story and a different column.)

However bad my Dragon record was, it was my own fault. I knew I could always sell crunch articles by using my "look for a need and fill it" method. If the wizard spell list had one or two spells that you could design a theme around, an article that included 20 spells was always a sure thing.

That's how I ended up writing "Magic of Sight and Sound"; I noticed that a couple of spells dealt with pretty lights (like rainbow pattern) and/or music. They seemed to go together well as a theme. Add a couple of higher-level versions of low-level spells, low-level versions of high-level spells, and you have half an article already.

Ride that Wave

Similarly, you can take one example and expound on it. Holy swords are cool and powerful paladin weapons. What if you want something that's similarly cool but not so powerful? I offered Dragon "Holy Swords of the Realms" and they snagged it up.

If I had wanted to keep writing crunch articles, after I sold Holy Swords of the Realms, I could have modeled other magic weapons after the vorpal sword mechanic, in which a natural 20 inflicts some kind of effect on the target. One weapon would have blinded the creature struck, one might inflict disease, one could make the creature insane ... you get the idea.

Astronomers have an expression: there's no such thing as two. If more than one of something exists, an infinite number of that thing might exist in the vastness of space. The same concept applies to those crunch articles. Another example article inspired by the first one might have featured weapons that granted spells, like the luck blade that grants wishes. All-purpose useful spells include commune, contact outer plane, gate, etc. Tie in a bonus, give each item a history, and you have an article.

The dwarven hammer of thunderbolts was a player favorite and a potent magic item. One similar article could have covered lesser dwarven weapons, while at the same time, another article might have featured an elven longsword, a halfling sling, a gnomish pick, and a half-orc dagger.

To expand in another direction, I could have offered the same basic concept of variant holy swords for other settings: Grayhawk, Ravenloft, or Birthright.

Add those article ideas together, and can find yourself a slot in a market for a year merely because you chose to "flavor" a magic item differently.

Narrow Focus, Broad Appeal

Elves are my favorite topic for example use, because they're so overdone. Let's say you want to write about elves. Writing about all aspects of elves could take 200,000 words. You'd have to include comments about culture, history, language, religion, classes, sub-races, magic, communities, law, etc.

Narrow it down. How about elven wizards? That’s still pretty broad and doesn't have a hook. Half-elves? Races of Destiny did it. How about elven substitution levels for the arcane spellcasting races: wizard, sorcerer and bard? Now we're getting somewhere. You could find out what’s been done and what's still available.

How about elven archery for d20? You could discuss ways to build elven archer characters, including stats (beyond high score into Dex), which elven sub-race works best, how to build an archer out of each of the various classes, necessary equipment, skills, feats, religion, and other considerations.

Been Done Before

"Been done before" doesn't necessarily preclude a topic from being done again. There is a market for adapting older products to the current D20 rules or the latest revision of your favorite game setting (recently, the World of Darkness, GURPS and Shadowrun have all seen revisions).

Getting into that market requires that you add something to the original work. Players don't want to buy material that is 75% reprinted. You might begin with updating the subject for an advancing storyline. You could also add detail: expand a geographic area, add more information about cults, secret societies, religious movements, wizardly cabals, and other character groups.

You could even cover the same topic yourself more than once. Consider offering the same topic to different markets. Knights of the Dinner Table caters mostly to Hackmaster and D&D players. Pyramid's readers primarily play GURPS. You might be able to sell an article for Elven Archers for Hackmaster and D20 to KoDT, and a similar article tailored for GURPS could go to Pyramid. Make sure you change enough material to make both articles worthwhile for your audience to read.

Coming up with article topics should not be what's keeping you out of the high-paying magazines. Writers don’t earn money for ideas; writers earn money for execution. If you want to brainstorm article ideas here on the forum, let's do that. Next time I'll workshop one concept from the idea stage to a fully-developed article.