Elaborating on a story idea
I don't love Walter Jon Williams's novella "The Green Leopard Plague" (Asimov's, Oct/Nov 2003 double issue; excerpt available on Asimov's site). But I do like it, and I think it's a fascinating study in how to complexify a story idea.
The following list, which contains a fair number of high-level structural spoilers (I'm avoiding mentioning details, but the story's surprises will no longer be surprises if you read the following), describes some approaches that various kinds of writers might have taken to the central sfnal idea of this story, each one building on and incorporating the plot of the previous ones.
- (Basic/Linear/Brochure): A short-short in which a scientist in the relatively near future comes up with a cool idea for how to biologically change humans to eliminate hunger. The entire point of the story is "Look at this cool and unusual/surprising idea the author had!"
- (Thriller): Take that idea and turn it into a thriller, with intrigue and guns, and bad guys chasing the good guys and trying to steal or destroy the technology. Add characters with human/emotional motives and reactions. The original scientist may no longer be part of the story at this point.
- (New Wave): During the course of the thriller, have someone realize that actually implementing the idea will lead to utterly disastrous socioeconomic effects. Downbeat ending: either the idea is intentionally lost or destroyed to avoid the bad effects, or the idea is implemented and the bad effects happen.
- (Modern Economic SF): Have someone recognize the bad effects—and then come up with a way to fix the socioeconomic problems, turning the story into a science fiction story where the most important science is economics. Notice that at this point the specifics of the original central idea have become almost entirely unimportant; it could be any technology that has the same general effect.
- (Postcapitalist): Wrap the whole thing in a frame set several decades or a couple centuries later, in a world that has gone through the predicted changes, providing a different perspective on the original characters' actions and beliefs. Manage information flow to the reader, though, so that the reader isn't sure what kind of society the far-future society is until after the near-future storyline is mostly resolved.
- (Utopian Drama): Give the far-future framing story a plot and some personal-scale drama of a sort that works even in a near-utopia, without losing the immediacy of the framed near-future story.
It seems to me that a lot of authors get an idea for a new technology and write it up as a cute little piece that exists solely to present the idea. I'd like to see more authors take the next step, and the next one after that—explore the idea, don't be afraid to let it change the world, figure out how real people would react to it, provide drama and plot and characterization and, most importantly to me, emotional content.
Of course, the result may be a novella, which may be hard to sell. But you don't have to take the complexification as far as Williams does.