Greetings!
I thought I’d kick off the writing tips blog posts with the most basic topic I can think of (and one of the most popular questions I hear as an author): where you get story ideas from. Now, for some of you, this is a no-brainer. You’ve already got this handled. And to those people, I say, AWESOME! I promise I’ll get into more detailed subjects as time goes by.
The fact remains, however, that the question of where to get ideas for a short story or novel is one of the most popular I hear at convention panels, on talk shows, and like I said, a lot of people ask me. It’s like the answer is some big mystery. It really isn’t. Allow me to demystify it for you.
Before I go on, I’ll state my usual caveat with writing. Everyone has a different process. Everyone. If you ask one hundred different writers what their writing process is like, you will get one hundred different answers, from beginning to end. I can just tell you what my writing process is, and in the end–really–it’s what works for you that will make you the best writer you can be.
All right, with that out of the way–story ideas. Let’s go with the low-hanging fruit first:
- News, magazine, online articles: If you haven’t yet warmed up to the idea that you’ll be doing a lot of reading, you better start. There’s daily bits in the news that make for GREAT story ideas. Heck, with what’s going on in our American government right now, you can probably find something every hour to write about.
These other two are more general personality traits, but, stay with me here:
- Be observant: Always look around and be aware of your surroundings. You never know what you might see that will spark an idea for a story. The next novel I’m working on, Lights, came about from something I saw on a BART car (that’s Bay Area Rapid Transit, for those who live outside of the Bay Area). It wasn’t just what I saw, though, it was the demeanor of my fellow passengers in the car. It was like we were all sharing this beautiful secret we got to hide from how ugly and cruel the real world can be. Now, that was the seed of the novel. That’s how it starts–with the idea. When you read Lights (hoping to launch at the end of the year) you’ll find little of that initial idea. That’s because I did the next thing on the list…
- Always ask, “What if?”: Ask it, ask it, then ask it again. Keep asking “what if” and it will lead you to great places and fill out the bones of your novel. I wrote a short story once, the idea for which I got while waiting for my wife to finish shopping in Hobby Lobby. I was waiting, hanging around the picture frames aisles, when I noticed a large alcove that, from my view, was completely empty. That set my mind going: What if that area was used to sell something not on the floor? What would that be? Well, what if it was a place to come and ask for transport to anywhere in the universe? Who would be the customer? Not human beings. What if a human being stumbled on to it? And so on…
Certainly, there are more resources to get story ideas from, but these are my three, and they’ve served me well for many years. I hope if you struggle with finding ideas, you can use these and, after a while, finding ideas will be second nature for you.
Until next week!
David.