As a young writer, I used to think of my mind as some sort of divinely inspired mega-computer that was constantly online, plugged into the cosmos, being bombarded by story ideas, quotes and characters like the International Space Station is bombarded by space debris. I remember boasting gleefully to my agent, Deidre Knight of The Knight Agency, that I’d spent the weekend “downloading stories from my brain.” Talk about self-delusion.
As I spent more time writing (and as I grew the hell up), I realised that there’s no cosmic idea-generating alternative universe that has nothing better to do than throw ideas at me like litterbugs tossing beer bottles onto the highway. I discovered that finding ideas was hard—and finding good, fresh, useable ones was damn near impossible.
Y’all know what I mean. We’ve all been there, bashing our head against our keyboard like Don Music at his piano. “I’ll never get it! Never!”
But unless we want our store of ideas to dry up like a frog pond in April, we have to actively seek them out. Here are a few of the places I look for mine—and you can do the same.
Newspaper clippings
Over the years I’ve collected enough newspaper clippings to line a hundred hamster cages. I’m always snipping or tearing out articles that strike my fancy, be they about gruesome murders, weird fetishes, charming towns, or inspiring people. Maybe I’ll never use 90% of them . . . but think of all the things I can do with that last 10%!
Keep your eyes and ears open
Let’s not call it eavesdropping. Let’s call it “Casual attentive overhearing.” People say the damnedest things. Gossip. Scandal. Pathos. Wisdom. Hilarity. It’s all there, falling from the lips of friends and strangers like manna from heaven. And all ya gotta do is gather them up into your basket.
Did you know my novel, Love Me All The Way, was based on a single overheard sentence? I once heard a friend remark that her mother always said, “Never let a man give you pearls; he will one day make you cry.” I was so excited by the idea that I immediately tried to find out how I could turn it into a story. Who would give who pearls? And why would he make her cry?
Thump your Bible
Or any other work of scripture or mythology. The Bible is my favourite source of story ideas, and many of my novels have noticeable threads that trace back to well-loved stories. And why not? The book covers thousands of years of human history and is crammed full of every human foible and flaw: vanity, lust, murder, rape, incest, infidelity, lies, scheming, angels, demons, birth, death, hope and redemption. And that’s just the first couple of pages!
Visit your inner landscape
That’s just a fancy way of saying “daydream”. If you have a day job, develop the skill of working through your story while looking offally, offally interested in the staff-meeting purgatory you’re stuck in. Take discreet notes in the margins of your notepad. Learn to get up and slide into your fantasy while leaving your body behind, looking poised and attentive at the boardroom table.
Read, read, read
If I told you how many people have told me they want to be writers but hate to read, your earlobe hairs would all fall out from shock. Repeat after me: it is impossible to be a writer if you are not a reader. And no, I will not be taking counter-arguments at this time.
Explore your dreams
No, not the one with you, Forrest Gump, a motel room and a banana. Most of the time, dreams are your subconscious taking the piss out of you, but sometimes, the sneaky little diva throws a few gems your way. When it happens, for God’s sake write it down. Dream-ideas last for less time than morning dew on a warm car engine.
Doodle, you doodlebug
Sketches, drawings, charts and vision boards help you see what’s in your head. Once you see it, you can make it grow. And you don’t need to be the next great insert-hot-famous-artist’s-name-here to sketch out your ideas. You’re drawing for you and nobody else. Someone else thinks your WWII rapid-fire artillery canon-whatsit looks like a duck? Their problem, not yours.
Whatever you do, write your ideas down, no matter how dumb they sound at the time. Maybe the next time you look at them they’ll still look dumb.
But then again, maybe they won’t.
I’ve done my part. Now it’s your turn. Leave a comment below.
Reading has been the best source of ideas for me. And I read EVERYTHING when I was a teen. Now my tastes are a bit more streamlined but still enough to give me great ideas.
Agreed, but when I am working on a book I sometimes stop reading, at least in the same genre, for fear of contamination. I’d hate to subliminally absorb some storyline for it to come out in my own writing.