Writing Blog Number 2

20240119 Where (My) Ideas Come From

Where (My) Ideas Come From

I think the question I am most often asked at authors things is, “Where do you get your ideas from?”

Most often my story ideas are based on a simple “What if…” scenario. Some examples can be demonstrated in my published novels: “What if what we did as kids came back and affected our own kids?” “What if a farm was ruled by plants?” “What if a mythical European monster was set loose in Australia?” Then more questions come. That last one led to: How did it get there? Then came: How is it defeated? Then came: Who could the main characters be?

This “what if…?” could also be based on a book or film or TV show. I wrote a novelette (published by Alban Lake Publishing) where the question was, “What if Godzilla was a comedy?” I also have a collection dating back to 1987 of newspaper articles which have supplied me with a few ideas for stories based on “What if this story involved a demon?” or the like.

Sometimes, and this doesn't happen that often, I get an idea for an actual, fleshed-out character. This could also come from a newspaper article, a person I meet in real life, a combination of people. I rarely (in fact, I don’t think I have unless doing it for a deliberate parody) take a character already created by somebody else and place them in a different situation, even if I change settings and names.

A couple of times I have used dreams. Or other people have told me their dreams and I have taken them and run with them. I had a story published about a road strewn with dead cars that came from the dream of a guy I was living with at the time. That used to happen more when I was a teenager, but it is still there.

Then there is taking what I have already done and reworking it. So, going back to the mythical creature in Australia story, I took a character I had already developed for a different story (a short story) that had just not worked. I changed her occupation, kept her appearance and age, made her daughter younger and suddenly I had my female main character.

Some people use real-world things people believe in, like conspiracy theories, and treating them as real. Slight tangent here: The problem with conspiracy theories is that they ignore Occam's Razor. And the more convoluted the theory, the less plausible. But, really, Watergate started because a group of burglars couldn't do their job properly in a hotel, so how are thousands going to keep their mouth shut? Conspiracies make for fun reading. Yes, some (very, very few) turn out to have a modicum of truth in them, but not really. They do make for good stories, though; I have read some awesome stuff based on conspiracy theories.

I do like to say that I have characters and I just write their stories, and I honestly feel that way, but that usually results in me being called pretentious.

Now, that is me. I have a friend who I met through university recently whose way of writing a story is she has a message she wants to get across and then she couches it in a fantasy setting and tries to make it as subtle as possible. Another writer I know reads history books and just lets stories flow from that. Another, a romance writer, says she likes to write about situations that would make her feel good if she was the main character. She is such a good writer that I would never guess every character (by her own admission) starts as a version of her.

There is no one way to get started with a story. It is whatever works for you.

But then comes a scenario like this:
         I have ideas but have no idea how to start writing.
Or
         I come up with lots of great ideas for scenes, but can’t expand them.

This is tough. In both cases, my first thing would be don’t try to write a story. Just write scenes as they come to you. This could well result in you having a folder (real or on the computer) made up of just scenes, and these could seem unrelated to anything. The main thing is that you are writing (more on that later). The more you write, the chances are the longer these scenes will become and then, suddenly, you’ve written a complete story in 100 words (a drabble), or you’ve got a second related scene, or you can join it to a scene you’ve already written.

If you force it, it will not be as natural and the story will have more trouble flowing. But there is nothing wrong with just writing scenes, conversations, descriptions, whatever, and let the thoughts just come out onto paper..