“Where Do You Get All Those Crazy Ideas?”

Every author, especially in the science fiction world, gets questions like this.  Actually, it’s a good question.  Let’s try to explore the idea process as it pertains to authors and creating stories.

Story ideas can come from anywhere.  From life, from problems, from things that nag you and just won’t let go, from things you’ve observed and wondered about.  The key is to be open to ideas and to record them in some fashion when they come.

1.     Simple Observation

 

One place to find ideas for stories or characters is to be a good observer.  Melissa Donovan describes this particularly well, at the ‘Writing Forward’ website:

First, let us dispel the myth that if you want to be a writer, you must have a vivid imagination. Plenty of writers have found success by being simple observers.

Mark Twain is a shining example. His idea for Huckleberry Finn wasn’t an idea at all; he simply based the character on someone he knew from real life. It turns out that the beloved character was practically a replica of Twain’s childhood friend, Tom Blankenship:

“In Huckleberry Finn I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had. His liberties were totally unrestricted. He was the only really independent person—boy or man—in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy and envied by the rest of us.” — Mark Twain

Have you ever known someone with a standout personality? Such a person can influence your work in the same way that Tom Blankenship influenced Mark Twain.

2.     Current (or recent) Events

Again, Melissa Donovan describes how to turn what you see or experience into a workable story…

During the Great Depression, hundreds of thousands of people migrated from the Dust Bowl to California and other western states. John Steinbeck (one of my literary heroes) told their story in The Grapes of Wrath, which was developed from a series of articles that ran in the San Francisco News in 1936.

But it was more than a story about people struggling with poverty in a downtrodden economic climate:

“I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this [the Great Depression and its effects].” — John Steinbeck

Steinbeck’s Pulitzer-Prize winning novel is a thoughtful commentary on social injustice and the forces behind poverty and oppression.

In today’s world, which is rampant with political, religious, and sociological commentary, one need not look far for writing ideas. If you can find an issue that matters to you, just look to the news and documentaries for true stories that you can use for inspiration.

3.     Making Connections Between Unrelated Things

You may find that reading widely (as I do), then letting your mind free-wheel will generate all kinds of odd connections.  Some of my ideas come when I’m swimming, working out, doing yard work, or am otherwise unengaged in work directly related to writing. Here, Melissa Donovan relates the story of Suzanne Collins, author of Hunger Games…

Suzanne Collins broke the mold with Hunger Games, arguably the most successful post-Harry Potter series to date. The books captured the hearts and minds of untold millions of young adult readers and the films turned the story into a cultural phenomenon. So how did she do it? Where did Collins get the idea for a dystopian, young adult novel set in a future where citizens are required to tune in to an annual reality show so they can watch teenagers fight to the death in an oversized arena?

“One night, I was lying in bed and I was very tired, and I was just sort of channel surfing on television. And, I was going through, flipping through images of reality television where there were these young people competing for a million dollars or a bachelor or whatever. And then I was flipping and I was seeing footage from the Iraq War. And these two things began to sort of fuse together in a very unsettling way, and that is when I, really, I think was the moment where I really got the idea for Katniss’s story.” — Suzanne Collins

You really don’t have to have a vivid imagination to create stories.  Look around you, be open to what you see and hear and write it down.  Let your mind wander.  The idea for my sf novel The Farpool (available at Smashwords.com) came from reading about dolphins and somehow conflating that with a weather report about waterspouts off the Gulf shores of Florida.  It didn’t hurt that I had done a story decades ago set on a similar oceanic planet.  Put all three together, mix it up and you have a science fiction novel that has been downloaded over 500 times in its first four months of existence.

The next post to The Word Shed comes on November 14.

See you then

Phil B.