One of the questions I often get asked is 'where do you get your ideas?' and to be honest it's one of the hardest questions to answer. Ideas are easy to come by, they pop in when I'm least expecting them and can surprise me, they're the easiest bit of writing - but knowing where they come from is a whole other topic.
Ideas Can Come From Anywhere
News - When a report on the TV tells of a man being stabbed after an argument, or a woman being attacked in the dead of night I wonder what happened and my writer brain goes into overdrive. From one report I'll be inspired and have 5 or 6 new ideas.
TV Shows - I'm inspired by serial killer shows, one of my favourites is Dexter. It's a bit of a knife edge (no pun intended!) when you're inspired by shows though, you don't want to copy the idea they came up with but your own idea has legs.
You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.
Washing the dishes - Most of my ideas come to me when I'm doing mundane chores. My mind wanders, I glance to the side of the sink and spy a knife and my writer mind goes 'aha!' and spins a tale. Or I'll be changing the bedding wishing I could just hide away from the cleaning and BAM! Another idea.
Ideas can trickle in, little snippets or images come together to form a whole story. They can hit me like freight train - BOOM! Or they just pop into my head, sitting there nagging me until I put them down on paper.
Ideas are Easy
Some writers say an idea needs to be interesting, it needs to have appeal, but I think it's not necessarily the idea that has to be interesting. For example my short story Where To Hide came from the idea of standing in front of the kitchen sink and hearing a boom outside. The story naturally grew from there. There's nothing very interesting about standing in front of the kitchen sink - but what the boom was, where it came from, and who caused it, can inspire a whole range of new ideas. Even now as I write I'm hit with new ideas from that same start.
I don't know where the ideas come from. I make them up, like Neil Gaiman says "Out of my head." Whether it's imagination, creative brain, or something inherent, I don't know but I'm going to utilise it as much as possible.
Writing is Hard
So yes, it's easy coming up with ideas - it's probably the easiest part of writing. It's the next stages that are difficult.
Creating characters.
A storyline.
A believable plot.
Writing word after word after word.
...wishing I could just hide away from the cleaning and BAM! Another idea.
That's the hard bit.
Staring at a blank page is the scariest part of my day. Wondering whether the inspiration will come and I'll write word after word, wondering if the storyline will be coherent, hoping beyond hope that that page doesn't stay blank.
And then there's tidying up a first draft - oh boy! This is the stage I'm at now and it's terrifying but exciting at the same time. I get to work on my writing and improve it, change it around and make the plot lines work better.
Ideas come easily, it's the writing that's hard.
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