the age-old 'how do you get ideas'?

1) Write. Just sit down and type. Lots of times, you'll end up with wonderfully creative and interesting story lines/details/etc that way.

2) Keep your eyes and ears (even your nose) open. Whether you're reading the newspaper, talking to a client on the phone, watching TV, or taking a walk, you can almost always find an interesting detail that can be put in your story.

3) Keep a writing journal. I have a small notebook I carry in my briefcase and another I keep in my purse, so whether I'm "on the clock" or off, I have a place to jot down writing ideas. My notebooks are filled with funny bits of dialogue I hear, details I've noticed, ideas for future novels, etc. When I need inspiration, I flip through these journals.

Good luck!

Personally, I just observe and think about things constantly. And I always ask myself why things are the way they are, and what would happen if they were different.

Most of the ideas I've had for my own writing come either from that or from situations I've found myself in which seemed so out of the ordinary that I just thought, "There's got to be a story here somewhere."

As for filling in the blanks, I'm afraid I suffer the same malady. However, I have begun to learn that good ideas tend to come from lots of bad ones. In other words, the more ideas you have, the more good ideas you'll have. Also, it's important to realize that not all ideas make for good storytelling.

I frequently just bounce ideas off of my girlfriend. Sometimes I try to explain my idea and am met with a blank stare. Other times I can't even finish the explanation because I realize how absurd or unworkable the idea is. On rare occasions, she has said something to the effect of, "That sounds like a story that should have already been written." When she says that, I know that I'm either on to something or have unwittingly stolen the idea. ^_^

Tough question to answer! To me it's akin to asking "How do you hang decorations on a Christmas tree?" Well, you take the decorations and... hang them on the tree. I don't think I've analyzed the action, I just keep hanging the decorations until it looks kinda balanced. Sometimes I drop a couple of baubles and they break, so I replace them with better-looking ones. Then I realize I forgot to put the fairy at the top.

...And that's probably not helping at all. You've got me thinking back to how I wrote past stories, what sparked the ideas, how details got filled in until the story finally came together. I always had a goal in mind -- always saw the final scene first, so I knew how the story would end, which made getting there easier.

-Derek

Same way as you do.

satyesu said:

And, moreover, when you get an inkling of a character or plot, how do you fill in the spaces you haven't figured out yet?
I know there's no switch to flip or formula to follow, but I guess there's no harm in asking

Click to expand...

satyesu said:

And, moreover, when you get an inkling of a character or plot, how do you fill in the spaces you haven't figured out yet?

Click to expand...

I forget about the inkling. Honestly. I throw it out of my conscious mind and into whatever vat of creativity exists in my un/subconscious mind. When several ideas from various sources finally form a useable goop--and I'm in the mood to look for a new novel idea and play with the useable goop--it's there and ready for me to do something with.

And if it's not quite useable, it goes back into the vat to continue to goopify until it is totally useable.

Works for me.

You can try to find existing works that share your 'inkled' element and see what other authors have done with it. This works as frequently by reverse psychology as by straightforward emulation; you want to write about, say, a spy, but some examples are too campy, or some are too horrific/gory, or some are too mundane... you often realize what you subconsciously want to do by realizing what you definitely don't want to do.

Then there are various brainstorming exercises like going to a bookstore and just looking at titles and imagining what a book with that title would be about, or like dealing tarot cards for your characters, or one of those books/card sets of random writing prompts.

And sometimes the structured approach of a writer's aid program or workbook can spark ideas by asking you questions about your idea or providing thematic terms for you to puzzle over how they are expressed in your story.

Then finally there's posting your partial idea on a messageboard (or describing it to friends) to see if they have any suggestions.

But for all these methods, I still often get stuck without good plot ideas or ideas for how to make seemingly inconsistent elements fit together.

Think about stuff. Jot stuff down. Only keep the cool stuff.

I second the 'Write' suggestion. My characters tend to know more than I do.

I'll just sit down and write the scene, even if I don't know where I'm going with it. I'll have the characters look around, dig through drawers, move furniture, talk to each other, whatever.

For example, recently I knew my characters had to go to someone's house to find they'd gone missing. They start poking about the room and find two things that directly tie into the villian's motives. I wrote the scene, thought about the stuff they'd found, did a little research, and figured out why what they found was interesting, in that order.

You're not necessarily trying to get that perfect final scene here. You're just trying to get the characters doing something that will give you a lead in to the next step, or next stage. If the scene gets tossed in revision 6, it's not gonna matter - you've got what you need out of it.

The stork brings them.

satyesu said:

And, moreover, when you get an inkling of a character or plot, how do you fill in the spaces you haven't figured out yet?
I know there's no switch to flip or formula to follow, but I guess there's no harm in asking

Click to expand...

Since I write mostly historical fiction, it's probably a little bit easier for me than for many other folks to get ideas. I find an event or a specific character from the past that interests me, and I start exploring the real history. As I research, I keep a list of questions that have stumped me, or a list of things I want to know more about. As I search for the answers to questions or more clarity on the fine points that hold my interest, I come up with more and more questions until a plot begins to form in my brain.

For example, my current WIP takes place in ancient Egypt and is about the parents of Hatshepsut, the female Pharaoh. I started out intending to write a novel about Hatshepsut's life (and still intend to), but while researching Hatshepsut I learned about a curious inscription on the wall of the temple she built that tells an "origin story." The story claims that she has a male soul and was intended by the gods to be male, and that her mother actually conceived her with a god, not with her mortal father. The story is certainly political propaganda, used to legitimize her unusual reign, but I started asking myself, "What if SOMEBODY really believed that this story was true? What if that somebody was Hatshepsut's mother?"

From those questions, an entire 120,000-word book formed. It took some time to develop characters and play around with the plot, but I think it's going well, and it's amost done. And then it'll be edited down to something less than 120,000 words.

So, for me, it's just asking questions. Here's a bit of the process that helped fill in the plot holes for God's Wife, my present WIP (title probably to be changed soon.) Once I settled on Hatshepsut's mom believing that her child had a male soul and was the offspring of a god, I asked and answered these questions:

Why would she believe this? What reason would she have for trusting such an unusual belief? Because she's been a visionary and an interpreter of dreams her whole life. She doesn't always get the dreams right, but she thinks she always does.

Well, okay, so she's a visionary and she has a daughter. What stands in her way, aside from the fact that it's unusual for a female to be the heir to the throne? Ancient Egyptians weren't particularly hostile toward women, and many women held a great deal of power. So what really stands in Ahmose's way of making her daughter the heir? Oh, look! My research has uncovered the fact that Hatshepsut's father had three sons who all died long before he did. Maybe Hatshepsut couldn't be the heir not only because she was female, but because there were these boy children hanging around messing things up for her mother. Research indicates that the boys were probably the children of a lesser queen named Mutnofret.

Who was Mutnofret? Research doesn't give me many clues, other than that she was married to the Pharaoh and was probably the mother of his sons. If she was married to the Pharaoh, she was probably from the royal family.

What if Ahmose and Mutnofret were sisters? What if Mutnofret was supposed to be the First Queen, but for political reasons, Ahmose, the younger sister, was chosen instead? Ahhh, now I've got some real conflict going. Ahmose and Mutnofret start out with strong conflict early in their lives, and as they become mothers that conflict carries over into a competition between them to see whose child will become the heir to the throne.

And on it goes. Just asking myself questions in a "what if" format allows me to play around with answers, which turn into strong ideas, which turn into plots and characters.

I'm sure there are tons of other ways to do it, but I've been really happy with the results I've had from finding something that piques my interest -- maybe something as bland as an engraving on a temple wall -- and asking myself a string of questions about it. I hope that helps give you some ideas!

Newspaper articles etc.

My crime novel was kick started by my irritation at the way kidnap stories are handled in soaps etc.

The two books I'm plotting are historical novels based around Scottish Kings. One came from a Uni lecture, the other this weekend when sightseeing a pre-Reformation abbey where one King is buried.

The only time I took Salvia I filled three notebooks with largely incomprehensible scrawlings. Those bits that I can decipher however have given me some really good ideas, I seem to only have real skill at writing when under the influence of psychotropics. It's like William Blake's prophecies, but a little less lucid. If nothing else writing them up provides good dream sequences.

I am not recommending the use of any substances of questionable legality. A bottle of scotch was enough for Hemmingway after all. Like with many situations I use mind altering substances as a crutch for deep seated personal failings.

Really the best way of getting ideas is the same as learning how to experience lucid dreams. Many people say 'oh, I just don't remember any of my dreams' and this is true, people don't remember dreams unless they wake up immediatley after them. However, if you just tell yourself that you will remember your dreams upon waking (but you can't force it), after several days you will notice more rememberance of dreams.

It's similar for ideas. If you train yourself to write down every idea you have, no matter how awful, eventually you will see your brain developing and the ideas becoming better and better. This is dependant on regular exercise however, read things, watch things, especially things you wouldn't consider otherwise. It doesn't matter what.

Whenever something plants itself in my brain and won't let go, I type the seed of the idea in a file on my PC, and the idea then recedes to the back of my consciousness, where it and every other idea I have percolates until ready, at which point I have no choice but to start writing, because it will drive me to distraction otherwise.

The actual ideas come from the aliens that beam them there. Or it might be the best-selling future me using a time/thought transference device to ensure I write what he's sold.

More likely it's from my subconscious.

Fairies bring them to me in my deams~

My ideas come from everywhere. The more I use or jot down, the more I get. Sometimes it's a word spoken or read. Sometimes it's a name. Sometimes it's a phrase in a book or newspaper. Sometimes they come out of nowhere and pop into my head while I'm performing some mundane task. The world is filled with potential ideas. You just have to open your mind and see them.

I have a subscription to WRITING IDEAS magazine. It's not cheap, but it's definitely worth the price.

And time. It takes time for more ideas to cling to the current ideas.

I'm glad I was only 1/3 through my WIP when I thought, "For a person so concerned with rain, you'd think he'd own a barometer." [forehead slap]

And, slightly off topic, research is helpful too. I was 1/4 through when I found out postal LLV trucks have only one seat. Doh!

satyesu said:

And, moreover, when you get an inkling of a character or plot, how do you fill in the spaces you haven't figured out yet?

Click to expand...

If I have the character already sometimes I'll just "take them out for a walk" which sounds odd, but I'll wake them up on any given day and see where they take me, let the character take over telling you about there day.

And then sometimes I'll go to one of those online classified pages (craigs) and click on the link that says 'for sale' and read classified while trying to imagine the person behind the ad, at least I used to do that, then I'd run across these adds for "Everything you could ever want for a three year old boy's room" and I would start crying for no reason and I kinda stopped doing that -heh- oops nm. Guess I need to be more positive huh?

To fill in the blanks on stuff I haven't figured out yet, I play "what if" games. When I find something I think works, I flow with it.

Where I get my ideas from:

Each of my stories is made up of hundreds of ideas, from a multitude of places. My WIP's ideas include my experiences at science fiction conventions; news articles in Washington, DC on the last election (not on the election, mind you, but on the clothes and the image, etc.); old movies; genealogy; Antiques Roadshow; museums, research; and even my family's house (in the avatar). And that's not even all of them.

My next one, still in development, started with something my father said. He'd called me up in one day and said, "They just had a major drug bust. You'll never guess where!" Since it had to be some place least like to, Solvang, California, and Morro Bay, California, were both at the top of my list. I'd been to both many times. The drug bust was in Morro Bay. So that got me thinking about doing a book set in Morro Bay, since there's only two that I know of. While doing some researching, I discovered it, too, had provided an idea for my first one.

And, moreover, when you get an inkling of a character or plot, how do you fill in the spaces you haven't figured out yet?

Click to expand...

I do think a novel is not just made up of one idea, but hundreds of ideas. Little things pop across at the right time that get me thinking. I might be doing research on something like auctions and pop across a simple sentence, but it gives an idea to something else. But I also go with ideas that I can write. I don't pick stuff that's so outside my range that I'd have to research it to death just to get it right or that just isn't me.

In my currant WIP I used ideas of things that occurred all around me. Coruption of law enforcement is happening now in my town. I took that seed and expanded and added and invented. In a carwreck scene I used one of my children's experience. A woman dying in my mc's arms came from an experience my father had when I was a little girl. The legal stuff in coming chapters are a laundry list of ideas that have come from my daughters. One is a cop the other is in forensic medicine. And my son, unfortunatesly was addicted to meth a few years ago. He is my foremost advior in all that I write comcerning the user in my piece. So I am a big fan of writing about what you know. It is a good way to come up with believable ideas.
jane

I prefer to take something, a collect of objects, a photograph, a piece of music, and try to find a story in it. Most of the time the stories are crap, stilted, ridiculous, over-done, or all of the above. A small fraction of the time I get something usable.

I find the newspaper to be one of the best sources for stories. Really, most of the time you are just getting a snapshot of a family or a person, usually on one of the worst, most traumatic days of their lives. I often find myself wondering what those people are like, what led them to that particular circumstance and how they will cope once the spotlight fades.

I also like writing from my own personal cache of experiences. I have my share of experiences that make for great stories but are too personal to share with all but my closest intimates. Turning them into fiction is a good way to share them.

I've talked to writers who practice by selecting an object and writing a story about it. You could select an object, person or incident and create a story around it.
How about an off-shoot from an old movie? was there an interesting character in the movie that you want to know more about? write a story about him/her.
How about an interesting place. I've written two stories with Washington, DC as the background. I've been there a few times, researched it on the INTERNET, and read a novel based there. You can't go wrong with Goggle Maps. You can put yourself right down in the street in many places.