People ask me where I get my writing ideas. The best answer is everywhere, but most people won’t find that answer very edifying. I understand their reaction. Everywhere can mean on the side of a breakfast cereal box, in the pattern of clouds in the sky, in the instruction manual for newly purchased software, in other words, everywhere. So where is my “everywhere,” exactly?
I found the idea for my latest Robert Champion novel, Insure to Murder, in an article on the front page of the Sunday New York Times back in 2006. I let the idea gestate for a few years before I developed it and finally wrote the novel. That gestation period will be the subject for future blog entries.
The “idea” for my novel, Not Just A Girl, came during the writing of another novel. The “idea” actually came in the form of the two main characters – Richie and Roxanne. When I heard them talking to each other, I listened. I started taking down their conversation. As I listened to their voices, I began to “see” them. That experience gave me enough information to start creating their story. Other characters, the story line and the plot began to develop. Areas where research would be needed became clear and obvious.
To return to Insure to Murder, many of the ideas I get for writing projects come from newspapers. The Sunday edition of the New York Times is a good source. Newspapers are an excellent source for stories that serve as the seed for a crime story or novel, since one of the main functions of a newspaper is to report on crime. The writer needs only to apply his or her imagination and the tools in the writer’s toolbox to expand and build on a news story, using it without the specifics, to build a new story worth telling.
So where do you get your ideas?
By the way a great blog-resource for self-publishing writers is the writer’s blog:
http://www.selfpubauthors.com
The Self Publishing Authors Helping Other Authors blog is run by several very smart, self-published writers who offer plenty advice for new eNovelists-Writers. It’s worth checking out.
