Just a short one this week. My deadline looms like a black wave of destiny and I can’t spend too long here in the warm, pleasant shallows of Bloggy Lake. So, to a question all writers get asked. Where do you come up with your ideas?
The short answer is, our imaginations, dummy. If you don’t have much of an imagination you’re never going to be much of a storyteller, unless you have a particular eye for reportage and you’re paying the rent working nonfiction narrative.
Where do the rest of us get them though? It’s funny and kind of counterintuitive but I suspect the toughest ideas to come up with and to make engaging on the page are the most prosaic. Mrs Birmo surprised me the other day by telling me she had an idea for a story which turned out to be really fucking awesome in a big L. literature kind of way. She’d thought the whole thing through from prologue to denouemont, including the characterizations. No I’m not going to tell you what it was, I may want to steal some of the ideas to flesh out my own much less intelligent stories later.
And it’s those much less intelligent stories to which I want to turn to address this question of where ideas come from. It’s a very individual thing. I haven’t got a fucking clue where Tim Winton gets his ideas. But I do have an inkling where people like Stephen King or SM Stirling get theirs; from the same bulk discount Ideas R Us warehouse I use, the one with the complementary mash up service.
A couple of people have e-mailed, or tweeted, or messaged me on Facebook recently asking whether I’ve seen King’s latest book about the town that gets trapped under the dome of the inexplicable energy. Quite a few of them wanted to know whether I’d be suing him, and if I was, whether they could get a spotter’s fee for alerting me to the opportunity to cash in.
Long story short, no. Anybody who thinks that Stephen King has even noticed Without Warning and then gone on to rip it off has a zero understanding of how long it takes to germinate an idea for a novel and what is involved in bringing that story into the world of real things, to borrow a phrase the King himself likes to use (and which I like to rip off occasionally in a bit of an homage).
I’ve explained a few times now where the original idea for Without Warning came from; an argument with a left-wing lunatic at a demonstration on campus way back in 1989. This guy was one of those guys who liked to blame America for everything. He worked himself up into such a rage when I wouldn’t agree with him that the Tiananmen Square massacre was America’s fault that he screamed at me the world would be a much better place if we all just woke up one day and they were gone, just gone, every last American in the world. That dumb ass suggestion must have caught like a fish hook in my brain (another Stephen King favorite) and kept nagging away for years until the idea of turning it into a novel finally occurred to me after a couple of months of frustrating negotiations to settle on the topic for a new trilogy after Axis of Time.
Where did King get his idea? Who knows, but I’m sure you’ll be able to google it up sometime in the next week as he does publicity for the book. Most likely the inspiration came from a number of sources. All of them equally unlikely. I remember reading somewhere that the inspiration for The Stand came from his reading a news article about the heiress Patty Hearst who was kidnapped by a 1970s urban terror group called the SLA. It was a stock standard news article which for some reason caused King to imagine what would happen if Hearst and her kidnappers were all bitten by a snake which gave them immunity to some sort of disease. From that small germ of an idea came the super flu, Randall Flagg, Mother Abigail, and one of the greatest end of the world novels ever written.
Likewise there was an interesting interview at brisbanetimes the other day with Charlie Brooker, the TV critic turned producer and screenwriter behind the excellent big brother/zombie mash up, Dead Set, currently screening on SBS on Monday nights. Asked where he got the inspiration what research he did in preparation Brooker replied:
I watched a lot of zombie films. I watch a lot of zombie films anyway, which is where the original idea came from. I wanted to make a zombie television series before the Big Brother angle came along. I’d decided I wanted to do a series that was a bit like 24 but set during a zombie apocalypse. Then, after having that thought, I was watching Big Brother when it occurred to me that that was the perfect setting.
For myself I’ve always liked the story of the inspiration behind Weapons of Choice. I was sitting in the library in Sydney research and Leviathan, or rather not researching Leviathan, when I picked up Matthew Reilly’s Ice Station and read it from cover to cover in a day and a half. I loved the hyper accelerated narrative form he used in that novel and it fused in my mind with all of the historical research I was doing, and a Steve Stirling book I just read, Island in the Sea of Time. You throw all of those ingredients together and all of a sudden you have an idea for a time traveling aircraft carrier going back to kick Hitler’s arse.
Is there any practical help or advice I can offer to move you through the process of generating ideas from what psychologists would call the day residue – a fancy term for all of the little bits and pieces that flow through our minds while we’re awake, often to be reprocessed in the form of dreams while we sleep. It is that minutia, scraps of news stories, fragments of conversation, an interesting character who wanders into our peripheral vision as we cross the road, that are the building blocks of our stories.
I suppose if I had one piece of advice about how to turn this stuff into narrative it would be to get into the habit of asking yourself, “what if?”
Depending on the type of story you want to write the what-if question can be more or less outrageous. What if a woman was forced by an evil Nazi camp doctor to choose between her children, might lead you if you were a writer of the caliber of William Styron, to compose Sophie’s Choice. What if the choice Snake Plissken makes at the end of Escape from LA, to fry the world’s electrical grid with a massive EMP actually sort of happened but in a different context? Then you’d have SM Stirling’s Dies the Fire.
Of course these are all big ideas for big books. There is another question I get asked often by journalism students; where do you get ideas for columns or feature articles. But that is a topic for another day.
It looks cuddly, but its deadly. Grrrrr….
I vote HVK for the leader of literary affairs.
I trounce that call and say we put him in charge of monetary grants to Australian Film Makers.
That way anyone who wants to make some preaching tale of misery in the burbs will have to get it past Havock.
Now that’s entertainment.
Great post.
There is a good Southpark episode where the boys want to do a prank and for everything they come up with, one says “simpsons did it”.
King has written so damn much (short stories to-in someways his best work)that half off all writers must go “what if..?” and then their partner says “Kings done it”.
That mans idea well is so deep it must literally come out the opther end in Australia (now that might explain alot…).
Infact what I like about King is that he’s the first to acknowledge the influence of other writers ( Wyndom, Materson )unlike many of todays writers of TV…….Whedon not guilty, Davies guilty.
Hope he catched WW warning in a bookshop though, he might just read it……
FK yeah. No more FKN dark tales of suburban woes. The closest I get to ANGST is havin to decide between RedTube and YouPorn
I also get to do minor re writes of course..just to ensure continuity of chaos..Imagine Breaker Morant..we woulda NUKED the fkn Boers
well..after the AoT thing happened and I popped back in time of course
Mrs Sparty just pointed out that actually Stephen King can be sarcastic and annoyed when pople ask him where ideas come from -which can be a bit rich given that he often says exactly where ideas come from in the afterword (and sometimes preface) of his short stories!
We still love him though.
I like this idea of being a snarky, unsociable, sarcastic and thoroughly unlikable author.
I mistrust this friendly sociable type.
I suspect in truth they are all secretly axe murderers, billowing around Brisbane in their darth vader capes and skintight black leisurewear between the hours of 3 and 5am, killing off traffic inspectors and cyclists who fail to equip their bikes with night vision.
One day the truth will out.
Great post, JB.
I was just discussing this issue with a friend the other day, after pointing her to your blog. She asked if I was a writer waiting to express myself and my response was basically no, I’ve got no great story in me at the moment, and no great ideas rattling around. I am however, kind of exploring the question of “What might I have to say/express via writing?”, whether fiction or otherwise with the assumption that I’d start in blog form.
So it’s kind of cool to look at where ideas come from, and more to the point, similar to Donna’s earlier comment, do we even hear our own ideas before our inner critic discounts them, or tells us not to bother?
Something I’m interested in is the space in which creativity arises, cause often I find I am too caught up in the minor details and “mental noise” of life, to be creative, but when I’m at peace with life and myself, I notice my creative thoughts a lot more.
Good post John, always the ideas are the hardest.
I suppose with the idea comes the ending and you’re half way there: just fill in the details.
Talking of ideas, I recently re-read The Pilo Family Circus by Will Elliott and it was the basic idea of the book that grabbed me as much as the book itself.
The idea, in “what if” format would be something like “What if, a regular young guy heading home to New Farm from a late night in The Valley interrupts the mission of a bunch of comic, violent, clumsy, psychotic clowns from a weird circus in a slightly alternate space and time?”
The idea just grabbed me:
1. It’s set locally, (which I love)
and 2. It’s clowns, which are almost as good as zombies
and 3. You get reeled into the story along with the main character.
It sounds like a story that’s been done before – Mr King’s IT must be the archetypal scary clown story – but he made these characters likeable despite their vioence and nastiness. It’s a great read if you get the chance.
Timmo I’ve met Will a few times and he’s a really nice guy.
The first time I met him he was speaking at a conference on mental illness about how the book was inspired by his own struggles with his delusions when he was psychotic.
My entire share house read ‘It’ at the same time and it scared the bejesus out of us. Lame ending though.
Well I can’t stand a bloody bar of Stephen King’s work.Nothing about his writing appeals to me. And. Meh.
There, I’ve immortalised that thought. I feel so much better.Sorry, I’m being a provoke-troll. But truly, am so over rich list best sellers. Mostly they’re mediocrity and crap . Sometimes they’re not but mostly, they bloody are.
Quokka: “What if we lived in a world without chocolate?”
There’s a term for ideas like that. Dystopias.
Abigail – do you like any writers that have been influenced by him?
quokka,
While I didn’t know that, it doesn’t surprise me to hear that it is inspired by personal experience with mental illness.
The initial part of the story – in that weird boundary between real and imagined, between light and shadow – was the most real and gripping, with a true sense of foreboding. After that I was hooked by the main character’s journey and where he was going to end up.
Glad to hear Will’s a nice guy – I just looked on his site to see he has a memoir out about his experience of life with schizophrenia. I might have to get a copy of that – sounds an interesting read.
I’m reading “Anathem” by Neal Stephenson at the mo’ and I recognise a concept that has run through SF for a bit: that of cloistered communities acting as repositories of knowledge as civilisation rises and falls. I first encountered it in “A Canticle for Liebowitz” by Walter M Miller and there’s echoes of it in “Against a Dark Background” by Iain Banks. I found an echo of this concept as I trudged around Cambridge yesterday and saw ancient buildings with modern infrastructure integrated onto them, in Lincoln I noticed an old castle tower with a crown of microwave relays, cell phone transmitters, dishes and other aerials tacked on. Things like that are a great spur to my imagination, I guess that I find it fundamentally reassuring to imagine that civilisation will always endure.
Banks gives a great description of an ancient structure continually in use and added to in his book.
if your into surfin’ necronauts and drugged out hippies, tim wintons “breath” is a fair read even for a fkn sandgroper. he’s even discovered my top secret breaks outta margaret river and those killer lefts on the eyre peninsular. hasn’t done the rock/coral shelf rights and lefts off of the old albany whaling station (salmon holes) tho’.
imagination ya reckon? …. nah, he’s relying on the fact that it’s so fkn far away from anywheres it’s all neva neva stuff. must admit it’s one of the only places (depending on time of day) you can stick yer big toe in the water and have 20 white pointers lined up competing for it. err maybe the byrons beach slaughter house comes close come to think of it. pz.v.
Hi Sparty- Yeah sure, quite possibly I do. I have an emotional response to individual writers and anything can happen from there. For all I know JB is influenced by him and I like John’s writing style very much indeed or I wouldn’t get anything out of interacting in his blogsphere. I just don’t like King’s style, or the production line feel to his work and never did.I know a lot of peeps do. Most people I know feel a sympatico wht his books. I am on an island there:)
I liked the film adaptations of Carrie and Stand by Me very much, but the books left me cold.It’s his style, and other things besides. (In the films, the acting was great: Sissy Spacek in Carrie, and all of the kids in SBM, plus the direction).
I try to keep an open mind and read across a lot of styles, but like anyone else, I’m not an endless pit of empathy for every writer. I try to be objective, but sometimes you just gotta draw a line on emotional grounds.
I like James Ellroy and Elmore Loenard way better :)
Though in Anathem the smart people are locked up because they found that if you did that, you slowed down the rapid rise and fall of civilization into something that was a bit more survivable. The concents weren’t there to protect knowledge – almost the opposite – they were there to stop it running rampant by locking up anyone who tested as a smartarse so that they’d be locked up doing monk type stuff instead of coming up with portable black hole missiles and shit like that.
Well we can agree on Elroy who interestingly agreed that his writing style had become too paired down even for him!
He did a great BBC world service bookclub interview (i got to ask a question!)which should be up on Dec 5th at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/arts/2009/03/000000_worldbookclub.shtml
Matt K,
Yeah I remember Asimov’s Nightfall having a similar idea, but the scientists were locked up to save their arses from being torn to shreds by a rioting mob, as I recall. I’m trying to think of other sci-fi that I know I’ve read with similar themes.
Orin, interesting to hear Stephenson has turned that on it’s head a bit – science as something to try and survive, rather than zealotry and fundamentalism. Anathem sounds good – it’s in the pile to read once I’ve got through Diamond Age.
Anathem is a good ‘un. Quite dense and chewy but a worthwhile take on the idea, or is it a meme? Something less than a genre.
I recommend “Against a Dark Background”, it’s not seen as one of Banks’ greatest but it’s got some lovely concepts in it; a solar system in a dust cloud so they see no (other) stars and are thus trapped in a cycle of decline and fall. And the aforementioned much accreted ancient structure; The Sea House, inhabited by a bunch of mad monks who are confined to the place in a truly original fashion.
I love Banks’ concepts, that and you never know, reading his books if it’s going to be one of his upbeat ones or a bleak one. (The clue’s in the title with “Against a Dark Background”).
Timmo – I didn’t know about the memoir so I’m glad you told me.
I like memoirs and non-fiction.
I haven’t read Will’s novel but I was very impressed with his story of how he pulled himself out of psychosis. We both have family with some serious MH issues so reading fiction about it tends to push me into overload.
Anyway, I was very pleased to hear him talk at the ARAFMI conference a few years ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZwM3GvaTRM
You see? Now this is what I mean about getting creative when a character really, really pisses you off, to the point where you’d like to drive a stake through their sparkly little vampire heart.
All those who’d like to see what happens when Buffy meets Edward, click on the above.
Having a good imagination definitely helps. Fuel Your Writing has a list of 10 ways to find inspiration:
http://www.fuelyourwriting.com/10-ways-to-find-inspiration-for-your-writing/
I find people-watching (yes, and eavesdropping a little) great for what-if triggers – seeing a snapshot of something playing out in real life, or not drowning out the annoying guy on his mobile on the bus, can sometimes lead to a bigger story.
And Quokka – thanks for the link! hee-larious.
Hey Sparty- cool, thanks a lot for posting it (Ellroy link).
Lucky you- well, if you like his style he’d have given you a very decisive and clear reply ,I’d imagine.
I met him years ago here in Canberra when he talked about writing/ doing his own work etc., for a couple of hours. He was very nice, interested in all sorts of stuff.
He also has a FB page and, like JB, uses it, chats away, so it’s interesting (rather than a lot of fan-child gush)
I suspect his weird early life helps him keep a sense of perspective about who he is, & that’s why he’s just a normal person (similar approach to JB)
given PNB’s fatal attraction to space chicks i just remembered this classic outta t wintons, breath, plus birmin’ams keyword of yesterday.
- an example of not leaving much to the imagination
“but i wasn’t sure what i knew except that she was silky-hot inside, and strong enough to hold me by the muscles in her pelvis and pin my arms to the bed so that i couldn’t have fought her off if i’d wanted to”
(eva and the dog, p206)
- there again ms myer (was it majorie?) may have been PNB’s perfect cup of tea given the incessant waffle.
pz.v.
Ideas- the problem with them is they can easily run out of steam, or get ruined in the execution. ‘Breath’ by Winton is a case in point. It was mentioned above and I think thats agreat example re ideas. His was great. It was simple and powerful and full of energy and suspense. But then like he does with his books, notice, he ran out of steam and it all fell over after he’d milked the sea and suffocation metaphors as far as he could (forexample, one of hios main characters is given the most unlikely, cliched hotel room demise which spoilt all of the relationship before it, for me, just by being too much of a good thing taken too far) . Maybe sometimes you have to be brutally honest with yourself and say “this idea has done all it possibly can before it starts to get ridiculous/ overstates the case (as Breath did after a while), time to wrap it up”. Short story writers have something to teach novelists, I think. Try Anton Chekov’s s/stories for brilliant execution of the idea.
re ‘Breath’: that said (comment above), othe rpeople argue the opposite- that his later life was portrayed wiht the right amount of rush because it was his earlier life which mattered and formed the rest. They also argue that the demise of the character referred to was what might feasibly have happened to them so it was valid. No right answer.It’s not I think he’s a bad writer ,he’s very good, but the idea is hard for the most skilled writer, we’re all only human and plenty of great stories suffer from ideas getting too opaque or too worn out. But I hate seeing an idea get thinner and thinner because it ruins the entire novel for me, even if the rest is great writing.
JB-You mentioned dreams as a storehouse. Agreed. You can get some really strange and wonderful ideas developing out of dreams. I write all mine down nowadays and mine them for material.
But
…I have a recurring dream about being in a disorienting post apocalyptic landscape , and even thjough it;s nit my natural kind of story writing, I feel sure I’ll use soem of that dream in a story & it will work because it is a part of me, rather than a tv show etc etc
Whoops, Damian- you were thinking alonmg the same lines much further up the page- (sorry I should have cut and paste). I think the same about the idea, really. It’s how you carry it off. Lots of sexy ideas turn on the writer later. I wonder if pace is a big factor here? It’s not how you end things, it’s how you begin things that you’ve gotta watch.
Great post, JB. Thanks for ‘correcting’ me on my hubris-inspired question regarding Stephen King’s novel.
Speaking of ideas, my latest short story takes the hysteria surrounding the H1N1 pandemic in NA, and projects it forward into a what if scenario. I have been personally bombarded by wall-to-wall coverage of the virus and had so many directives at work shoved down my throat (including the cancellation of the company Christmas party!) that they all joined in my brain into a wonderful idea for a story.
Look forward to more of those Friday posts.
mornin’ all (yawns), while maintaining a fox vigil (kill the fox kill the fox type blood and guts thingo) plus swapping untoward lesbian events of the last century with lowly drunken & desperado mates, then this weird fkn flash happening in the wee small hours under the light of the most slithery-’st moon this very morn of:
sfx: blue moon played on electric steel cello and w. atwells fav. piano at collaroy beach.
- birmin’am sorta sittin’, be-slung (arm in caste, pole – dancer style) astride this cold steel vehicle of geriatricity, the voice activated zenith space commander remote, christened “who’s a lazy boy”, in hand mexican banger sambo in ‘tother. his cuppa milk chai and heart starters within easy reach pending the ineviable. the pirate dbs 105.73″ centrifugal axis mounted plasma teev (with slingbox) cued and synced with the 16.1 surround sound with kick ass woofer firmly implanted in the lumbar section of the checker plate seat.
the supine anticipation and mouth wide openess is driving him crazy with desire as SG – which element of the universe will we ratfk with now, loads it’s digitized chore.
……..
like a shard of glass permanently embedded under his thumbnail, an orpine voice from the kitchen interrupts his alcohol-less addiction with “honey bunch, you do realise you’ve ONLY 504 hours, 23 minutes and as many seconds to D DAY ?”
go figure. v.
Thread hijack: to all Melbourne burgers. I’m in town till Wednesday this week. Wanna have lunch on Wed?
Virty- lol.
shit, utmost apologies all round, imagination obsessive syndrome forgot to add the fkn graphics …. have always thought mr, take a running jump onto a grand piano and trash the fkn thang, martin; totally besoffen (read hackedicht, very naughty german verd), sounded like steel slide cello.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrIstkuso98
the trash goanna thang is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9ZRBI0EIas
cheers.v.
Drinking some good stuff there virty?
right on MK, can’t recommend multitasking on watermelon daiquiris unless you use pint glasses and are on first name terms with ya fruit and veggie man. then the mule woke up, shotgunned the leftovers and started composing fkn mulettes (read minuets) at 3 in the morning. still got all these blood soaked shooters over the floor in the dungeon, note: can’t see syphilis bob in there anywheres, look real ugly. and there’s all these fox skins pegged to the clothesline.
- not half as bad as birmin’ams by the sound of it but our blood red moat around the chateaux is a first. there’s a thought, might start dredgin’ it for any vital signs of syphilis bob. waddaweek’nd.v.
by the by, my latest t.winton overaticus discovery.
- was skype-in’ with learned colleague over toulouse way in last days and she’s been hassling all the bookshops over there (and over the “borders”) for any of his stuff. like me she’s anti amazon/ online purchase rather into booksniffin’ and personal libraries.
now according to the winton propaganda machine, he’s “translated into twenty five languages”.
BUT
the local booksellers according me mate, reckon he’s not popular at all, they don’t stock him and have great problems ordering one offs from distributorships anyway (he is at least listed). they recommended amazon :(((( BAH and attribute this to the generic nature of his blurbs. i.e. the aussie imagery is lost in translation.
now for the follow up ;)
would be interested to know if that young birmin’am fella has had any troubles with this i.e. if his blurbs have indeed been translated for the euro/ asian market?
like marketing and re-wording to a yanky readership is one thang obviously, but what, if any, issues have you and your publishers had with “foreign speaking” markets given the limited subject matter. pz.v.
Steven Spielberg and Stephen King are developing a limited series based on King’s just-released supernatural thriller “Under the Dome,” reports Variety. DreamWorks TV has optioned the book and is looking to set it up as an event series, likely for cable.
MOTHER FKR… thing of the bunnies and the hovercraft that little project would have bought. all about the dome still… could have made a gold-plated bunny.
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“My deadline looms like a black wave of destiny”
Interesting.
And you call the killer force-field in Without Warning “The Wave”.
You wouldn’t happen to be into surfing, would you? I can picture a love/hate relationship with curls coming from the sport.