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.
Jane as in Mrs Birmo or as in SJS?
I find mind maps pretty good for tracking ideas. Mind maps also tend (at least for me) to allow me to pull an idea apart.
Another bit of wisdom I heard (though I don’t remember from where) – Getting ideas is never a problem – getting GOOD ideas is rather more challenging ;-)
LOL. Mrs b. I’ll edit for clarity above.
Creepy. I was thinking about Inspiration last night.
I was watching NOIR and started to flesh out some vague details in an artbook-turned-notebook about a conspiracy. (I can’t figure out a good conspiracy though.)
Jb thanks for the read. Is Reilly still writing? I saw him speak once at our school and he just said he wanted everything to be a Hollywood action movie in words. Do you ever find you hit a wall a short way in? Am writing a book about running cattle on the roofs of city buildings and keep stalling! Have a good weekend.
Now don’t laugh!…I toyed with an idea years ago…’what if’ mutant mossies from space infiltrated a highly classified lab and an alien disguised as an entomologist set them out to infect a select group of people who would then do the dirty work in the dark of the night (with no memory of it) for said alien race. It just stopped dead because I found it hard to flesh it out or perhaps I had no faith in my ability to research the intricacies of a topic for which I have no qualifications.
Then again it might work if I took out the alien element and gave the bad guys a more tangible face.
ORIN: Where do you get a hold of those mind maps?
Thanks for allowing me to think out loud…well on screen.
NatV, it is a dumb idea in its particulars, but a GREAT idea in principle – ie. blood-borne transmission of control. So you take the great idea (which is ‘control’) and swap out the dumb bit (space mosquitoes). See where it takes you.
Now I must get back to my paying work. I will indulge in this thread at length sometime later.
Birmo that is much appreciated! Yes of course that is the answer.
I just found some notes I wrote about it years ago:
Certain members of society experience their dream life in a sleep walking state. Their bodies are possessed at night when asleep and they effectively lead a double life. They physically participate in scurrilous activities at night without any memory upon waking. These chosen ones meet in their dream state in a variety of scenarios but lead separate lives during the daytime as if their dream memories are wiped by an external force each morning and reinstated again that night. One character starts to suffer from acute paranoia when recollecting their dreams and he begins to question what is happening. This is the catalyst that unravels the motivation behind the controlling force in the story.
The blood-borne transmission of control concept could work nicely! Cheers.
Nat – the website bubbl.us is a free mind mapping application. I use Visio on my numerous computers and Mind Manager on my iPod Touch.
Thank you sincerely Orin.
reckon it all kicks orf with those fkn grommits in 4th form/grade english lit. and the priest reciting frikken revelations verbatum.
plagiarism & imitation.
and we’re gettin’ anal about it these days (in academia anyways) purely because one in two students are guilty as sin.
break that out into the real world and you have the current standard of literature (and reportage).
’tis the nature of the beast tho’, from liddle thangs these big thangs grow.
it’s endemic.
- happens with music lix big time, like how many songs do you hear that “sounds familiar” … a litigious minefield.
there’s a lot more to “sonata form” than meets the eye
as birmingham will attest no doubt, good drugs help in maintaining the gonzo attitude inc. perception e.g. fear and loathing in vegas, les paradis artificiels, aldous huxley and of course let us not omit, carlo castenada (yaqui way of knowledge) and enid blyton to name but a few.
we won’t even mention gregorian chant, the verve and coldplay in relation to plunderphonics and blatant theft.
pz.v.
About 10 years ago I was dating a local writer who had been working on his first novel for two years already when suddenly two big movies came out with similar ideas in them. He was distraught for a moment but is enough difference between those stories that he couldn’t be accused of trying to cash in on a trend.
As it turns out that ambitious novel he intended to be his first ended up taking another 8 or 9 years to finish. He’s published other work in the meantime.
My point is that it seems there are these similar ideas for stories floating about in the communal mindspace, even when the ideas seem very obscure. Even though the long process of publishing and movie making does the ideas the favour of spacing out their delivery to the public, they sometimes all hit the theatres and shops at the same time.
Thanks, JB.
I like the ‘What if?’ tactics but must admit that my biggest triggers for inspiration tend to derive from irritation.
i.e. ‘As if!
Something that starts off as a splinter of irritation for me can fester into the kind of festering obsessive brain spit along the lines of ‘But that would never happen. THIS is what would happen…’ and before I know it I’m off in some surreal bizzaro universe, where the antithesis of the character or scenario that’s annoyed me rises, like Venus, foam flecked from the sea.
Except given that the Devil Made Me Do It, perhaps I should say the idea appears like an imp on a sulphur rock, prodding me to go forth and mess with some icon of modern day literature.
This is why, on occasion, I think its good to read things that annoy the bejesus out of you.
Some of the stories I’ve most enjoyed have been those that have been written in the point of view of a character in a novel who was never allowed a voice.
i.e ‘The Wide Sargasso Sea’ by Jean Rhys.
Another girly one, written from the POV of the mad wife of the first Mrs. Rochester in Jane Eyre.
Orin – mindmapping ROCKS!
I especially love showing my mindmaps to the computing geeks at uni and spinning them out. “How hell do you turn that into a linear sequence?!” they wail.
BWAW-HAW-HAW-HAAAWW!!!
Mindmapping _doubled_ my essay marks instantly.
I read once that there are only 7 basic plots and all story ideas are a variation on these somehow:
1. Overcoming the monster — defeating some force which threatens… e.g. most Hollywood movies; Star Wars, James Bond.
2. The Quest — typically a group setoff in search of something and (usually) find it. e.g. Watership Down, Pilgrim’s Progress.
3. Journey and Return — the hero journeys away from home to somewhere different and finally comes back having experienced something and maybe changed for the better. e.g. Wizard of Oz, Gullivers Travels.
4. Comedy – not neccesarily a funny plot. Some kind of
misunderstanding or ignorance is created that keeps parties apart which is resolved towards the end bringing them back together. e.g. Bridget Jones Diary, War and Peace.
5. Tragedy – Someone is tempted in some way, vanity, greed etc and becomes increasingly desperate or trapped by their actions until at a climax they usually die. Unless it’s a Hollywood movie, when they escape to a happy ending. e.g. Devils’ Advocate, Hamlet.
6. Rebirth – hero is captured or oppressed and seems to be in a state of living death until it seems all is lost when miraculously they are freed. e.g. Snow White.
7. Rags to Riches – self explanatory really. e.g. Cinderella & derivatives
Quoks- agreed about Wide Sargasso Sea and voice. good call.
JB- all of these writing tutes have been good, bt this is the stand out for me because ideas, well, they’re tricky. I have half ideas most of the time.
FKNVIRTY: There’s a lot more to “sonata form” than meets the eye.
Indeed. All music is based on the three concepts of repetition, variation and contrast. All too often the subject for this process (melody or riff) is not always entirely original in modern popular music. To make an analogy with writing I guess I’m trying to say is that the underlining subject matter is not always original…the genius is in how it is manipulated and fully realized.
+++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.+++
Bang on. Several authors I know refer to this as their “cultural stash”, and note the importance of not just drawing on it but consciously replenishing it, by taking in new stuff all the time: people, places, books, facts, whatever.
My own nickname is “the solution”, or sometimes “the chemical pool”, because my analogy for germinating ideas is with those experiments from school science class where you made a supersaturated solution of some chemical, usually salt, then lowered a string into it and drew it out a few hours later covered in crystals. Everything I hear, read, see, study, it all gets hoovered up and dumped into that solution to dissolve. Then the little idea-seed gets lowered in there and, if it’s a good one, the thoughts and story elements will crystallise around it.
I think the point’s worth reiterating that that stash, solution or whatever needs deliberate cultivation and replenishing. A writer who doesn’t have a deep or varied stash will tend to produce stuff that’s similarly shallow; a writer who doesn’t fill their stash with all sorts of different flavours and colours will produce work that’s similarly grey. The weirder and more diverse the mix of stuff that you dissolve into that solution, the brighter and better the stuff you draw out will be.
It’s why I maintain that just as important as imagination is curiosity. The more curious a writer gets, the more willing to grab up stuff that’s completely outside their normal experience, and the more willing to catch themselves in the act of thinking “eh, that’s not what I’m into” and to expose themselves to that thing and find the interest there, the better their ideas will get. To quote Pratchett, writers should import, not recycle.
On the other hand, a lot of writers will say that the case for the Great Idea is overstated, that ideas come along constantly, to all of us. A non-writer may think that a writer has their Amazing Idea and that’s it, that’s the book in the bag, but what really makes the writer is the way they can hang onto the idea, grow and develop it and express it.
Aaron Alston once said he gets a lot of people saying “hey, I’ve got this awesome idea for a story, why don’t I tell you it, and you write it, and we’ll split the money?” To which he said he’s always wanted to respond “hey, I’ve got these dozen grains of sand, why don’t I give you them, and you take them away and get some oysters and put the sand in there and grow each grain into a pearl, and then collect and sell the pearls, and we’ll split the money?”
Thanks, JB. Another really, really helpful post. I’ve got to start carrying around a notebook more often, and writing these ideas down when I occasionally get them…
There was great mind-map tool that came free with my G4 PowerBook a few years back – I forget what it was called. I was a little bothered not to get it with my MacBook Pro, later on, but not enough to go looking for it to buy (and avoiding PPC based apps like the plague now). In truth I’m more likely to use a low tech solution for this in any case. Whiteboards are great, but in their absence a notepad is fine, really. If it is really necessary to translate it into something presentable, I like Visio also. I only have that at work, but usually such presentation is indeed work related anyway.
Thinking about this “who stole what idea form whom” trope. I think most people overestimate how important it is to have a good idea, and underestimate how important it is to be able to carry it off well and make a good story out of it. On the other hand, authors play down the talent they were born with in favour of their skill in deploying it. Always it must be a bit of both.
The most successful small businesses are not the ones that have some brilliant new idea, but rather the ones that provide something for which there is a proven market, keep their costs low and customer satisfaction high. I think the same can apply to storytelling, though I wouldn’t presss the point too hard — or overstretch the metaphor, for that matter.
I would never ask you where you get your ideas, John. That, from my admittedly oblique perspective is the wrong question. The better question is where you get your GOOD ideas.
Ideas are cheap, perhaps the cheapest thing in existence. I am afflicted with an endless stream of them. For example my idea back in the 1970′s for the digital briefcase. Was it an idea? Yes. Was it any good or worthy of exploration. Not really. In the end it just turned out to be a really big and clumsy watch.
Am I bitter? Well, a little. But I find solace reading cool stuff based on really good ideas – which even writers like Steve Sterling can come up with every now and then.
“the genius is in how it is manipulated”
hence the student and the master e.g. beethoven under haydn etc …. which leads us back to doe … the 4th grader logging on to “www.download an assignment for only US$10.” in the 21st century.
wasn’t my point really but kudos for the interpolation, appreciate the cultural significances here & there and suggest melody/harmony, dynamics, timbre and rhythmn (note spelling please) be music speak in australian.
i’ve a visual of this huge cast iron stamping machine in the processing room of an internal combustion engine factory in detroit circa 1957 = montage, rather than something with subtle key changes & foxtrots with ornamented rubato =
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYtcM51yIOM
pz.v.
As someone who drove a FKN lot for work I have had a favourite “What if” I’ve been playing with for years. I cant imagine it making a book any one would want to read, but it kept me from going crazy. (er)
Imagine if; carrying, wearing, possibly driving what you are today, right now. Without any notice. Whizzo you a transported back in time.
What do you do?
Over the course of many hundreds of hours driving I worked out it’d depend When I’m transported to.
200 Years ago? Perhaps ferment a resistance movement amoung Australia’s first people – give whitey some Maori type welcome – at least they got a treaty (subsequently ignored, but I digress.)
2000 years ago? I’d try to get myself to China. Really? I can’t make gunpowder, an internal combustion engine what have I got to contribute that isn’t dependant on precursor technologies. Hmm? Vague political ideals that’d be really fkn welcome in Dynastic China?
It sort of got sticky on “How do you tell _when_ it is?”
Then a 5ft tall at the hip wombat wandered through my mental campsite & I realised I’m sh!t out of luck.
My favorite “what if” is: What if the Incas had escalators? What an alternate history that would make, eh?
I have ideas.
As a matter of fact I have tons of ideas, stuffed into purses and notebooks and my laptop case, scribbled on restaurant napkins, backs of movie tickets and when I’m desperate, written on the back of my hand.
I get very passionate and excited when the inspiration strikes and I drop everything (when possible) to get it all down.
My problem is that I flit to this idea and that, from project to project to unfinished project, and I spread myself thin.
I know I should just stop and focus on the task at hand but I have a problem sitting still and writing then. I pace, I drive, I walk my dog. I repeat what would amount to pages of dialogue to myself over and over again until it’s memorized.
I map out the stories, the scenes and have the detailed outline in my head.
But to force myself to sit down and just type it out? Feels impossible most days.
I don’t know how to get the focus and discipline to just put on paper.
What if the American Indians had the technology to invent Twisties? What if the Aztecs had taken maize and invented the cornflake? They’d rule the world!
What if we lived in a world without chocolate?
Jesus..I was kinda day dreaming a BSG, meets Transformers in an average day. The planet is always under threat of Aliens, descending from the sky to attack at random motorists and special shipments. As they descent towards a rather innocuous convoy on the road, several cars, transform into fighter type aircraft and ascend upwards to meet the slimy hoards.
But the kicker is that the TYPE of Aircraft or ship relates to the TYPE of Vehicle, so a Modern sports car could be the fighter, an older one, maybe an F4 type Viper, combi van gets a short haul troop transporter type thingamajig. Then ya BIG Fuel tuck becomes an Aerial Tanker and so on, people in the vehicles assuming their roles in the fight, defending the non-transforming persons below kind of. And I have day dreamed occasionally about that scenario since I was a teenager…roof on the family sedan transforming to have a gun turret in it…or hell, maybe I am just plain bloody weird and should be locked up.
What if we didn’t have Pens and Pencils?
Answer: Fingerpainting!
Harry that’s no stranger than space mossies!
lol NAT..I KNOW..its DEMENTED…but hey…All GODS possibly have weird day dreams I figure
Cornflakes with Llama milk?
bleh
oh oh oh ..and a car transporter becomes a flat deck Aircraft carrier thats wicked..see what happens when ya start to think about stuff…you can get on a rol of ..well, sortss i guess. Now I just need to have a female pilot in Knee high CFM Boots, with brown or black hair a pony tail and denim jeans… and we are OFF !
Actually, I just had anothet though..what about nano weave reactive matrix underwear.. seeing as they are designed to shed boat loads of Kinetic energy…….
Hmm, that would be a REAL , MIL PORN BOOK I reckon
OK, its Friday afternoon I have not had lunch and I think the mind just might be wandering all over the joint.
Unless its the joint wandering all over the mind.
xx
Another great post JB, thanks.
I get lots of ideas, triggered by all sorts of things; however my inner critic, who is a totally negative hag bitch usually shoots most of them down in flames before I get too far. (Any clues how to shut your inner critic up!)
I love Stephen King and often visit his site to see what he’s up to. He says that certain people have been telling him that his idea for Under The Dome was done by the Simpsons first, haha funny bout that….
He has actually put up 60 pages of his ‘second’ effort of this story on his site as a download. That old manuscript actually titled ‘The Cannibals’ was found in a cupboard recently by his staff. The novel out now is actually his third effort. It has cross-outs and side notes etc and looks like a real relic. I must buy and read the latest version and then go back and read the old one…how rare! Here’s an excerpt of what he says about all this, which might interest you in light of what you’ve been experiencing with comparisons, but do visit his site and read the rest.
“There’s another reason for publishing this on the website. Several Internet writers have speculated on a perceived similarity between Under the Dome and The Simpsons Movie, where, according to Wikipedia, Homer’s town of Springfield is isolated inside a large glass dome (probably because of that pesky nuclear power plant). I can’t speak personally to this, because I have never seen the movie, and the similarity came as a complete surprise to me…although I know, from personal experience, that the similarity will turn out to be casual. Unless there’s deliberate copying (sometimes known as “plagiarism”), stories can no more be alike than snowflakes. The reason is simple: no two human imaginations are exactly alike. For the doubters, this excerpt should demonstrate that I was thinking dome and isolation long before Homer, Marge, and their amusing brood came on the scene.”
I think I first saw this idea in a Super Girl movie.
I’m relying on a 35 year old memory here but I’m sure I read in some comic or other that her home town on Krypton got shrunk down (was it by her father the scientist) and encased in a protective ‘Dome’ to save it from the radiation that killed everyone else on Krypton.
The thing is, given how much information we’re all exposed to, how the hell is any one of us expected to remember where a stray seed came from, if it should take find fertile soil in our imaginations?
Dammit I’m having brain freeze again today. Comic, not movie.
http://supermanica.superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Kandor
That’s it.
Brainiac shrank the city and stuffed it in a glass bottle and kept it on board his space ship.
I knew I’d seen that city in a jar idea before.
Er…how many nerd points does that earn me?
My point being I don’t think this one idea being used by several writers is a bad thing, I find it quite interesting that everyone can take the one ‘seed’ and turn it into their own work of art.
That’d be a symptom of too much Gelati Aunty Q
Oh & JB, Thanks again. Another thinky thoughts post & you know they are my favourites.
Maybe its a good time to ask the food critic why it is that some pistachio gelati tastes like almonds and green food dye.
Quokka ya need to ask jb about his manly snack food he has whilst writing
Bob, Llama milk is delicious. No fooling.
Now there’s an image.
Hope you didn’t get neck strain, PNB.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/19/2747381.htm?section=entertainment
Off topic (again) but just wondering if you saw this JB.
Criticism of funding for Australian films which nobody goes to see coz they’re bleak and based on social realism.
All those intrigued by such themes should head over to my place for the Live Show at the boarding house next door. Its Friday so the fun should start around 9pm when they’re tanked and I’m trying to get some shut eye.
Garn. We’ll pop corn. It’ll be fun.
My idea is that there is this FKN crUise ship right which is about to host a Ms UniversE padgent. And there is this dude named Andrew who is like the facilities manager on this ship and he’s ripped like early 80′s schwartzenegger. And then some FKN space lizrd or Summfin sends the ship back in time to like 3 million years BC or like that and then there is this giant FKN paleo FKN crocodile and it gets on the ship and eats all the men on the ship and there is blood and limbs and SHT goin EVERYWhEre and it is all FKN inTensE except this FKN old codger with one FKN leg who tells FKN AWSM stories in flashback and HVK. Anyway HVK saves the day by using FKN MAD McGuyver skills to create this FKN awsome crock killer and the croc is about to die and HVK is like “FKN CRIKEY!”, but at the end he is stuck 3 million years in the FKN past with a ship full of Ms Universe contestants and then !!!!!! and some !!!!!!! it would be FKN AWSM
I have crocodile phobia. I think you should swop it for a killer prehistoric Quokka that’s 8m tall and has it in for swedish backpackers.