Where Do You Find Ideas?
Donna McCrohan Rosenthal, East Sierra Branch
Unless you want to rely on AI entirely, you can browse search such as “plot ideas” and “plot generator,” buy books on the subject, attend workshops presented by CWC branches, or find them yourself. If you want to develop your own roadmap, a few techniques might simplify the journey:
Ideas for what?
Know what you need. A plot? Dialogue? Clues for a mystery novel? You’ll have nothing but writer’s block if you wait until you sit at the computer screen desperate for inspiration, muttering, “Brain, think!” Instead, long before you approach the keyboard, explore sights, sounds, and human nature with your eyes and ears wide open.
Attend speaker programs
They reveal new worlds. From a volunteer who went to Africa or Appalachia to a goat rancher who makes soap to a police officer sharing advice for protecting your home, they pack their presentations with colorful details and generally stick around for Q&A afterwards.
Travel and strike up chats with strangers
You can’t beat these opportunities to spend time with folks you’d otherwise never encounter who have professions that intrigue you. Heck. You could meet a detective, a concert violinist, or a master chef. Particularly if you have meals with them, you can ask about their lives and they’ll appreciate your friendly interest.
Flip through magazines
Okay. I’ve arbitrarily picked one off my desk. Preservation – published by the National Trust for Historical Preservation. One article spotlights restaurants in former carriage houses. Within the next eight pages come a rooftop garden, a saloon, and a 300-year-old lighthouse. What perfect settings for scenes.
Talk to children
These little sponges don’t miss a thing, and express themselves so beautifully. (“Mint tastes like a draft in your mouth.” “They call them slippers because if you run in them, you slip.”)
Observe
If the electricity goes off then returns in a few hours, clocks show the wrong time. This could furnish a red herring, later solved, for a mystery novel. Watch couples on a date. You can tell when they seem distant, or especially close. Notice what signs they give and incorporate them in a story. Eavesdrop on casual conversations (but don’t spy on clearly private exchanges). If one man says to another, “If it isn’t right for both of you, it’s not right for either of you” as they pass by you on the sidewalk…
…Write it down
Don’t risk losing these serendipitous gifts of clues, description, dialogue, or even the beginnings of an entire plot. You probably won’t transcribe them exactly, but now you have material to build on and embellish. You’ll have a grab bag of images and phrases at your fingertips when you sit down at that blank screen.
Sharpen your mind and memory
Don’t short yourself on sleep. Brilliant flashes do you no good if you can’t hang onto them.
And
Once you acquire the knack, you’ll discover that you don’t find ideas. They find you. Just don’t let them get away.