It’s the famous question every writer hears over and over, even unpublished ones like me. A few days before my first NaNo, I told my mother-in-law that I didn’t have a story yet, but I wasn’t worried, something would come. And it did, the night before, so I wrote out a couple of paragraphs about the plot and the next morning I started writing. Easy as that.
(Of course, it wasn’t that great an idea to start with and got tweaked a lot on the way and is unreadable now, but it was also the first novel I’d ever completed, so the way the idea came about wasn’t really what crippled it. Ideas are easy. Expressing ideas is hard. Maybe that’s why copyright law only applies to expression.)
Whenever I hear someone wish she could come up with ideas that easily, I’d like to offer some advice, but the concept of having no ideas sort of baffles me. Ideas are a result of thinking, and if you’re not thinking? Well, I have bad news: you’re dead. Except vampires think. Sometimes even zombies think. Hmm. Anyway, if you can think, you can create. Simple as that. Of course, the process of developing ideas into stories takes practice, and that’s where most people fall along the wayside. But you can’t really practice without an idea to start with.
Finding story ideas is about being open to possibilities and then being willing to seize the baby idea before the little wriggly thing can escape. So for SWORD AND KNIFE, I started my thinking about the story with one line of dialog:
“Once, by the gods, and I thought you were dead.”
I don’t remember where that line came from, except it was one of things my brain produced when I let it loose to freewrite. But then I took the next step, pushing to see who these people were, what they were talking about, and what was behind their words. I had a strong feeling that it was one man talking to another, and they were talking about a betrayal of trust. The language suggested a medieval fantasy setting. Well then, who are they and what are they doing? What was their relationship that they would still be together after this betrayal? What was the betrayal? And so on. Good writing begins by asking a lot of questions.
The line never made it into the story itself, because it doesn’t fit the character’s voice and there are no gods in their world, among other reasons. But the idea of betrayal became one of the underpinnings of the story. It’s the theme that runs throughout and informs the plots and subplots, as well as the relationships of the main characters with each other and with secondary characters. All from one line and the willingness to ask questions.
So the next time you’re fretting because you have no good ideas, just relax. And then pick something that intrigues you, whether it’s a scrap of dialog, a half-formed character, or a setting. And then push. Ask why? How? Just keep asking questions until the story emerges. Really, that’s all there is to it. Until you sit down to write. Then you have a whole other set of problems. But asking questions will get you started.
So what’s your process? Something similar or totally different? I’d love to hear in the comments.
