"Where Do You Get Your Ideas?"
(Before I get into anything, I hope all of my readers had a good Holiday season. As long as it takes to get it, it also seems to fly by to the point that, I at least, feel as if I hardly got to enjoy it. Anyway, let's get into it.)
A misimpression many young writers and non-writers get is this idea that writers are endowed with some kind of special ability to conjure their works, wholly and completely, out of nowhere. They don't understand that writing is, actually, work, that it takes time to sit down and put a piece of writing, any piece of writing together. Sometimes it's fast, but much of the time, it's slow.
This misimpression has thus given rise to the Question that Must Not Be Asked, "Where do you get your ideas?"
I don't know about others, but one of my favorite things that happens at every author Q&A video (of which I watch quite a few, especially if one of my heroes graces the stage), is the moment this question comes up. And it always comes up. Given that YouTube exists, you would think that readers who are even remotely internet-savvy would know by now not to ask this question. Why is that? Every author I've ever seen who's had this question put to them always has a smartass reply. (We can't help it. It's part of the job description: write stuff, do readings, and have at-the-ready retorts for anyone who asks dumbass questions.)
My favorite example of this though has to be Neil Gaiman's response to this question. Gaiman is not a naturally impolite, impatient person. He's very generous, so when someone put this question to him years ago, the gentle verbal-backhanding he gave to the person was a wonder to behold:
Now, why is it that writers are reluctant to answer this questions straight (which, Gaiman, again generously, answers in the above video)? Because, to use his words, "We don't really know." We know they come from daydreaming. They come from asking really random questions that, if we were to speak them aloud in another era, would've landed us in an Institution for the Mentally Unbalanced. Out of this process of making odd connections, we gradually begin to build our stories, and we consciously cultivate our minds a) to spot interesting idea and note them down and b) to perform this process whenever we're not doing (and sometimes while doing) other things.
I can't speak for every writer, but at least in my case, ideas don't just come together in a flash on command. For me, the development of a story is a slow process of accumulation. Often, I'll have been thinking about and considering a story for at least a year (usually more though), before I finally sit down to write the first draft.
A story, for me, is a mosaic. It's this beautiful larger image, created from bits and pieces of much smaller ideas that I gradually piece together. Once I feel as though I have enough of them assembled, that's when I begin the actual writing.
Usually, it begins with a character.
An image of a person will enter my mind. I'll start asking myself questions about this person. Who are they? Where do they come from? What do they love? What do they hate? What to do they want? So on and so forth...
As I arrive at satisfactory answers to each of those questions (You never know you've found the right answer until you do. The answer will just feel right), other elements will come to the surface. The setting of the story, the central conflict of the story, the plot of the story, the themes I'm exploring--all of these aspects gradually reveal themselves to me.
Now of course, this isn't always the case. I'm writing a short story right now that didn't begin with the characters. It began with a setting and a theme: a space station and refugees. I didn't have characters, nor did I have a plot initially. I just had a question. What will the human race do with its disenfranchised people in the far, post-Space Diaspora future?
When the idea first came to me, three things happened in quick succession.
First, the Syria Refugee Crisis, as the media called it, was in full-swing, and the United States was debating on how many refugees it would take (I still don't think we did enough). Next, I visited and worked at a homeless shelter for the first time. Seeing all these men (it was a men-only shelter), was very moving. Finally, I re-watched Babylon 5 for the first time in years and realized just how cool the idea of a city-sized space station could be, and how ideal such a location could be for helping with this problem in a post-Deep Space Exploration era.
But, even then, I had no story. That is until recently.
You can see from how random those ideas are, but somehow my mind connected to them because I've trained myself to spot potential ideas.
Again though, this is just how it works for me. How, when, where, and what comes first when it comes to writing stories is completely unique to every writer on the face of the earth. Everybody does it differently, and you should do what works for you.
A misimpression many young writers and non-writers get is this idea that writers are endowed with some kind of special ability to conjure their works, wholly and completely, out of nowhere. They don't understand that writing is, actually, work, that it takes time to sit down and put a piece of writing, any piece of writing together. Sometimes it's fast, but much of the time, it's slow.
This misimpression has thus given rise to the Question that Must Not Be Asked, "Where do you get your ideas?"
I don't know about others, but one of my favorite things that happens at every author Q&A video (of which I watch quite a few, especially if one of my heroes graces the stage), is the moment this question comes up. And it always comes up. Given that YouTube exists, you would think that readers who are even remotely internet-savvy would know by now not to ask this question. Why is that? Every author I've ever seen who's had this question put to them always has a smartass reply. (We can't help it. It's part of the job description: write stuff, do readings, and have at-the-ready retorts for anyone who asks dumbass questions.)
My favorite example of this though has to be Neil Gaiman's response to this question. Gaiman is not a naturally impolite, impatient person. He's very generous, so when someone put this question to him years ago, the gentle verbal-backhanding he gave to the person was a wonder to behold:
Now, why is it that writers are reluctant to answer this questions straight (which, Gaiman, again generously, answers in the above video)? Because, to use his words, "We don't really know." We know they come from daydreaming. They come from asking really random questions that, if we were to speak them aloud in another era, would've landed us in an Institution for the Mentally Unbalanced. Out of this process of making odd connections, we gradually begin to build our stories, and we consciously cultivate our minds a) to spot interesting idea and note them down and b) to perform this process whenever we're not doing (and sometimes while doing) other things.
I can't speak for every writer, but at least in my case, ideas don't just come together in a flash on command. For me, the development of a story is a slow process of accumulation. Often, I'll have been thinking about and considering a story for at least a year (usually more though), before I finally sit down to write the first draft.
A story, for me, is a mosaic. It's this beautiful larger image, created from bits and pieces of much smaller ideas that I gradually piece together. Once I feel as though I have enough of them assembled, that's when I begin the actual writing.
Usually, it begins with a character.
An image of a person will enter my mind. I'll start asking myself questions about this person. Who are they? Where do they come from? What do they love? What do they hate? What to do they want? So on and so forth...
As I arrive at satisfactory answers to each of those questions (You never know you've found the right answer until you do. The answer will just feel right), other elements will come to the surface. The setting of the story, the central conflict of the story, the plot of the story, the themes I'm exploring--all of these aspects gradually reveal themselves to me.
Now of course, this isn't always the case. I'm writing a short story right now that didn't begin with the characters. It began with a setting and a theme: a space station and refugees. I didn't have characters, nor did I have a plot initially. I just had a question. What will the human race do with its disenfranchised people in the far, post-Space Diaspora future?
When the idea first came to me, three things happened in quick succession.
First, the Syria Refugee Crisis, as the media called it, was in full-swing, and the United States was debating on how many refugees it would take (I still don't think we did enough). Next, I visited and worked at a homeless shelter for the first time. Seeing all these men (it was a men-only shelter), was very moving. Finally, I re-watched Babylon 5 for the first time in years and realized just how cool the idea of a city-sized space station could be, and how ideal such a location could be for helping with this problem in a post-Deep Space Exploration era.
But, even then, I had no story. That is until recently.
You can see from how random those ideas are, but somehow my mind connected to them because I've trained myself to spot potential ideas.
Again though, this is just how it works for me. How, when, where, and what comes first when it comes to writing stories is completely unique to every writer on the face of the earth. Everybody does it differently, and you should do what works for you.
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