I’ve been asked a few times since starting my first book, “Where did you get your idea from?” I wish there were some simple answer, like “I had this amazing epiphany one day!” or “I went out to the idea tree and picked one.” I can confirm we do not have an idea tree, though I’m considering planting one in a few months. I hear they’re a spring/summer plant.
The answer on that particular idea is that I’ve always been fascinated by questions of “What would happen if …?” And, seeing as it’s basically a stated goal of modern medicine to cure every disease and keep people alive for as long as possible, this is a great “What if?” That would be to say, “What if we actually reached a goal we have?” It’s compelling to me because it’s a goal we have as a society, but I think it might cause a lot more problems if we achieved it. And my story is just about one problem I came up with. I thought of plenty more — from massive overcrowding in cities to healthcare distribution to resource depletion to restrictive family planning to all sorts of other issues — and I talk about some of them in the book because they have an impact on the story, but this was the one I thought translated the best as the main focus of a novel. Of course, it’s quite possible I’m wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time.
But that’s just one idea. Where, more generally, do story ideas come from? It can obviously vary. Maybe it started as a dream one night. Maybe you just saw a picture or thought about a certain word. Maybe a movie, TV show or song sparked something. Maybe it didn’t come from anywhere you can pinpoint. For some, the ideas come fast and furious, and they feel compelled to get them out.
That’s not me, though. Idea generation is definitely the hardest part of this whole fiction-writing folly for me to figure out. I’m trained as a writer, and to document what happened, not to make up stories — no matter what you might think about journalists, damn it. Probably my biggest fear about writing fiction is that my river of ideas will just run dry at some point. I’ve got a few trickling along right now, but they’ll only take me so far. I definitely don’t have an overflowing tank of ideas I need someplace to write down. I really need to plant one of those trees.
Leave a Reply