How to Find the Ideas That Are Right for You!

By Sharon Short

Writers are often asked, “Where do you get your ideas?”

To the "asker", it seems an obvious question, one that the writer should be able to answer quickly and easily.

And yet often, to the writer being asked (at least, to this writer), it’s a difficult question to answer with any kind of depth or true helpfulness.

That’s because the short answer is… “Everywhere!”

And that answer seems, on its surface, rather snotty.

Yet, it’s true. When one is a writer, or, I imagine, a creative artist of any kind, at first it seems challenging to get past the urge of knowing that one wants to write (or paint, or sculpt, or compose), to knowing what one wants to write (or paint, or sculpt, or compose).

And that challenge leads to looking anywhere, and everywhere, for ideas. This is where the ‘what if?’ question comes in handy. What if… that man on the bus, who looks like he’s bursting to tell someone a secret, suddenly stood up and yelled that secret to everyone on the bus? What if that caused a wreck? What if, unbeknownst to him, someone who isn’t supposed to know the secret is actually on the bus?

What if the events in this newspaper or website article happened here in my hometown, or to me, or to a loved one? Could that be the basis of a story, a poem, a novel, a play?

Keep asking that ‘what if’ question. Get in the habit of asking it until it’s second nature. Sooner or later, you’ll start asking it all the time… and you’ll feel like ideas are, in fact, suddenly everywhere.

Of course, solving one problem (where does one get ideas?) can lead to another (how do I know which idea is the right one for me?)

After nearly 30 years of writing professionally, getting ideas is no longer a challenge for me. They’re everywhere! The challenge is now knowing when it’s worth my time and energy to pursue one. The answer, for me, is that an idea has to, metaphorically speaking, grab me by the throat, shake me around, and demand that I DO something about it! When an idea just won’t let me go… when I find characters from the idea narrating their stories in my head, haunting my thoughts, interrupting my sleep… that’s when I know I must follow that idea, develop it, and see where it wants me to go and what it wants me to learn.

I become rather like my imaginary man on the bus; I just feel I must get this idea fleshed out on paper, and developed into a story, or I will burst!

If you’re a beginning writer and that seems strange or far-fetched, don’t worry. Get in the habit of asking of situations, articles, observations, odd bits of overheard conversation—‘what if…?’ and before you know it, you’ll have plenty of ideas. The ones that aren't going to challenge you will wander off; the ones that will help you grow as a writer and give you great material for stories will, like the man on the bus, demand your attention.

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Sharon Short is the author of the novel My One Square Inch of Alaska My One Square Inch of Alaska (Penguin Plume, 2013) in which a pair of siblings escape the strictures of the 1950s industrial Ohio town on the adventure of a lifetime. Opening chapters of this novel earned Sharon a 2012 Ohio Arts Council individual artist's grant and a 2011 Montgomery County (Ohio) Arts & Cultural District Literary Artist Fellowship. Sharon is the Literary Life columnist for the Dayton Daily News, directs the renowned Antioch Writers' Workshop in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and is an adjunct instructor of creative writing and composition at Antioch University Midwest.Additionally, Sharon's book Sanity Check: A Collection of Columns includes 100 reader-favorites of her weekly humor and lifestyle column that ran in the Dayton Daily News from 2002-2012. Sharon has also published two mystery series (Josie Toadfern and Patricia Delaney) as well as short stories and essays.  Sharon holds a B.A. in English from Wright State University and an M.A. in English from Bowling Green State University. She lives in Ohio with her husband and is the mother of two adult daughters. Website and Blog: www.sharonshort.com.   Facebook:www.facebook.com/SharonShortAuthor.  Twitter: @SharonGShort

Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

By Morgen Bailey

This is a question that aspiring writers invariably ask and established authors dread being asked, or so they’ve told me. For most of us – I’ve been a writer (on and off) for eight years – ideas are everywhere, but what do you do if they just don’t leap out at you?

You look in newspapers: you can write about the main news story of the day, change the names, location, write it as fiction and see where it takes you. I often find though that it’s the smaller articles, away from the front few pages, that inspire me the most – the quirky stories that Mark Twain said were “stranger than fiction”. Some are too unbelievable (but I like writing them anyway) and you’ll know when you see them because they will grab you, planting seeds of a plot inside your brain.

You look in magazines: not a lot of difference you might imagine to newspapers, but articles in magazines tend to be more general, not latest events (because invariably they work weeks in advance) but magazines are full of people; real men and women who can become your characters. Locations can become your settings. Agony pages become your dilemmas.

You look out the window: the chances are that your house or apartment overlooks another, so even if you can’t see anyone, you can imagine that they’re there. What are they doing? If they’re just hanging out washing, have them talking to themselves, thinking about something that’s troubling them or a holiday they wish they could afford. This would be a template for a monologue. If you imagine that the phone rings or a visitor calls then there’d be a dialogue. Great practice for dialogue is to write a conversation with no ‘he said’, ‘she said’ etc; just write down what they say and see whether they can keep the conversation going between them. And make the speech authentic; incomplete sentences work well but cut down on the ums and ers. With no description, can the reader still follow what’s happening?

You think of a word: any word. Yes, just one word can set your imagination flowing. Take

‘chicken’ for example. Does it conjure up a dinner you had as a child, or perhaps a story where young boys are egging on a new ‘recruit’ into their gang to carry out a dare as part of his initiation ceremony.

However ideas strike you (or even if you have to lasso them) it’s all about communication. A reader reads your words and creates their world around them. They use their memories to picture your characters. Your Tracey could be a girl they knew from school instead of just a name you picked out of your head… or magazine. If the readers turn the page eager to know what happens next then you’ve done your ‘job’ and hopefully, you’ve had as much enjoyment getting the words there.

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Based in Northamptonshire, England, Morgen Bailey (“Morgen with an E”) is a prolific blogger, podcaster, editor / critiquer, Chair of NWG (which runs the annual H.E. Bates Short Story Competition), Head Judge for the NLG Flash Fiction Competition and creative writing tutor for her local council. She is also a freelance author of numerous ‘dark and light’ short stories, novels, articles, and very occasional dabbler of poetry. Like her, her blog, http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com, is consumed by all things literary. She is also active on Twitter, Facebook along with many others (listed on her blog’s Contact page).She also recently created five online writing groups and an interview-only blog. Her debut novel is the chick lit eBook The Serial Dater’s Shopping List and she has six others (mostly crime) in the works. http://twitter.com/morgenwriteruk  http://www.facebook.com/morgenwriteruk