Where do you get your ideas?
It’s the question that is asked the most of any author. Where did you come up with your idea for your book, your story? I teach beginning writers who are terrified of sharing their ideas for fear that someone else will steal them. I have to assure them again and again, that I’m not going to – I’ve got way too many of my own. So, where do they come from?
Many people I know get their ideas from their life or the lives of others they meet. People are a rich source of stories. We live our lives and then want to share what we’ve done with others. Sometimes this is a good idea – if we’ve had a particularly fascinating or difficult life. Sometimes, it’s really not since the basis for any really good story is conflict and, thank goodness, most of us don’t ever experience the sort of conflict which makes for a good novel.
I get my ideas from observing the world around me, from reading, and from listening to others share things that they find interesting. Magic In The Storm was sparked by the back cover of another book – “the seventh child of the seventh child is the most powerful…” Huh. Usually when we read that it’s referring to witches. Witches are usually female. But, my perverse mind said, what happened if that seventh child of the seventh child who was to be all-powerful was a boy? Wouldn’t that just mess everything up in a big way? And so Morgan was born – the child who should have been a girl. My mind spun with the implications and then moved on to create a whole world where the highest achieving people are able to be so amazing not through simple in-born talent, but through magic (because, personally, I’ve always felt it extremely unfair that some people are just born talented. There’s got to be more than just luck, genes and a little bit of hard work – there’s got to be some magic involved somewhere).
When I started writing waaay back, the idea for my very first book came from a title suggested by a friend who played off of my name. She suggested I write a book entitlted The Merry Marquis. I thought it was great. I would have to be a man named Merry, since he’s a marquis, and to put an ironic twist on it, he’d have to be really depressed. The book, and then the series was born. Of course, as soon as it got to the publisher who bought it, they changed the name! Someday I’m going to get the rights to those books back, and you know I’m going to republish them with their original titles.
And finally, what about In A Beginning, my new short story that is officially coming out on the 17th in Tales From The Mist? Where did I get my idea to write about Lilith? Well, you’re going to get a chance to find out on 25th (sorry, it’s a while away, but you can wait). Starting on the 19th, Natalie G. Owens (one of the fabulous authors in Tales From The Mist) will be posting a series of blogs on where everyone got their ideas for the stories they published in the book. Here’s the link to her blog – stop by, you may learn a lot, or even come up with some ideas of your own!
