Keyboards at the ready...Charge!

Mario here:

What I'm reading: The Alien Years by Robert Silverberg.











It's NaNoWriMo. Do you know where your Muse is at?


One popular question for writers is, "Where do your ideas come from?" It's a tough question to answer because for us fiction writers, ideas come from everywhere. It could be from a wedding veil lying in a deserted alley, or a man in a business suit running down the street, or from overhearing an argument in a posh restaurant. I guess the seed for a story is that detail that sticks out from its surroundings, the proverbial What if?

Maybe the veil was tossed by a jilted bride. The man running down the street has left his mistress' panties in his luggage, which his wife will soon unpack, and he's racing to catch a cab home. The argument could be over a house a couple is about to buy, which is actually a fight over the fact that he hates her mother.

Once we get these ideas, we have to weave them into a larger story. Some ideas can be scenes within the story, and others can be drivers for the plot. How people interact on the subway can add nice texture to a scene. I once read an article about how corporations are buying fresh-water rights all over the world and used that as a plot theme in the Undead Kama Sutra, a tale about alien gangsters and vampires.

I'm surprised when other people--normal people I suppose--aren't constantly letting themselves get lost in the narrative threads around us. Then I suppose normal people aren't trying to write fifty thousand words in thirty days.