Inspiration Comes From Where?

It's probably the most common question every writer is asked, especially one that likes to write creepy and bizarre stories the way I do. And that question is where do you get your ideas from? Where does your inspiration come from?

The answer isn’t as simple as it might sound. It’s not like there is some idea chute that I just wait the next packaged idea to come tumbling down. They come from all kinds of things. It might be a simple as a conversation or something noticed while walking around the neighborhood. It’s difficult to quantify what exactly makes that conversation idea worthy too, because they are hardly ever an entire story no matter what form those bits of inspiration come in.

A lot of times, those ideas are perhaps only a character or a setting or a line a character should say. Sometimes the idea comes as a complete interaction between characters or even part of a story. I have to constantly update my ‘IDEAS.WPD’ file with these so that no idea scrambles away to the idea factory to be recycled by someone else.

It might be gleaned from the endless lists of top 10 weird but true lists on the Internet. It might be one of those mass SPAM mailings.

The last thing that inspired an idea?

I was driving my car in the predawn dark and heard the half-empty water bottle crinkling as it rolled across the floor. It made me think about what else might be rolling around on the passenger floor in the dark that I couldn’t see. It also made me wonder what might be hungry or thirsty riding beneath my own seat.

The point is never stop talking, watching, reading, interacting, and being part of the crazy world around us. No matter what genre, you’re bound to find something to inspire you.



IDEAS.WPD content?

I have over forty-five pages of single spaced ideas for stories and it’s always growing.