To Authors

[jbcohen]

I have been wondering for many years - how do you come up with ideas for your tales? And don't reveal any proprietary secrects.

[DiapDealer]

They pull them out of a magic idea bag, silly.

[KenIsaacson]

Harlan Ellison is reported to have answered this question with one word: "Schenectady."

Stephen King said: "I get my ideas from everywhere. But what all of my ideas boil down to is seeing maybe one thing, but in a lot of cases it's seeing two things and having them come together in some new and interesting way, and then adding the question 'What if?' 'What if' is always the key question."

I've been to Schenectady in search of ideas, but that hasn't worked too well for me. King's approach has been more productive. I get my ideas from issues in the news. And then I ask "what if?" in order to give the whole picture a twist.

[DrZoidberg]

My primary sources of inspiration is reading philosophy and books on science. They both help me to look at old things in a new way. Another big source of inspiration is reading other people's books. I often find myself thinking, "I can do better. I'd do it like this". And there's often a new novel or polot twist.

The main problem for writers usually isn't ideas. But simply to sit down and write. Once you force yourself to write (anything really) the ideas will come. It's when you have the whole novel in scope that you get overwhelmed.

If you really want to know how established authors do it I recommend "On Writing" by Stephen King and "Telling Lies for Fun and Profit" by Lawrence Block. Good books on the process of writing.

[KenIsaacson]

Dr. Zoidberg,

I agree with you--King's "On Writing" is wonderful. I haven't read Block's book yet. Perhaps I'll seek it out.

[altworld]

Just look around, the most amazing stories are just under your nose, then just twist reality a couple of degrees and get writing.
Arigato,
Nick Davis

PS - Seriously the sitting down and writing part is the hardest part

[Worldwalker]

Doesn't Harlan specifically buy them from a little old lady in Schenectady? I believe they're $25 for a six-pack.

Once upon a time, I was a small software company. I sold gamemasters' aid programs to RPG players (the paper-and-dice kind) and, as such, often had a booth among other vendors at game conventions. At just about every one, some random person would come up to me and say "I have this great idea for a program. How about I tell you the idea, and you write the program, and we split the money?" to which my answer was always "How about you write the program, and you keep all the money?" They never liked that -- they wanted someone else (namely me) to do all the heavy lifting. Published authors get the same thing: people who have had only one idea in their lives who want someone else to do the work of implementing it, while they (the ideator) reap the rewards. But it doesn't work that way. Ideas are everywhere; time is in short supply.

Anyway, ideas are over-rated. Implementation is what matters. William Shakespeare didn't come up with new ideas for his plays -- some of them were re-workings of existing plays, some were other plays bunged together, and some were straight out of history. It wasn't his ideas that made his work immortal -- it was the implementation. Anybody could have had the same ideas, and in fact a fair number of playwrights did. It was what he did with them that was so different. A good writer can make a great novel out of "boy meets girl" and a bad writer can make ... well, nothing, because he never wrote it ... out of the greatest idea of all time. The difference between a great sculptor and an art student isn't the materials they work with, nor what they intend to do with those materials, but how they go about it. A marble horse by Joe Schmoe is not going to look as beautiful as one by Michaelangelo, and it's neither the marble nor the idea of "horse" that makes the difference.

There is no magic idea that will make a hack into a great writer. It's all about what you do with it. No shortcuts.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by KenIsaacson

Stephen King said: "I get my ideas from everywhere.

Stephen King (along with his wife, and David Lyons) were lucky enough to find some magic paper.

You can read about it in the afterword of The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger:

[pirate site]

[KenIsaacson]

For some reason, I'd always thought it had been Stephen King who'd said he got his ideas in Schenectady--"A little shop in Schenectady," to be exact. But in responding to this thread, I Googled "Schenectady and ideas," and found the Ellison attribution.

[MartinC]

According to Neil Gaiman, there's a very good ideas shop in Bognor.

He also says that when he started telling the truth: "Out of my head, stupid." people got quite angry. OK, I added the stupid bit. But they really preferred to believe that there was some sort of trick involved. Presumably so that anyone could do it.

[TrineDaely]

Sometimes like others it's just seeing something and asking "What if?" Sometimes it's based on a dream, or the image that a song makes in my head.

[Assassin]

"Proprietary Secrets". You make it sound like there might be a mathematical formula, or a potion you just go out and get. People can get upset if they want to but, "It just comes out of my head!!!" That's what separates writers from readers; the same as entrepreneurs are different from the workers who take their ideas and turn them into a product.

[G J Lau]

Originally Posted by Assassin

"Proprietary Secrets". You make it sound like there might be a mathematical formula, or a potion you just go out and get. People can get upset if they want to but, "It just comes out of my head!!!" That's what separates writers from readers; the same as entrepreneurs are different from the workers who take their ideas and turn them into a product.

And the best part is the ideas continue to bubble up even while you are composing. About half of my first novel was nowhere in sight when I started writing. The doing of it is what brings out all the other ideas that have been lurking just under the surface.

As for ideas, mine came from a combination of life experiences and a lot of reading in a lot of different areas of interest. Sometimes they just pop up from nowhere, like thinking about Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal (flowers of evil) and wondering what if a flower really was infused with evil, say a rose with thorns that could prick your finger and touch your blood.

What if . . . the two most powerful words a writer knows.

[John Carroll]

Insanity . . .


Actually, I spent my childhood dreaming of being anywhere but reality. My stories are from those dreams. It took me 40 years to be able to focus and direct those dreams into readable stories.

I've also been heavily influenced by hundreds, possibly even thousands of books since I was able to read. I liked a lot of mystery when I was younger then fantasy when I was older.

[Todd Young]

It's all about association. Most of my ideas come when I am reading someone else's work. I think how it would be if it was a little different, if a character was like this or that and then this or that happened.

When I'm actually writing, I don't usually know a lot about what's going to happen. It just comes to me, bubbling out of the unconscious.