Many writers hate the question from non-writers, “Where do you get your ideas?” I suspect one reason they hate it* is that they themselves don’t really know, but wish they did — so they could return to the well again, and again, and again…
No such luck in the real world, of course. Some story ideas do come directly from identifiable triggers — we see a mother slapping a child’s face, say, and suddenly we start to wonder what led up the moment of unhinging, or what will follow it. But I believe most stories just sort of emerge half-formed (if that much), from the mind’s restless sifting through and folding together of the everyday, long after we can attribute the ideas to something specific.
Still, explicit sources of inspiration aren’t to be sniffed at. When you’ve just gotta get moving at the keyboard, but have nothing to move you, you can turn for instance to automated brainstorming aids. You might play with reCaptcha word pairs (like here or here), or take a handful of simple emotions and toss them into the subconscious’s blender.
Here’s one more source for you: the Portrait of Words blog:
Welcome to our bi-monthly writing challenge known as a “Portrait of Words”.
In a nut shell here’s how it works. Every other week we will give you a set of categories along with photographs to use as inspiration for your story. Look at each of the pictures and interpret them, then create a story based on what you see and feel. It’s really that simple.
(For more detailed guidelines, click the above link. The “set of categories” guideline seems to have been dropped, though.)
As an example, see Portrait of Words #22, from November. It includes four pictures, including these two:
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Do those two photos, taken together, suggest a story to you?** If so, you might want to hang onto a Portrait of Words bookmark.
[Hat tip to Susan Carleton's excellent Stony River blog for the link to Portrait of Words. I found Susan's blog by way of the Write Your A** Off map.]
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* The main reason for hating the “Where do you get your ideas?” question may be the suggestion that ideas come to us from the outside, rather than from within.
** This probably indicates some deep-seated mental imbalance, but all I can think of — now that I’ve thought of it once — involves the pigeons getting mangled in the Ferris wheel’s machinery. And yes, I know: sick, sick, sick. But art isn’t always pretty. :)
Predicting the arrival of ideas is like predicting the weather, and I have as little control. I just know I have to be standing outside.
Squirrel: I have to be standing outside.
That completely fascinates me. It’s the sort of thing which wouldn’t bear too much thinking about — don’t tamper with results, y’know? But it never even occurred to me that some setting/activity might a common circumstance where ideas are born… I can’t see any pattern at all, from my own experience!
I like the idea of going to a place and looking at pictures to inspire. Sometimes I just need a good boot in the pants and photos or even word combinations can do that. But I think QS is right in that it really has to be in the right place at the right time, preferably not standing in front of the chap unloading the pigeons to be hopelessly mangled in the ferris wheel.
This is awesome and interesting. I think I hate the “where do you get your ideas from?” question because of a few visceral reasons.
First, it implies there’s a writer’s idea store somewhere, where I can walk in and buy what I like. A Wal-Mart of stories lining the shelves. Gimme a break. I always want to answer “This particular idea was a blue-light special over at my local K-Mart, but they’re sold out now. Sorry.”
Second, those same individuals wouldn’t ever ask a visual artist that question. No one asks an artist who works in oil and canvas where they get their ideas, neither a sculptor or musician. No one bugs them about where they get their inspiration, their muse. But if you’re a writer, well, you’re GOING to get the question. You will, period. Why?
Because we work in words. Because we work with something everyone has worked in at some point. Everybody thinks they have a story they can tell, and tell it well. It’s rare when someone doesn’t think they could be a writer. None of the those same people — or most of them, anyway — would consider picking up a pencil to do a portrait or a brush to paint a masterpiece, but hey! It’s just words! We all use words, every day, all the time. I send email. I write memos. I took English Comp 101. I can do this. I just need a good idea. Where do you get yours? If you tell me that, I can do this as well as you (but they probably say “as good as you”). Mebbe even better’n you. So — where you get them ideas at?
Yes, I get a little irked. And no one’s even asked me the question yet.
;)
I liked Darc’s response. If someone asked me that question, I’d be tempted to say something about waiting at the crossroads at midnight for a blood red gypsy caravan. The gypsies will trade me lots of different things for a story, but the reason I don’t have a bestseller yet is that I haven’t gone so far as to trade my soul. Not yet.
Okay, what I really want to ask them is where does any idea for anything come from? Some people just seem to steadfastly refuse to be open to their imagination. Heaven help where it might lead them. And if we can explain the idea process (machine?) then maybe we’re not crazy.
Know what this makes me think of from the world of children’s lit? Chris Van Allsburg’s The Mysteries of Harris Burdick (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mysteries_of_Harris_Burdick). And now I see this site, http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/features/harrisburdick/introduction.html, after having gone to look for some info for you on the book. Wow. I’ll have to explore that.
Ever seen it? I think you’d like it.
cynth: Haven’t done it in a while, but I used to love going to an art museum with a journal and just planting myself on a bench in front of a painting — not an expressionistic one, y’know, but like a real scene — and inventing a storyline for it.
Darc: A writer’s idea store! Why hasn’t that been done before?!? But it’s a great analogy, and it helps explain (as you implied) why some ideas seem to be valued less than others. “You get that at the five-and-dime?” “Actually, no, it came from The Gap.”
Because fiction is so tied to the idea of narrative, and the events of someone’s life are a form of narrative, and everyone (duh) has a life — maybe that’s why “making fiction” seems to many people to be such an Anyone Can Do It! activity. (Whereas art-art — painting etc. — seems to be something which actually requires skill, talent…)
marta: Wow. Did you just make up that “blood red gypsy caravan” phrase/image?!? You’re going to laugh, given the context, but first thing that occurred to me (before I caught myself in the act) was, Where did she come up with THAT?!? Ha!
Things like automobile repair are utter mystery to me, especially when the mechanic is confronting a problem which seems to me hopeless. But they manage to pull something together under pressure. Maybe I should start asking them where they get their ideas.
Jules: Oh, I love Harris Burdick! (See, that generation of kidlit I’m sorta familiar with. :)) On the Houghton-Mifflin site, did you see the animations inspired by “The Seven Chairs” and “Uninvited Guests”? and the story written by Stephen King???
Thanks… that was a GREAT connection to make. (And now that I’m looking at those images again, they remind me — conceptually, not stylistically — of the work in some of Edward Gorey’s little books, in which each image is similarly open-ended and, um, discontiguous with the images around it.)
@Jules – OOooo. I have those pictures! I love them. I use them in my writing class. Some students are fascinated–others are perplexed.
@John – Well, I didn’t want to say the devil at the crossroads, and I’ve got gypsies in my novel, and I’ve been adding red to my art, so…
What an irritating question! Reading it I can feel myself warming up behind the ears, thinking about someone asking you, “So JES, where do you get your ideas from?” For some reason I imagine it asked in a placid tone with their head on one side. grrr
OK, so what is my problem. Why does it make me feel a bit cross?
I think its because I find the question lazy. (Its similar to people making statements about being bored. “I’m bored”. Heavens!) Have these questioners lived? Do they not imagine, wonder and when bored (it does happen) fight back the feeling with an enquiring mind.
Sorry but if someone asked me “Where do you get your ideas from?” I would be very polite, kindly even but I would be thinking inside, HAVE YOU NOT LIVED!
The other problem with this question is that it smacks of complete misunderstanding of ideas. Like they grow on trees and are constantly available. Most creative people I have known well enough to know have had ups and down with ideas as with everything.
Finally if the person asking has actually taken some interest in ones work/writing surely they should have some idea themselves of where you are coming from? Surely!
Sorry, to sound hard line (I hope not arrogant). I should say that my context for this comment is things like my grandmother telling me as a child… “Bored people are boring.” And that was that. I was expected to go off and employ my brain myself if need be.
PS, I was once given a small square book calling itself a book of ideas or similar. It was thick with glossy photos of things, only photos – the moon, shiny shoes, ice cream cones. I didn’t really know what do do with it so it spent ten years in the downstairs loo. Finally I sold it for 50p at a car boot sale – a very satisfactory outcome I thought. I didn’t sell it before I had erased the birthday greeting to me in the front. For some reason I felt I might be dammed by association.
I’ve already worked out a couple of answers to that question:
“Oh, I just steal them from other people”
or
“Stalking is an underrated pastime. More writers should try it.”
But really I would be happy just to have anyone ask me ANYTHING about my book.
marta: See? When somebody DOES ask a writer where s/he got this or that idea, they need to be prepared for any answer — no matter how mundane and/or complicated it might be. :)
fg: Funny thing is, I seldom get irritated when someone asks me where I got a specific idea. Some stories about the sources of specific ideas can be pretty entertaining, illuminating, and so on. But the general question… As you say: grrr. It’s almost like they’re hoping I’ll give them a demonstration: Here, let me show you — you turn this crank here, that’s right, now drop a coin in my ear, good… wait… something’s happening… HERE IT COMES–
I’m with you on not being bored. My mother tells me she used to get frustrated, trying to punish me by sending me to my room — it was no punishment at all, ’cause I always found stuff to do. Heh.
Misssy: Okay, I’ll bite — tell me about your book! Especially: where’d you get the idea for it?
[All: I started with the "Where do you get your ideas?" thing as just a lead-in to what I thought the post was really gonna be about. Little did I know... Ha!]
Love this post and all the comments! I’ve got a thing about captcha words too, and blogspot’s verification words have weird poetry.
Where do I get my ideas? I don’t get ideas. They get me.
dwc: Oh yes — the pairs of words offered up by the little reCaptcha thingum on the comments form here (and elsewhere) are a favorite topic!
Love your second graf. Suggests a story: Writer Struck by Hit-and-Run Idea:
@John – I wouldn’t file charges unless the idea ran. I mean, if it hits you and stays, then you can work things out. But if it runs? Unforgivable! Put the idea on the most wanted listed.
recaptcha: captive would
Just for that very reason my mother used to send us to the bathroom. But we used to get talk and toothpaste and made white sticky pies. The bathroom was way more of a punishment but we still entertained ourselves, haha.
btw, yes I was responding to the thought of it as a general question, observant questions are very welcome critical or no.
Someone may have already said this, but I think they sell an edition of Harris Burdick with posters that can be hung on one’s walls. Marta, are those what you use? One day, one day…I wanna purchase for myself.
@Jules – Yes, those are the ones I use. They’re lovely.
marta: You know we could keep this storyline going forever, don’t you? (Not that I’m complaining!)
I suspect some of my own ideas may be zooming around without insurance, if not actually under the influence.
fg: Ha! I bet my parents would’ve liked to use our tiny bathroom to confine us, too… except then they’d have had to, er, borrow the neighbors’ facilities for “real” reasons.
Jules: I think that’s called something like the “portfolio edition.”
I mentioned Edward Gorey above. I’ve got a book of Gorey prints-as-posters! (And a signed/framed print, from The Gashlycrumb Tinies, of “P is for Prue… trampled flat in a brawl.”