How Do We Come Up With Ideas?
And why is it so hard?
There’s lots of (often, helpfully, conflicting) guidance for writers; show don’t tell, use single speech marks, no use double speech marks, write every day, don’t write every day, avoid exposition, don’t be too oblique, write what you know, be unexpected….
But something there is no clear advice on is how to come up with ideas in the first place. Where do those golden nuggets come from? Why do they sometimes spring fully formed into your mind from nowhere, and why do the stories we want desperately to work need luring from the fuzzy edges of our brains over many many many hours? And why does no one technique work for everyone?
And we writers just have to accept the highs and lows of the idea rollercoaster. There are two ways of looking at this, as a terrifying beast, a roadblock to creativity. The uncertainty of where the next idea will come from could make writing rather unenjoyable.
But if you’ll allow me a brief dalliance with optimism, I think that’s rather freeing. Because there is no one right or wrong answer that means we can never be wrong. I’ll repeat that, there is no wrong way to devise a story. Plagiarism aside of course.
Sometimes all it takes is a spark, an utterance from a friend, a headline, a long-forgotten song lyric to bring the plot of a story racing to your prefrontal cortex. The best (and easiest for the craft article writer to impart) advice is to keep your eyes and ears open. Inspiration is all around!
I find it helpful to have a list of broad stroke ideas, ‘story about a grandmother’, ‘story about a family meal’. All with no ideas about specifics, what the plot might be, or who the characters are. Having this very general list of nearly-ideas that you would like to tackle at some point is handy because you never know when you’re going to see a photo, read a news snippet, or overhear a conversation that gives you the way into the specifics of your (up until now) vague premise.
Idea generator prompt:
If you’re a note taker, grab an old notebook and journal and have a flick through. Select one of your ideas at random and write it down on a new black screen/ piece of paper. Choose another idea (eyes closed and pointing wildly is a perfectly acceptable way to do this) and write that on the same page. Now have a play. Blend the two sentences, shuffle the words, create new words from the letters on the page. Does anything emerge?