I have a stock answer for that perennial question, "Where do your story ideas come from?". Some people talk about being visited by a muse, or about looking at things from a different perspective, or allowing inspiration to strike, or finding the core concept and working outward from there.
Today, I'm thinking about this question so I can write a blog post. My stock answer is long and boring and uninformative. It's all about storycraft, plotting, character development, etc., none of which have anything to do with ideas. So, I'm going to give some thought to this, to try to come up with a better answer than, "My ideas don't come to me. I go to them."
===== Feel free to comment on this or any other post.
Today, I'm thinking about this question so I can write a blog post. My stock answer is long and boring and uninformative. It's all about storycraft, plotting, character development, etc., none of which have anything to do with ideas. So, I'm going to give some thought to this, to try to come up with a better answer than, "My ideas don't come to me. I go to them."
===== Feel free to comment on this or any other post.
I always say: from my dreams. It is more complicated than that of course and sometimes not true. But it's true often enough.
ReplyDeleteIdeas are everywhere – as a species, we're usually just too busy to see 'em. All we have to do to get one is open our minds and, wham, they're there.
ReplyDeleteIs that a Muse in your pocket, or are you just glad to be writing?
ReplyDeleteMy personal answer is that creativity is a reflection of the Divine, the "image" in which we were created. We create entire new worlds and populate them with our own creations, and sometimes we laugh and cry with them. MHO, as always.
FAR... I've always felt that the children of the Creator God should themselves be creators. For myself, though, stories almost always come out of a moment of "What if..?", with a certain number born out of daydreams.
ReplyDeleteI tend to agree with Cathy. It's a complicated, fascinating world. Opening your eyes and seeing it, paying attention to the details and nuances, will give you one rich vein after another to mine for gold.
ReplyDeleteFor some odd reason, I get many ideas while showering. So I guess if I doubled the size of the hot water tank, I'd be a more prolific writer...
ReplyDelete