Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Neverending Supply Chains to Tap
The unvarnished truth is: Sometimes I have no ideas. How can this be possible when I have several neverending supply chains? Answer: While they are neverending, they do sometimes slow down for a while. There are peaks and valleys. Ebbs and flows.
I should clarify that it’s Shelf Lifes I sometimes run dry on ideas for, not on fictional stories. This is probably because I write two Shelf Lifes a week and one fictional story approximately once every Leap Year. If I could write fiction at the rate I write essays I might run out of fiction ideas, too. However, at the rate I’m going, I will leave plenty of ideas behind when I expire. This is why I don’t have any fear of my ideas being “stolen.”
Now you may be asking yourself: “Who needs an article on where to get ideas? Ideas are so easy to come up with!” This is true for plenty of people and for plenty more it’s not. When I run low on Shelf Life ideas I go browse writer hotspots on social media and look at what people are asking for advice or help with. Today the first thing I saw was a post that asked, as you may have already surmised, “Where do you get your ideas?”
So at least one person out there wants to know. If even one person wants to know, that’s plenty to get on with writing a Shelf Life.
I am both a person who is overflowing with ideas and a person who sometimes runs out of ideas, as I alluded above. Sometimes I’m low on Shelf Life ideas. Rarely or never do I run low on fiction ideas. I have learned where to go to find ideas and how to produce ideas on demand. I have learned how to capture them for future use so I never run low (see Bearer of Bad Muse on how to populate an idea bucket).
So you need to come up with some ideas. This is something I’ve written about before (see Idea Machine) but today I’m back with even more ways to put your brain into storm mode to come up with fresh ideas for you.
Without further ado, here are three goldmines I routinely exploit for fresh ideas.
From Dreams
I don’t keep a dream journal. I have tried to but I’m just not good at it. Some people do morning pages and chronicle their dreams as part of that morning journal dump—not me. I rarely remember more than a snippet here or there from my dreams.
As it turns out, a snippet of a dream is all you need. The seed of the giant sequoia tree is about as big as a grain of oatmeal. If the world’s biggest tree can grow from a seed that small, then you can grow a whole novel or series out of a tiny snippet from a dream.
So in lieu of a “Dream Journal” I have a dream note in my phone’s notes app. When I remember anything interesting from a dream, I write it down in there. It could be as simple as “Riding in a dirigible and dropped my notebook overboard” or “alien experiment gone awry is dissolving time and space.” I have weird dreams.
Periodically, I read through my “dream bullet list” to see if anything jumps out as developable. It’s important to read the whole list every now and then because that gets your brain germinating those idea seeds. Something that didn’t seem interesting enough to write about last time might have been sprouting in your mind—it might be interesting enough to write about this time.
Via Theft
Ideas can’t be “stolen” in a meaningful sense of the word “steal” because ideas don’t have value and are not unique until the idea-haver has done the execution. Lifting ideas from anywhere I find them does not mean I am rewriting Jane Eyre or plagiarizing my fellow writers. Instead it means taking a bit here, and a bit there, and putting those bits together into something new.
This is a time-honored strategy. First of all, every sci fi and fantasy writer is lifting ideas from humanity’s body of myths and legends as well as from the authors who come before them. Tolkien didn’t invent hobbits out of whole cloth; the idea of small, childlike, agrarian-inclined people predates him and traces back to the folklore of many cultures. Further, Tolkien took inspiration from other writers before him, such as Edward Wyke-Smith, to write The Hobbit.
Ursula Le Guin coined the term ansible, a device that allows faster-than-light communication across the vast reaches of space. Dozens of science fiction authors since Le Guin have borrowed the idea of the ansible from her and used it in their own work.
The Iteration Game
This is one of my favorite ways to get fresh ideas and honestly it’s just a really fun thought exercise all around, I think. This is based on the same premise as “fan fiction reworked into salable fiction”—you start with something that is recognizable as someone else’s, and then you iterate one step at a time until it’s unrecognizable as anything but yours. Just as Fifty Shades of Grey began as Twilight fanfiction and The Love Hypothesis began as a Star Wars Reylo fic,
To identify things I’d like to borrow and iterate on, I keep a casual list of the the best, most engaging, and my favorite plot points, characters, and settings. When I’m looking to come up with a fresh idea, I can start there. You can start with a book you like, or a faerie tale that resonates with you, or a myth, or a TV show—anything you’ve seen, read, or heard that appeals to you.
Next, change one thing. The mad doctor’s creature is a woman instead of a man. The puppeteer’s wooden son is a creature summoned from another plane instead of an animated puppet. The neurodiverse enemies-to-lovers are living in the modern era instead of the Regency (looking at you, Pride and Prejudice). Then change one more thing. Then, one more. And so on—until you have a totally unique story.
Try this with your favorite book or movie and see how fast you can make a totally new plot and characters. I dare you.
This is only a few of the many ways I come up with ideas, but the most important part of coming up with ideas is writing them all down—even the bad ones. I firmly believe you cannot know in the moment whether an idea is good or bad. If something rings “bad” the moment you think of it, and so you discard it without writing it down, you’ll never find out whether it might have been a good idea after all—or could have evolved into one.
This goes not just for fictional story and essay ideas but for all kinds of ideas—decorating ideas, wardrobe ideas, ideas for making an app, ideas for trying out an art project, and so on.
Now here’s the best thing about ideas: Once you’ve trained your brain how to come up with new ideas, your brain will come up with new ideas for you all the time. You’ll learn how to turn things you see, hear, read, dream, and experience on a daily basis into a neverending fountain of ideas ripe for the developing.
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