Blogger: Rachel Kent
I would like to know where you get your book ideas. Here are some of the scenarios I’ve heard, but please weigh in with yours.
1) Dreams–I have three clients who have written books that they dreamed about first, and I’ve heard that this is how Stephenie Meyer was inspired to write Twilight. My dreams never make enough sense to become a story. My last memorable dream involved an overweight homeless man who broke into my house and forced me to make him grilled cheese sandwiches. It freaked me out, but I don’t think that it would inspire a very good book. Some people are blessed to dream in detail. Do you have creative dreams?
2) Articles/Current Events–Many authors get ideas for books from current events in the media. This includes newspaper articles, online articles, television news and even some TV programs. One Books & Such client writes mystery/suspense, and she read of a murder in her area and imagined the details to create her own story. Have you been inspired by a current event to write either a novel or a nonfiction book?
3) Historical Stories/Family History–Other writers are inspired to write by historical events or family history. They might come across these stories in a genealogy, in a textbook, or while doing research at a library. Michelle Ule’s novella, The Dogtrot Christmas (part of The Log Cabin Christmas Collection, Barbour, 2011) was partially inspired by the story of her great-great-great grandfather. Michelle blogged about the details here, so feel free to check it out. Sometimes history inspires nonfiction, too. Biographies, church history, or theological permutations can use history as a springboard into a book. Has history ever inspired you to write?
5) Life Experiences–Many nonfiction books are inspired by experiences that the author has gone through. Fiction can also be inspired by these types of experiences. Robin Jones Gunn and Tricia Goyer’s nonfiction book, Praying for Your Future Husband (Zondervan, 2011), is a good example of a book that’s inspired by real-life experiences. Tricia and Robin share their own stories of praying for and finding a spouse, and many other women weigh in with their experiences as well. Have you ever written a book based on your life experiences?
Do you have any others to add? Please share the story of how you were inspired to write your current work in progress.
Oh my! Grilled cheese, eh?
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I got my ideas for my hist/fic work by Googling New Mexico history. I’d never once heard of The Long walk of the Navajo, but we don’t get much US history in Canadian high schools. We get some, but not a lot.
And after I swore on a stack of book contracts that I’d never write a rom/com?
I’m writing a rom/com.
I blame(or thank) Michelle Ule for urging me to write it, have fun with it and see where God takes it.
The setting? On an Alaskan cruise. That was Michelle’s idea. So I have the itinerary of the cruise I enjoyed with my daughter and my parents, and that is the framework of this novella.
The characters are the star of an Argentine soap opera, who hates being the star of an Argentine soap opera, and a business woman who wasn’t an ugly ducking, but in a family of models, she was made to feel that way.
The fun of it is using dialogue styles simply not acceptable in hist/fic. Like, at all.
And it’s a great way to remember my trip.
Jennifer!!! I am so happy to hear that you are writing a romantic comedy. 🙂 You definitely have the voice for it. I look forward to reading it.
You have got to get that one written and into the market pronto! You have a flair for funny that’s rather like one of those sunburst fireworks. I want to read that book.
Jennifer–how exciting! Looking forward to hearing what happens with this story–sounds like a lot of fun. 🙂
What fun! I think humor comes naturally to you. You always make me smile with your comments.
I love Rom/Com’s, so relaxing to watch and to read. Tell us when it’s finished and we’ll all go out and snap it up! Love your idea.
I get me ideas from the bottom of a bottle of Jack, the stub end of a cheap cigar, and a roadhouse that used to lean into the wind just outside Port-Au-Prince. Oh, wait, sorry. I was channeling Hemingway. (Get out of my head and take your beard with you!)
* Interesting topic, Rachel. I got my the idea from my WIP, “Lady Stonewall”, from a what-if scenario –
1) At the end of the Civil War, the last Confederate warship, the ironclad CSS Stonewall, built in France, had not yet reached the South. It was interned in Bermuda, and later sold to Japan where it saw action in putting down the Satsuma Rebellion (which was the ‘real’ background for “The Last Samurai”.)
2) In the 1850s one of the most celebrated navigators on the China Clippers (the tea trade) was a woman, Ellen Cressy, who worked with her captain-husband.
* So, what it CSS Stonewall had been finished a bit early, in time to make a run for Richmond…and the Confederate navigator was killed in a duel…and Ellen Cressy was available for the job, given the collapse of the tea trade.
* And what if in breaking the Union blockade of Europe (they knew full well of the Stonewall), the Confederate ship’s captain was blinded, and Cressy was the only one on the spot to take over and keep fighting the ship?
* And since the Stonewall was singularly nasty in seakeeping, this made her the logical choice to retain as captain, since she had the most experience at its helm?
* Yeah. Farfetched.
One reason that LS is likely to remain a WIP is that while I like the story and the characters (there is a gently formal romance in there), I really, really hate writing in the “Civil War Vernacular”. I don’t mind reading period books from that time, but I feel like a total fraud in trying to reconstruct it in my own work.
* Does anyone else feel this way, wanting to write a historical idea but put off by the need for creating this kind of ambience? (I did think about steampunking the language, but that would just make the whole thing a bit silly.)
Dog gone it, Andrew, you had me right up until, “remain unfinished”. I love Civil War stuff……
Well, MacKenzie, OK. I’ll have a go at finishing it. I like Civil War stuff too, and the research has been fascinating, but writing the vernacular makes me want to tear my hair.
* If you’d like to read what’s there – you’d be the first – please drop me a note through my blog. I would dearly love some feedback!
Anyone taking the grilled-cheese idea? ‘Cause I want it. The next Christy Award, I’m certain!!! Thanks for the laugh, Rachel!
Most of my dreams are disjointed messes, but twice I’ve had good story ideas from dreams – including the story that started me writing in the first place. Granted, it will never – should never – be published 🙂
My ideas have come from all of the above, plus elements from movies and songs and “what if” questions.
I’ll thumb wrestle you for it Sarah, I think it could be a great starting place for a story!
It was a very scary dream, so I think it could be a good horror story…not sure it’s a WWII idea. 🙂
My last two projects came from articles I wrote. On one article, I went to Commerce, Texas, to take pictures of the ladies and their project to go along with the article. I don’t normally get that opportunity because usually I’m interviewing people overseas, etc. But I fell in love with those ladies and their project. So that particular work is set in Commerce because of that experience. I used their work idea to weave my story.
*And I could seriously use the grilled cheese in my current WIP. 🙂
Ha, I think your dream could make for a memorable short story if we give the homeless man some motives and come up with a good ending 🙂 I’ve had one story idea come from a dream, but other than writing it down I haven’t pursued that project yet. My ideas are often inspired by other books, not in a plagiarism kind of way but just thinking about what I liked about them and what I wish had been done differently and turning it into a totally new story. And even though I write fantasy, my favorite thing to think about is the romantic relationship in the story, so I also get ideas thinking about how a relationship could start, what the obstacles would be, and creating a story around that. Thanks for a fun post!
This question reminds me of the one I get all the time about my paintings: “How long did it take you to paint that?” To me, the real answer to the painting question is, “All my life,” because all my experience, practice, and skill go into every painting, and what I learn from each goes into the next.
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“Where do I get my book ideas?” From everywhere, everything, and everyone I’ve experienced. It all stews around in my head, until I ask the universal question, “What if…?”
If this was my dream, Rachel, I would say that I am putting my energy into the wrong project (grilled cheese to the plump guy) while ignoring the project that desperately needs attention (homelessness). AKA “put down the comfort food and work on that poor unfinished book!”
🙂
There’s one major source missing, Rachel. What about the plots that just pop into your head while you’re doing something totally unrelated, and you have all the major scenes at least as a high-level outline in a day or two?
*When I’m working on a story, I have awakened with the next scene pretty well defined, sometimes including lines of dialogue
*Another source is when a minor character in one WIP expands in my mind to become the basis for the main character in the next in the series.
Great addition!
Yes! That happens to me, too.
I had two stories “hit me up ‘side the head.” The first came in a flash just before I exited my car at a local diner/gas station. A woman in a car facing me was on her cell phone, and I suddenly saw her fleeing for her life on a wintry Colorado night. When I got home, I wrote out what I had, and over the next several weeks worked it up as a contemporary Christmas story. When a call came from Barbour for historical Christmas novellas, I realized I could use the contemporary by bumping it back 150 years. The car became a wagon, the diner became a train depot, and Barbour bought the story. It landed on the ECPA bestseller list three months running in The 12 Brides of Christmas.
This year an opening scene came to me as I sat by the woodstove one cold evening–a mail-order bride story, something I’d never written. I pounded out 3,000 words, and in answer to a Love Inspired Historical call-out this spring, I sent the first three chapters and a synopsis. They were interested, and I completed the story at 70,000 in June. I hope to know any day now if they want it.
My current work in progress (I have three) came straight from television news about two people who met on a plane, were attracted to each other, separated, and later connected via social media.
Those stories are SO cool, Davalynn! I was sure I wasn’t the only one who had that happen.
Rachel, I’m sure with a bit of tweaking you could turn your dream into a humorous PB.
*My dreams are so vvivd I often wake up feeling exhausted. I’m inclined to believe a lot of this is spiritual warfare in my subconscious. I actually had one dream come to pass in real life.
*On the plus side, I’ve received several story ideas from dreams and also for a few songs, which is odd because I have no interest in songwriting and since I’m not gifted to write music, I doubt those songs will flow any further than my desk.
*The idea for my current WIP came from a strange name I saw printed on a rural mailbox while traveling to work. I thought to myself, why would you give your kid this name? A story immediately popped into my head and the ideas that followed came so quickly I put together an outline on my lunch hour. I did, however, make a slight variation to the name. ?
Attempted murder. Yeah, that. My neighbor tried to kill his wife last summer and I’m just waiting for the trial to end and one of us to move before I write that tale.
OH MY WORD!!!
Is she all right?
The poor woman!
She is now.
Wow! What a crazy thing to have happen right next to you!
My fiction ideas come from…wait for it…doing chores. 🙂 It’s a great time to let my mind wander and ask the “what if” questions while vacuuming, doing dishes, or scrubbing the bathrooms. I’ve never had an idea from a dream, although I think about all kinds of things when I should be sleeping. I do have a couple of book ideas from articles I found on Facebook. And a lot of my stories for tween girls come from life experiences—my own and my daughters.
How funny! I can’t think while doing chores. All I can think is, “How is this messy again ALREADY?” I’m glad you are able to come up with great things!
I’m relieved to know I’m not the only one who taps dreams for ideas. I’ve written three short stories from dreams and one could be a longer work.
For nonfiction my ideas are usually from life experiences or things I read.
For fiction it usually blooms from life experiences or a rabbit trail sparked by a movie.
Of course random inspiration also plays a part, as in “What shall I write about? Oh, I have an idea!”
Several have come out of my family’s genealogy– we’re an adventurous bunch– and Jennifer’s came out of the shower.
So my answer? Know your family and keep clean. 🙂
I do some good thinking in the shower, too.
Yes, the shower is a great place for inspiration!
I was a substitute teacher back when WWJD was popular. The Peril of the Sinister Scientist is based on the question, What would Jesus do in Middle School? The main character needed and got a compelling reason to ask since he thought he was cloned from the blood on the Shroud of Turin, Signs of Trouble is based on field trips I took while working with a Special Ed Class.
Sounds crazy, but I figure you guys will understand. While I have gotten several book ideas just from looking at random story prompts and then applying the “What If” strategy to the idea, and one story was inspired by the redemption tale of someone close to me, Three or Four of my stories I just prayed for. I was lost for anything to write about that had substance and spent some time really praying for a good idea and then boom, God sent a little bit of creative help my way. I can’t explain it, but I am grateful of His tender care in even this area. Of course, the prayed for stories are all ones that have not sold, so apparently He does not consider publication as important as inspiration, but they are stories that I love all the same.
What a fun post! And I think the overweight/homeless/grilled cheese dream would have been a fun story! Or at least a fun flash fic piece. 😉
My first book was in the making in my head for several years, but the biggest inspirations were A Voice in the Wind (so categorize that with “other books”) and an episode of Stargate SG1 that my husband forced me to watch. XD
My other series was inspired by these caverns under Louisville where refugees from the Cold War were going to go if there would have been an atomic crisis. In the tour, they told us all about what the living conditions would have been like. The caverns didn’t even make it until book two of the series, but it’s the inspiration that counts, right? 😉
If I typed up my dreams, it’d resemble the commercial with Abraham Lincoln and the beaver playing chess. 🙂
* For my stories, I use my in-house target audience–my kids. I started writing again after being so disappointed with the YA market (in general) and asked my kids and their friends what they’d like to read. They are my litmus test and tell me when something doesn’t ring true. “Mom, kids don’t say that anymore.” #That’sWhenIFeelOld
All of the above, plus I would add simple observation of the world around me—which I suppose is akin to life experiences.
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I have a series of cozy mysteries planned based on craziness in my family history. I thought I was done at seven, but recently learned one of my second cousins and her husband had an open marriage, were swingers, and two of her children were by her husband and three by her father-in-law. I don’t think I’ll submit the fictional account of that to a CBA publisher.
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I have a series of short stories set in locations where we traveled during our overseas years. Three published, the fourth brewing, and anywhere from 10-20 somewhere within the gray cells.
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I’ve published one novella poking fun at the civil engineering profession, and hope to write more in this series.
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My poems of late, though few in number, generally come from observations of nature.
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I’m currently reading a biography of Leonardo da Vinci, and book ideas leap off the pages. I have to suppress then or I’d never finish reading it.
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Etc., etc., etc.
My current WIP is a romantic suspense novel entitled Storm Warning. It’s set on the cruise-owned peninsula of Labadie, Haiti. While on vacation there, my husband and I zip lined down 2,600-foot cables across the bay. It was a beautiful setting and incredibly secluded. I was most intrigued by the zip line instructors. They sign a seven-month contract to live and work on this tiny strip of sand, jumping off a mountain ten times a day. What drives a person to do that? It got my wheels turning. Enter Katie Herrera, who fled to the island to escape an abusive ex-boyfriend and the men he worked for. Throw in an accident causing the death of her best friend, an incoming hurricane, and a handsome CIA agent on a forced leave of absence with his brother’s family, who flames up her trust issues by claiming he’s “just a businessman,” and I’ve got a story. It’s been an absolute blast to write!