How Do Writers Get Their Ideas?

Many writers are asked how they get their story ideas, and for most writers this is a very difficult question to answer.  Mostly, we simply don’t know, or can’t remember.  It might have been sparked by something overheard in a conversation, it might have been a dream, or it might have just been something that seemed to spring into the mind, and grew.  ‘The tale grew in the telling,’ as Tolkien famously said about The Lord of the Rings. 

Or you might just start with an interesting setting – a place you love, or a house.  It could even just start with an interesting name.   

Everyone, of course, might notice these things – but what makes writers turn these things into stories?  My own theory is that writers are naturally curious, and inventive.  So, we might find ourselves turning over in our heads what we have just heard, or dreamt or thought about, wondering why and what it means.  Our inventive mind then begins to expand the idea. 

This is what one might call the ‘What if…?’ effect. 

This is where one takes an initial idea, interest or situation, and, consciously or subconsciously you begin to ask the question, ‘What if this or that were to happen?’  Throw in some interesting characters and relationships, and you have your novel. 

Let’s have a look at some possible examples. 

Suppose someone was just thinking about the American Civil War, and how it swept away a way of life.  And suppose they just started thinking, ‘What if a wealthy and spoilt Southern Belle lost everything in that war and had to find a way to survive by any means?’  Throw in a rakish, charming and selfish love interest called Captain Rhett Butler, and you’ve got the basic plot to Gone With the Wind. 

Or, try this one:  you’re pondering the limiting social etiquette of your day, and you begin to wonder, ‘What if two people who were actually made for each other hated each other at first sight?  How would they ever get together?’  Throw in some strong personality flaws and you have the basic plot of Pride and Prejudice.  

Perhaps you have a grandmother who’s extremely cheerful, but always expects the worse of anyone, and is often proved right. Perhaps you wonder, ‘What if someone like this became an amateur sleuth?’ This was how Agatha Christie got her idea for the Miss Marple series. 

With my own novels, sometimes the idea has just come to me, and sometimes I have to work at it.  When I was doing my Open University degree, I had to do a historical research project, and I chose as my topic, local entertainment in the nineteenth century for where I was living at the time in Northamptonshire.  Whilst researching at the local record office, I found a bundle of letters from actors in a company that visited Northampton and Daventry when travelling theatre companies were still popular.  These letters revealed some wonderful characters, and I felt they needed to go into a novel.  So my ‘What if’ was – What if a naïve but feisty provincial shoemaker’s daughter ran away and joined this company and was thrown into the racy, exciting and often scandalous world of the Victorian theatre?   That became my plot for my historical novel, Isobel Brite

 However, when I wrote Out of Time, that plot did not come out of the blue.  It started just with a desire to write about a house that would link someone in the modern world with someone in the past.  The What If’s were: What if there was an ancestral link?  And then – being a person who rather likes the strange and metaphysical – What if the protagonist meets a man who has lived for 200 years and met all her female ancestors?  Which then gave me the excuse to write several cameo roles for characters going back each generation, which was rather fun.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  The actual plot often is.  The ‘What if…?’ is your basic plot, and when you start thinking and planning it, it can be extremely exciting and inspiring; but that’s when the real hard work begins.  You have to work out structure, character traits, other characters, relationship developments, cliff-hangers, conflicts, sub-plots and how to bring the story together to a satisfying conclusion.  On top of that, you need to have some sort of something to say; some kind of message and theme, and get that across without forcing it down the reader’s throat.   

The plot I’m working on at the moment starts with ‘What if… someone in the future invented a kind of clock that could take you back in time to meet your ancestors using DNA?  Sounds like a good idea, but there’s a hell of a lot of working out to make sure the idea works! 

So, the ‘What if…’ scenario  might not be something that many writers do on a conscious level – but I am pretty sure that all writers not only have an ability, but also a strong need to investigate and expand on interests, thoughts and dreams etc, and that’s how we get our story ideas.