Ideas! Where does a writer of fiction get ideas?

This is one of the most common questions writers get – in this article I will give you my ideas about ideas. I hope many of these will be eminently practical and useful.

YOU LIAR YOU!

As I have written before, a writer of fiction is a professional liar. That’s what the word “fiction” means. So you are going to hit that keyboard with lie after lie, and if you lie well enough you can make money from it. After all, Trump has! But then his motives are far darker than yours.

Here then is some damn good advice for generating ideas:

1. Start with the TRUTH and lie about it. 

My first novel is shamelessly autobiographical. This is true about most authors. Look at this list! Did you know most of these writers started their literary career with their own life story? How many first novels can you name which start with autobiography – or a version of it?

Here’s the Wiki list:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobiographical_novel

You have a great story – your life story! However boring it may seem to you, there are aspects of it, if lied about, which could be fascinating to a stranger. If in doubt pick something TINY. Say, the owner of the local sweetshop in your home town had a wart on his cheek. The sweet shop closed when you were twelve. You were fairly sad about that.

How boring.

So fictionalise!: It wasn’t on his cheek. It was on the end of his nose. It continually dripped and grew larger over the years. At first his customers giggled about it but due to the local gossiper (introduce an interesting character, not a cliché!) they began to suspect he was diseased, and eventually stopped buying his sweets. Now the sweet shop owner was a single parent with a young teenage son, a brilliant mathematician who was offered a place at Oxford, but because of the old man’s impoverishment, he would have to become a cashier at Tesco’s…. now write on! Set yourself free from your own story. Take the truth and lie about it!

Maybe you have had a fascinating life, full of drama, challenge and really funny episodes. If you want to tell your story, fine! Write a memoir. But truth is so often unbelievable, or melodramatic, or not nearly as interesting to another person as it is to you. So take the truth and lie about it! See my first novel.

The protagonist: In your lies, the protagonist (the person the story is about) can be you, in the first person, or someone totally different. Who is still you. Try changing genders. VERY HARD TO DO. I tried it in my third novel, Sally’s Road.  Critics were very flattering but frankly I don’t think I pulled it off. No pun/s intended. (In my coming novel I do pull it off. Because the protagonist is a castrato. Apologies for the bad joke.) Maybe you are a great winner in your life. Your protagonist could be a winner too. Or a loser, but if you want to sell film rights to Hollywood, he/she must win in the end.

The plot:

THE TWO BIGGEST WORDS IN IDEA GENERATION:

WHAT IF….

2. “What if” everything!!!

 Some of my best Short Stories started with a simple “What if…”. This one started with “What if Donald Trump is an alien?” http://jonelkon.com/report-from-earth/

This one: “What if the partner of the girl you have been having an affair with gets you on the back of his motorcycle?” http://jonelkon.com/pillion/

This one: “What if ‘Tube Surfing’ was a Thing?” – inspired by my stupid habit of seeing how long I could stand unsupported in a tube train. Which inspired: “What if there was a secret society of Tube Surfers?” and then “What if two Narcissistic macho males decided to have a life-or death Tube Surf competition on the Circle Line?” http://jonelkon.com/tube-surf-no-exit/ SO “what ifs” breed. Put “What” and “If” in a brain cell together and they are going to have babies.

(That one, No Exit, was to be made into a film until London Transport said No Way, it encourages dangerous behavior. How boring.)

EXERCISE: Can you sum up the “what if” in my stories “Mile High”, http://jonelkon.com/mile-high/

And “In a Flash”, http://jonelkon.com/in-a-flash-500-words/

3. EVERYTHING is inspiration!

Anything and everything can spark ideas. We are surrounded by the everyday. But it’s your job to make the ordinary assume the mantle of the extraordinary. In a new, exciting, amazing way. Take the ordinary. Expand on it. Throw in an interesting character. Make the ordinary start to distort around this character. How is he/she reacting to the ordinary? Preferably, in an unusual or eccentric way, and you have the start of a story.

For example: there is a thunderstorm. Wow. Now to make it interesting, lie about its intensity, add in an interesting or boring character (possibly yourself), and some others and a bit of What If and you have a story. You see a pair of shoes lying on the sidewalk! (One of my stories was sparked by this experience). Wow….now what…..,

Which inspires my last idea (for now) as to how to get ideas:

4. WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE and WHY? Or, why not? Also a dose of HOW.

Throw those words at your setup. Add What If to each. Be able to set your imagination free to INVENT. You must know the answers to ALL those questions about your plot, character/s EVEN IF THEY ARE NOT IN YOUR STORY. I was once given excellent advice as to how to assume a character when I was on the stage. “You must know what they had for breakfast. And why!”. It wouldn’t be in the script, but for damn sure characters have to be living, breathing, 360 degrees in your brain. They must piss, shit and probably masturbate….but more about CHARACTERS in the next blog!

I hope these words have been of some help, dear writers. Please feel free to email me with examples, queries, or in response to the exercises in this blog.

NOW

5. SET YOUR IMAGINATION FREE! Your dreams are rich and rare and colourful, so that proves you could be a lovely writer. Your dreams are also great sources of inspiration! Harness them. Craft them. Develop your vocabulary by wide reading. Continually write. Have a notebook by you at all times.

WRITE, WRITE and WRITE!

…let me know how you get on….jonelkon3@gmail.com or post a comment below.

Do read my Tips for Writers Parts 1 2 and 3! They’re right here, in the panel on your right.