HOW DO YOU FIND GREAT BOOK IDEAS?

HOW DO YOU FIND GREAT BOOK IDEAS?

THINK:

PROBLEMS, NEEDS, AND THE HUMAN CONDITION

Those elements comprise the grid upon which to hang your great ideas.

BUT HOW DO YOU COME UP WITH THOSE IDEAS?

Let Neil Gaiman tell you --

http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff/Essays/Essays_By_Neil/Where_do_you_get_your_ideas%3F

 

"Every profession has its pitfalls. Doctors, for example, are always being asked for free medical advice, lawyers are asked for legal information. And writers are asked where we get our ideas from.

 

 'I make them up,' I tell them. 'Out of my head.'

People don't like this answer. I don't know why not. They look unhappy, as if I'm trying to slip a fast one past them.

As if there's a huge secret, and, for reasons of my own, I'm not telling them how it's done.

 

Firstly, I don't know myself where the ideas really come from, what makes them come, or whether one day they'll stop.

 

Secondly, I doubt anyone who asks really wants a three hour lecture on the creative process.

 

Thirdly, the ideas aren't that important. Really they aren't. Everyone's got an idea for a book, a movie, a story, a TV series.

 

 The Ideas aren't the hard bit.

 

They're a small component of the whole. Creating believable people who do more or less what you tell them to is much harder.

 

And hardest by far is the process of simply sitting down and putting one word after another to construct whatever it is you're trying to build:

 

making it interesting, making it new.

 

My daughter Holly, who is seven years of age, persuaded me to come in to give a talk to her class. Her teacher was really enthusiastic

 

('The children have all been making their own books recently, so perhaps you could come along and tell them about being a professional writer. And lots of little stories. They like the stories.')

 

and in I came.

They sat on the floor, I had a chair, fifty seven-year-old-eyes gazed up at me.

 

'When I was your age, people told me not to make things up,' I told them. 'These days, they give me money for it.'

 

For twenty minutes I talked, then they asked questions.

And eventually one of them asked it.

'Where do you get your ideas?'

 

And I realized I owed them an answer. They weren't old enough to know any better. And it's a perfectly reasonable question, if you aren't asked it weekly.

 

This is what I told them:

 

You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.

You get ideas when you ask yourself simple questions.

 

The most important of the questions is just,

 

 

What if...?

(What if you woke up with wings? What if your sister turned into a mouse? What if you all found out that your teacher was planning to eat one of you at the end of term - but you didn't know who?)
Another important question is,

 

 

If only...

 

(If only real life was like it is in Hollywood musicals. If only I could shrink myself small as a button. If only a ghost would do my homework.)

 

 And then there are the others:

 

 

I wonder...

 

 

('I wonder what she does when she's alone...') and

 

 

If This Goes On...

 

('If this goes on telephones are going to start talking to each other, and cut out the middleman...') and

 

 

 Wouldn't it be interesting if...

 

 

('Wouldn't it be interesting if the world used to be ruled by cats?')...

Those questions, and others like them, and the questions they, in their turn, pose

 

('Well, if cats used to rule the world, why don't they any more? And how do they feel about that?') are one of the places ideas come from.

 

 

Sometimes an idea is a person

 

 

('There's a boy who wants to know about magic').

 

 

Sometimes it's a place

 

 

('There's a castle at the end of time, which is the only place there is...').

 

 

Sometimes it's an image

 

 

('A woman, sifting in a dark room filled with empty faces.')
An idea doesn't have to be a plot notion, just a place to begin creating. Plots often generate themselves when one begins to ask oneself questions about whatever the starting point is."

 

 

WOULDN'T YOU HAVE LOVED TO HAVE BEEN IN THAT CLASSROOM?

 

WHERE DO YOUR IDEAS COME FROM?