Getting Ideas is Easy - Developing Them is Hard

It's such a common question for authors that it's almost become a cliche - where do we get our ideas? That authors hate this question has also become a cliche. I don't hate the question, but I will admit that, for many years, I was befuddled by it. Rather, I was befuddled why a person would ask that question. You see, coming up with ideas isn't something I do consciously. It's as natural to me as breathing. And for - really, an embarrassingly long time - I assumed this was true for everyone.

Didn't everyone spend their childhoods imagining made-up stories, characters, fantastical worlds? Doesn't everyone come up with five new story ideas every time they read a new book or watch a new movie? Doesn't everyone have elaborate, vivid dreams that play out like the plots of stories?

I'm not kidding when I say it was only in the last couple of years that I began to realize not everyone is like this. Only recently did I realize why people always want to know how authors come up with their ideas - because this is not something they do. If they did, they would probably become writers themselves.

I started writing little stories when I was eight years old, and full novels when I was 13. I have always known I would be a writer, even if my career or day job was something else. It's just the way my brain works - always coming up with new stories. Always coming up with new ideas.

I don't mean to come off as exclusive about this - I'm not trying to say that only certain kinds of people with certain kinds of brains can become writers. I have met writers who do struggle with coming up with ideas. But for me personally, coming up with ideas is not hard because it just happens - the ideas are why I write.

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That's all well and good, you might be thinking, but it doesn't actually answer the question. Where do I get my ideas?

Well, I really do get ideas from my dreams, but it's a little misleading to say I dream complete plots. I do sometimes dream complete plots, but they're not usually very usable. I remember once waking from a very epic dream. It left me with the feeling a great book or movie can leave me with, like I'd been completely swept away in this great tale. I quickly jotted down some notes about this dream, writing out everything I could remember about the "story."

When I was done, I read it over and realized it was the back half of the third season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Yeah.

That's often how my dreams are. They're stories, but not very original stories. They're really fun to experience, but not often great fodder for a novel. I've dreamt fairly generic superhero plots, epic fantasy plots, suspenseful thrillers and creepy horror. But when I actually use something from a dream, it's typically just bits and pieces, not the whole dream "story." Perhaps the plot overall wasn't very original, but parts of it might give me an idea to think on and develop. Or I might come up with an idea for a character from the dream, or a worldbuilding aspect. Many times, one of these "dream pieces" will fit well into another story I'm already developing, and I will use it to flesh out that existing idea.

Outside of dreams, where else do I get ideas? Mostly, from other stories. These could be real stories in the world, like news stories, or other fictional stories. I think this is true for most authors, and I think sometimes we hesitate to talk about this, because it sounds like saying we just copy other people's ideas. But that's not really it. Usually, as a writer, you're taking inspiration from lots of different ideas and looking at them in a new way. I had a friend in college who would frequently, when watching movies, pick out a small side character in the film and say, "I want to know that character's story. I want to tell that character's story."

For me, coming up with a "story idea" is often about cobbling little ideas together. On a very basic level, that's what I did with Rotting Beauty - it's Sleeping Beauty + zombies. Bam. Why did it occur to me to combine those two things? Honestly, I just happened to be a time of my life where I was renewing an old interest in fairy tales (tv shows like Once Upon A Time and Grimm were coming out back then), as well as discovering a new interest in horror. (Believe it or not, I had zero interest in horror for most of my life - in fact, I was a complete chicken who didn't even like to watch trailers for horror movies.) Slowly, those two interests coalesced in my mind. And it was slowly. I decided early on that I wanted to do a Sleeping Beauty retelling in which the curse goes wrong, but it wasn't until about six months later - as I slowly got into horror - that I decided to add the zombie element.

Today, I still come up with stories by cobbling different inspirations and ideas together, but I've refined the process as I've improved as a writer.

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At the end of 2017, I found myself experiencing a crisis of faith when it came to my writing. I'd spent years editing Rotting Beauty and querying it to agents, to no result. I'd also written and queried a YA "King Arthur" retelling that mostly focused on Morgan le Fay, also to no result. Feedback I received on the latter novel suggested this Arthurian story wasn't original enough.

I felt stuck about what to work on next. Not because I didn't have any ideas - I had plenty - but I was so desperate to get a literary agent that I only wanted to write a story that would appeal to them. Back then, a popular tag used on Twitter was "MSWL" or "Manuscript Wish List." Literary agents used this tag to let writers know what kind of stories they were looking for. I ended up writing an entire novel based on a few ideas that I saw crop up a lot from these agents. And that novel, I eventually abandoned.

Why? Because it wasn't really my own. It wasn't my ideas. It didn't truly come from me.

Eventually, I realized I wanted to escape from this mindset of chasing trends and trying to please agents. I wanted to connect with my core self, with what I wanted to write. But I also needed to come up with better ideas. The Arthurian story had definitely come from my heart; Arthurian legend has been a passion of mine since I was a child. But the feedback I'd received about that retelling I'd written wasn't wrong - the story wasn't original enough. It was just a straight-up retelling, with nothing interesting to make it stand out. So I shelved it for the time being and started refining how I develop my ideas.

And that was the key - not just the idea itself, but developing it. The best advice I received about this was from a Writing Excuses podcast. (Almost the entirety of my writing education can be credited to the Writing Excuses podcast.) Although I don't remember exactly what was said, the advice, essentially was "Don't just go with your first idea. Don't start writing the very first thing you come up with." Let it sit for a while. See what other ideas come on the heel of that first one. See how the idea changes.

I realized that was my problem. That was why my story ideas felt so derivative. Because as soon as I came up with an idea, I immediately ran with it, plotting out the story, sketching out the characters, writing the first draft.

I needed to slow down. I needed to let my ideas marinate.

I started keeping a running note in my phone where I would jot down little ideas as they came to me. But once the idea was jotted down, that was it - I let it stay there and refused to think about it further. At least, not consciously. Every once in a while, while sitting in a drive-through or lying awake at night, my mind might drift back to that idea. I might come up with a slightly better idea. I might come up with a way to diversify that idea, make it more complex. The idea slowly, organically, begins to develop.

And though it wasn't my intention, I began to cobble together some of the little ideas I jotted down in my phone. At one point, I had a note that contained four separate ideas or inspirations - (1) a quote from The Lord of the Rings, (2) a romance trope, (3) a type of character that I'd taken from a dream, and (4) a premise for a story that was inspired by a television show. (Interestingly, that premise was inspired by what didn't happen in the show - i.e., the characters in the show had a choice to make, and I was inspired by what might have happened if they hadn't made the choice they did.) Eventually, I realized these four separate ideas would work well together, and thus, a new story was born. (A story I haven't written yet!)

When do I allow myself to start consciously developing a story? Usually, after about a year. But I try not to really commit ideas to paper - I try not to plot out the story - until I'm ready to write it.

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And sometimes, an idea just needs time. I kept shelving my Arthurian story, but I also kept returning to it. As I said, Arthuriana is a passion of mine, and I spent too much time researching the Arthurian mythos and post-Roman Britain to throw it away. I considered telling a tale of a smaller character from the mythology. I considered writing a time-travel story. I considered writing a series of novellas that each focused on a different Arthurian character.

And eventually, I came up with a new idea for the project. A new idea I loved. A new idea that feels fresh and exciting. Unsurprisingly, it came from cobbling together a few different ideas I had. Thus, the new PROJECT EXCALIBUR was born, and I intend to start writing it next month.

Since I am starting something brand new, I thought it might be fun to document the project's journey here on the blog and take you through my entire process, from brainstorming the initial idea to publishing the finished product. The next post in this series will focus on research, outlining, and prewriting - all the prep work needed before sitting down to write a first draft.

Until then,

Elizabeth