One of the most common questions that is posed to writers is the obligatory “Where do you get your ideas?”
In the old TV series Naked City, each episode ended with this quote “There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them.”
A true statement.
Story ideas are all around you and they can be gleamed from the music you listen to, the shows you watch on TV. The conversation with friends or overhearing a conversation between strangers. Simple events that occur throughout your day can spark ideas, for example, a car running a red light or a car parked in the lot for days.
Once you start asking why and what if to these sparks, adding fuel, then a flame can start.
But it is not just being observant, curious, or plain paying attention for ideas. Many times I have gathered ideas from the city, fanned them into glowing embers in my mind, only to have them float away on ashes by the time I arrived home.
Thus it is essential to carry some form of a notebook with you so your ideas can be refueled time and time again till maybe one day a story emerges setting the world on fire.
Over time notebook after notebook will be filled. Not all ideas are ready for storytime and some will never flame into anything more than graphite on paper. Sometimes ideas come to you that you are not ready to explore yet. Some ideas alone may not be for you at all but you still wrote them down. They could still have a purpose.
Your notebooks hold tremendous mathematical powers. They can turn those “eight million stories in the naked city,” into exponential infinity of stories.
Glancing at just a few pages of my own notebooks I came across two separate ideas written pages apart from each other. One, was “An item stolen that does not exist.” And two, “A hired thief pulls off the heist and was surprised to be paid by the very thing he was hired to steal. His employer only wanted the container the prize was in.”
Combining ideas that have lost their glow can reignite and fuel new flames.
Comments