Blogger: Michelle Ule
Sitting in for Wendy who is visiting the upper Midwest with Lauraine Snelling’s book tour.
Note: I am at Kathi Lipp’s Leverage Speaking Conference with limited ability to comment.
Tell your own stories on this idea in the comments today!
Writers always get asked where a story idea came from.
This is an example of how my brain worked one morning.
- Driving along and letting my brain roam.
- Seeing something odd–in this case a man wearing a long black raincoat walking in the bike lane against traffic.
- Noticing he had walked away from a bicycle–which was parked with its kickstand down.
- Idle thought–when had I last seen a bike parked with a kick stand?
- Second idle thought–wouldn’t that long raincoat get in the way of pedaling the bike?
- Where would he have been going on an overcast Sunday morning at eight o’clock?
- He didn’t look like he cared he wasn’t wearing a helmet.
- One block past, another bike rider–also sans helmet–was riding along, slowly.
- He wasn’t wearing a raincoat.
- Were they together?
- Who first thought of using a wheel to move faster?
- How long ago was that?
- Bicycles began to be popular circa 1880. Who invented the first popular bike?
- Was it challenging to ride bicycles on cobblestones?
- Two blocks past–were the tires originally wood?
- Who would have made the first tires for bicycles in rural America?
- Were blacksmiths involved in putting together tires and if so, what did they think of the first person to come to them with a bicycle idea?
- What would it have been like to have helped put together an early bicycle in a small town?
- What would that man, working outside, have thought the first time he saw a bicycle ridden away–probably on a dirt path?
- Would it have made him want to learn to ride one as well, and to explore the world?
- Or would a bicycle manufacturer have been content merely to build bicycles for others to ride?
- If it wasn’t originally his idea would he have tinkered with the concept?
- Then what?
Three blocks and my mind was afire.
But I was going to church, so I filed it away.
Don’t have three blocks? How about one minute?
I came up with another idea in less than a minute yesterday.
A friend asked if I would be interested in contributing for a novella collection centering on stories set on a body of water during the 19th century.
I loved the idea, given my past, of writing a short romance about one of the first developers of an American submarine. Either the Turtle or the Hunley.
Think of the drama as a determined engineer tries to put together his warship while his girlfriend watches in dismay.
He could die!
It could sink (it’s supposed to sink!), but he might not survive!
(Wait, this idea may be hitting too close to the girl I once was . . . That means I could write with genuine feeling!)
I loved the idea.
But, alas, I’m too busy right now to write for the collection.
Still, the germ of the story idea came in no time.
All I needed was a little time, access to Google (that’s them screaming–“not her again!”) and I’m ready to write.
How about you?
Set a timer.
Can you come up with a story idea in less than a minute?
What if I gave you three blocks?
Tweetables
A story idea in one minute? Click to Tweet
Plotting an idea in three blocks. Click to Tweet
How the mind dreams up a story: a description. Click to Tweet
Shirlee Abbott
I could paint an X on the road to show you where God dropped the idea for my WIP into my head. Who knew that it would be a decade in the works while I learned how to write a book? (God knew, of course, but I was clueless).
*Most of my blog post ideas come to me while I drive. That’s partly due to my daily two hours on the road. Likely it’s more a function of my free-range mind pin-balling about while my driving self is on autopilot.
Michelle Ule
This is MICHELLE not Janet, responding on her IPad which apparently only wants to be Janet, today!
Great idea about letting the imagination roam and this activate! I’ve had the same experience, though the shower also is effective!
Carol Ashby
Kindred spirit, Shirlee! I live 17 miles from town, so I drive a lot of highway. I write in my head when I’m driving, but I have to make myself stop when I get into town and the interstate gets more than three lanes wide. Six lanes wide going one direction is not the place let my characters converse when I should be watching semis and the lane-weaving sports cars.
Funny thing is when I pray while driving (and not about the traffic), my awareness of the road and traffic is amplified instead of dulled. Do you experience that, too?
Shirlee Abbott
I am just as likely to brake for deer, groundhogs and (two times) bear as for other cars. I get in my car and pray, “Protect me from the wildlife and the wildlife from me.” When traffic calls for my undivided attention, I tell God, “Catch you on the other side,”
Carol Ashby
Sounds like you need a 1-ton pickup with a ranch bumper…just in case. They call them roo guards in Australia.
Lara Hosselton
Story ideas come to me in the form of Titles. I get the title for a book idea first. I don’t always act on every idea, but it’s interesting how that process comes about. The creative mind is weird.
*I had a professor in a writing class use an interesting technique to get the creative blood flowing. He’d give us either one word or a beginning sentence and then request a short story by end of class time. It was challenging, but fun.
Michelle Ule
MICHELLE on IPad:
I love a prompt and some of my best work, including published novellas have come from someone else’s ideas!
Andrew Budek-Schmeisser
Interesting question, Michelle.
* Like Shirlee, I could mark the spot where “Blessed Are The Pure Of Heart” was born. It was inspired by a roadside cross, and since I didn’t know the story, I decided to make one up. I’m still not sure why. The story that came out of it is very different from whatever original concept I had, but I still like it, and surprisingly find that I can re-read BPH every few years for fun.
* The as-yet-unpublished “The Last Indian War” arose from taking the Wounded Healer archetype a step further, to an ‘Enemy Healer’. Thus, it’s about a German POW during WW2, paroled to work as a mechanic on the edge of the Navajo Big Rez in New Mexico, and who finds that he has the power of healing in his hands. I wanted the juxtaposition of Christian and Navajo culture, and the very different ways in which they view what might be seen as miraculous, to play central part in the story. It’s probably too religious for mainstream, and it’s way too ‘Catholic/Navajo beliefs’ for CBA, so self-publication’s the only out.
* ‘Emerald Isle’ had a minimalist beginning – man boards airliner, only seat available is next to attractive woman, and he doesn’t want to sit there…why? (NO, it’s not because he’s gay, that was ruled out at the start!) It became a book-length free-writing exercise in which I was documenting what the characters did much more than directing their steps.
* I envy writers who have a methodical way of building ideas. My mind’s a squirrel-cage in comparison.
Michelle
And think about your book, now, when I see those shrines, Andrew.
Andrew Budek-Schmeisser
Michelle, you just made my day!
Jennifer Zarifeh Major
I LOVED The Last Indian War!! Such a great story,
Andrew Budek-Schmeisser
Thank you so much! I am trying to get it organized for Kindle. The cover is a big hurdle…haven’t a clue as to what would be good.
Shelli Littleton
I got both my novel ideas from mission stories, articles that I wrote and expanded on them. The middle grade I wrote with my daughter (my first novel) … an event happened with our cats, and we had fun brainstorming together. I struggle with “what if” questions … I feel like I struggle anyway. I think I do better when someone brainstorms with me. I wish I was better at this and had a folder with a thousand novel ideas. 🙂 But knowing me, God probably gives me one at a time, because if I had a folder full of ideas, I’d be a nervous wreck wanting to complete them all. 🙂
Michelle
Having friends to brainstorm with is great!
Carol Ashby
I’m glad you asked this, Michelle. I find it fascinating how other authors get the germ of a plot.
*For three of my Roman novels, I woke up knowing the main events of the plot. The others spawned off minor characters in a WIP where the new plot line with the minors as majors came to me while I was writing.The 1925 Colorado thriller just intruded into my consciousness while I was writing about Roman Germany one night. The only thing they had in common was people riding horses.
Michelle Ule
And those Twilight novels were born from a dream (nightmare?) and look (or not) where they led!
Wendy L Macdonald
Michelle, I love how you think because I can relate to dreaming up plots while driving home from church. One Sunday, as I drove behind a cutesy sport’s car, I wondered what would happen if an antique trunk flew out of the moving trunk in front of it and landed on the car’s hood? I was picturing the development of a romantic suspense. (Now that you’ve reminded me of this, I need to go and write a blurb for my idea file.) By the time I got home I had the two main characters sketched out, suspicious of one another, and annoyed at themselves for being attracted to the other character.
Blessings ~ Wendy Mac
Michelle
perfect!
Sarah Bennett
My last one came from a picture on Pinterest: an elderly lady looking into a mirror and seeing herself as a much younger version. It resonated.
*My current WIP comes from my daughter, who asked why some Christians don’t like tattoos or piercings. It nagged and picked at my brain after our talk until a plot tumbled out. Funny thing? The story ended up having nothing to do with tattoos or piercings, but bears the weight of biased thinking.
Michelle
Even better, you took the idea and made it yours!
Jennifer Zarifeh Major
Three blocks? How about a Skype session with a very enthusiastic , encouraging friend?
No names, though. But she speaks “submarine”.
Shelli Littleton
Skype sessions are the greatest. 🙂
Michelle Ule
Shower idea!
Tisha
I could come up with a vein of an idea in three blocks, but spend a few weeks writing about it until I’m certain it would work. 🙂