Blogger: Rachel Kent
I would like to know where you get your book ideas. Here are some of the scenarios I’ve heard, but please weigh in with yours.
1) Dreams–I have three clients who have written books that they dreamed about first, and I’ve heard that this is how Stephenie Meyer was inspired to write Twilight. My dreams never make enough sense to become a story. My last memorable dream involved an overweight homeless man who broke into my house and forced me to make him grilled cheese sandwiches. It freaked me out, but I don’t think that it would inspire a very good book. Some people are blessed to dream in detail. Do you have creative dreams?
2) Articles/Current Events–Many authors get ideas for books from current events in the media. This includes newspaper articles, online articles, television news and even some TV programs. One Books & Such client writes mystery/suspense, and she read of a murder in her area and imagined the details to create her own story. Have you been inspired by a current event to write either a novel or a nonfiction book?
3) Historical Stories/Family History–Other writers are inspired to write by historical events or family history. They might come across these stories in a genealogy, in a textbook, or while doing research at a library. Michelle Ule’s novella, The Dogtrot Christmas (part of The Log Cabin Christmas Collection, Barbour, 2011) was partially inspired by the story of her great-great-great grandfather. Michelle blogged about the details here, so feel free to check it out. Sometimes history inspires nonfiction, too. Biographies, church history, or theological permutations can use history as a springboard into a book. Has history ever inspired you to write?
5) Life Experiences–Many nonfiction books are inspired by experiences that the author has gone through. Fiction can also be inspired by these types of experiences. Robin Jones Gunn and Tricia Goyer’s nonfiction book, Praying for Your Future Husband (Zondervan, 2011), is a good example of a book that’s inspired by real-life experiences. Tricia and Robin share their own stories of praying for and finding a spouse, and many other women weigh in with their experiences as well. Have you ever written a book based on your life experiences?
Do you have any others to add? Please share the story of how you were inspired to write your current work in progress.
Because I’m traveling today to Ontario for the Write! Canada Conference, I probably won’t be able to weigh in with responses to your comments. Michelle plans to join the conversation on my behalf.
I have always felt tremendous empathy for women before emancipation and the right to vote. No matter how wealthy their husbands were, they were his chattel. The wife was a possession. He could do whatever he chose. So many women were forced to survive within horrible marriages because that is all there was. Unless they had the opportunity to take Holy Orders, become teachers or stay single… if they had wealth. From their fathers. But many women didn’t. Marriage was it. And for many women, it was pure agony. But for many others, marriage was pure joy.
I’m also extremely intrigued with Native American history, and of course, Canadian Aboriginal history. So much riches from so many cultures!
My adopted dad was born and raised in a war zone. He lived through all kinds of misery. He is a man of colour and has endured all kinds of, well, use your imagination.
My mom married young and was divorced with 3 children by the age of 22 1/2. It breaks me when I think about how her ex treated her.
Their stories paint how I live my life.
I HATE injustice.
I was doing some reading on New Mexico, because I’ve always wanted to go there, and learned about the Long Walk of the Navajo in January of 1864. I had never once heard of this event and began reading. And reading. And reading. I was sickened and shocked. How could it be allowed? How could good people stand by and do nothing? How could anyone do that? But I knew I couldn’t tackle such an enormous event. Then you know what happened, don’t you? That’s right…
Ping!
What if…?
What if a man had survived the Long Walk, only to be stranded, alone and defenseless? What if there was a wealthy woman somewhere who had lost everything? What if their lifelines were tied together? What if God could take His hand and weave the worn threads of their lives together?
God loves justice, He gives new mercy, He loves us and will hound us until we seek His face. And He will never leave us alone in the shadow of the valley of death.
In a way, my WIP is my parent’s allegory. A man unwanted, a woman broken. God bringing them together across cultures and societal expectations.
Intriguing! I would read this:)
Thanks!
I would read this too! Keep up the good work! 🙂
Thank you very much.
I’m still laughing over your dream. You must make a mean grilled cheese!
All of my stories have been inspired by a snippet of or relationship in scripture! But I think as I plot, experiences and things I’ve seen influence the idea.
Have a great time in Canada!
Your dream is cracking me up! I usually have a weird amalgamation of thoughts in my dreams, so if I wrote a story based on them, it might come out Alice in Wonderland-ish. Ca-razy.
My current ms was inspired partially by an issue I’m passionate about, and partially by life experience. It’s interesting how I started out with one idea and the story has become something almost completely different. I love how brainstorming can open up a whole new world like that!
Have a great time at your conference!
I had a dream about a fat man, once. The dream was actually full of symbolism, which doesn’t usually happen in my dreams. After I began writing, I dreamed in suspense (the genre), and wrote those down. Don’t know if I’ll ever do anything with them, but you never know. 🙂
I’ve gotten ideas from life situations friends have gone through. What if a woman’s husband calls her on the phone one day to tell her they’re moving to a third world country for his work? No conversation about it. It just is.
I’ve also gotten story ideas from what I’ve seen around me. Like an unusual car with bumper stickers, license frames and car accessories that all seem to contradict each other. What kind of a woman would drive a vehicle like that? Hmmmm. Other ideas pop in and out of my mind, but these are a couple that have stayed.
My current ms actually came to mind while my husband and I were at a couple’s retreat. The idea just came. It happens to be a story with a theme that resonates with my heart.
Hope your conference is going well!
I do have very vivid dreams, but I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t make good stories! I get ideas from life experiences — usually a situation I’ve lived or seen, followed by the question “What if…?” People interest me, so sometimes I just see someone who seems different or unique and wonder what it would be like to experience life through that lens. I could make up stories forever in that vein.
I tend to get inspired when I read other books or watch movies. I’ll get to a point in the plot where I ask myself, “but what would have happened if the MC did this instead?” The I daydream about scenarios in my head until I come up with something that I like that is completely my own.
My current wip started because of a dream about 15 years ago. The characters were developed off a dream moment, and the story continued to develop for many years before I started writing it. But that’s the only dream I remember turning into “reality.”
Recently, an idea was inspired by Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” The theme kept coming up for me in other areas, but one day last week, altering the words of Robert Frost turned the theme into a story idea:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And I took them both.
Now the challenge is a unique plot line, since I’m aware this idea has been done before. But I’ve got another project, or rather two other projects, to finish first!
Safe travels, Rachel, and have fun!
That’s some dream, Rachel. I rarely remember emough of my dreams to make them of any use.
For my first book, the inspiration came from a song. My upcoming book was inspired by my desire to remind my children that Christmas is a time to think of others.
I’ve written a story (unpublished) based upon an event here in town, and also tossed ideas around based upon an ad looking for a nanny that I found offensive. My sister and I collaborated on a women’s fiction book based loosely on our lives growing up. It needs to be dusted off and edited.
Ideas seem to be endless. It’s time I never have enough of. 🙂
Prayers for a safe and prosperous trip.
My dreams are neither detailed nor memorable…nothing like that big homeless man. 😉
My current WIP was inspired by historical research. I love to take the basics of a real-life historical story and go from there.
Hope you’re having fun at the conference!
Certainly you all can appreciate how challenging it would be to have a vivid dream and then have to put together a story around it. That happened to one of my critique partners, and it was in a genre she didn’t like.
For some reason, though, it wouldn’t let her go and she wrote the whole novel.
You can see where that might get problematic, especially if you were unfamiliar with that genre!
I see from many of these comments, that great question, “what if?” features in your thought process.
For me, the question is that of a child still, “why?” As in “why did that person do such a thing?”
That suggests to me, that I’m interested in stories that come out of character and personality. “What if?” seems to come out of plot–what’s happening.
What do you think? And does it matter?
Very interesting. I never thought of that before. I think we need to ask both questions, but I also start probably start with “why” more often. “What if” comes into play a lot as I’m doing my outlines.
Family and personal experience are my inspirations. (My dreams are usually really obvious and self-explanatory.)
I wrote The Memory of Drowning because I have an incredibly vivid memory of nearly drowning in a pond on our farm when I was four. And here’s the thing–it’s a mostly NICE memory. I figure only God could make almost drowning a fond memory.
For me the better question is where don’t you get a story idea… I think my brain is constantly roving through ideas as I experience the world. I find inspiration by watching people, a conversation I overheard at the mall, a latest news story, my kids, the old creepy house I drove by on the way to the doctor, that soccer mom that is just a bit too perfect, you name it.
So fun to hear all of the places that you guys get ideas! Wow, if I wrote my dreams they would be strange to be sure. Guess I better stick to people watching. LOL!
My YA series was inspired by a dream and a Bible study I was doing at the time. Also life experiences play a large part in my writing. The fact that my father was in a wheelchair much of my life shows up in my writing, as I have a tendency to feature characters dealing with disability…
My debut novel was inspired by a writing guild assignment: Write a scene from three different viewpoints. I did — and then came back to it years later and ran with the scene.
I like the whole “What if?” exercise.
I also like to listen to conversations — not eavesdropping exactly. But often I’ll talk with people and come away and think, “Hhhmm, that situation would make a good story.”
So far, no dreams of fat men and grilled cheese sandwiches …
My current WIP is a complete and total departure from what I usually write, genre-wise. In the theme department it’s exactly the same.
It came to me in the wee morning hours of May 16th, when I dreamed about a man walking through some woods. I can still see his face clear as day, and he was saying two words over and over and over. Those two words turned out to be what his people are called. He’s a humanoid alien, a member of a race whose home world was erased from history as punishment for a rebellion against their conquerors.
As of last night I’m 44,630 words into it and have no plans to stop any time soon.
Usually I write historical romance and my ideas come from a desire to say something about a particular time period or from research. I live in Louisiana and am surrounded by plantations, so I’m writing about French Creole plantations and the race relations common in French Creole society. The original idea came when I worked at a French Creole plantation-turned-museum and the other two books in the series are for the secondary POV characters in the first one.
I’m also obsessed with Russia and love writing about Russia. I get ideas from nearly everything I read about Russia.
Hi Rachel,
I’m from Louisiana too! 🙂
I write primarily historical fiction – sometimes with a twist. Since human beings around the world have been busily creating history for thousands of years, there is a plentiful supply. I never worry about getting ideas. I worry about which idea to do first.
I’m thinking I really need to try one of your grilled cheese sandwiches!! Seriously – my dreams, when I first wake seem so immediate and so detailed, but before I can get fully awake enough to jot anything down they already in tatters with just tantalizing wisps of detail left. So, no, dreams aren’t my source. Sometimes it’s a headline, or a story I heard from someone else that triggers the what if question. My favorite story was triggered when I stood on the remnants of a 200 year old foundation and wondered what if I fell and hit my head going down, then woke up to find a roof over my head and the year was long in the past?
My writing ideas coalesce from daydreams more than night dreams… though I have very vivid, often cinematic dreams with strong story lines.
The ideas come from all my life experiences; things I’ve done, read, watched, listened to, etc., etc.. I really think that’s true of all writers, don’t you?
Most of my ideas have been coming from asking the question: “what should a Christian think about… ?” My book that Mary is representing now is called …by Design and deals with the way people respond to the subjects of creation and evolution depending on whether they believe the world and all that is in it was created by a supernatural act of God or an accidental, random act. “How then should we behave?” What makes it fun, and fun for me to write, is that I’m not a theologian or a scientist so I don’t get bogged down in those discussions. I choose to show how PEOPLE behave, and that is the element of drama that I enjoy.
The outline took a short period of time to write, but I didn’t set words to page for several years after. Some things in the world changed, but the overall story is still relevant- and controversial.
I tend to ask myself a lot of “what if” questions. I have some beautiful, godly young girls in my extended family who inspired my current WIP. I saw them and thought to myself, hmm, how could I wreck that?
That doesn’t make me sound good, does it?
But it’s fun to play with fictional characters to see how you can screw up otherwise perfect lives. Most of my stories have some history in my own life experiences or those of someone I know. I have lots of fodder for my imagination in my own memory banks.
Russia is a perennial topic for me, the drama never ends in that country! Reading history also can give us insight into different settings, as noted above, people are the same throughout history (emotionally, at least), it’s their response to their particular situations that makes their stories unusual.
I’ll be filling in for Rachel next week as well, talking about the types of books writers should read–in part to gain story ideas and also to facilitate their writing.
And I agree, I get story ideas all the time, too.
Indeed, I tried to make a case to my husband that the reason I discuss my fears so often is because it is my job to think through disastrous scenarios into which my characters will be thrust. Therefore, my fears shouldn’t be dismissed as ridiculous since I’m just doing my job!
He still thinks I worry too much! 🙂
I had a dream once where the number 4 was outlawed and any who uses it would be executed 😉
Most of my ideas come from current events and personal experiences.
It wasn’t exactly a dream, but a sense. I was lying on the living room couch, sick with bronchitis, when I had a sense of my mother standing over me. I went to my computer and started typing about the complicated (to say the least!) relationship between a daughter in her late 30s and her recently deceased mother… That eventually led to the characters and story in my first mystery novel, MOTHER, MURDER AND ME.
On the end of one college term, I waited for my work shift to begin in the library. In a dark corner study corral, my pencil touched a piece of paper and the main character of my ms emerged. I saw some of my own fears and struggles in her, but she kind of just came. Sounds a little crazy:)
I also feel like I naturally gravitate and gather ideas from things I am passionate about as well. Or things that are very familiar like Lake Michigan.
I also LOVE to people watch. I get so many ideas from pure observation.
I get a lot of my ideas from classic stories or movies. I wonder what the stories would be like if you add Christians and the power of God’s healing to the brokenness that you find in the lives of most of the characters.
Many times it’s a person. I saw an aged man drinking coffee alone in a crowded café. There was something about him, beyond his haggard and weary appearance, the crevices in his brow, the leather his hands had become. An aura almost that said his purpose for living wasn’t completed yet and the porcelain cup contained a brief respite from his troubled journey.
He’s inspired several characters.
It takes five hours to mow our lawn – five wonderful, uninterrupted hours of running stories through my mind. That lawn mower has offered up a lot of ideas.
I used to add characters to books as I read them. Did you know there was a fifth sister in Little Women and in the Little House Books? All characters based on me! 🙂
Mote often than not, I’ll read something or get into a character on a tv series or into an archetype, and daydream up something related to that, then something related to that, and about four or five degrees out I’ll realize what I have is no longer fan fiction but something original that no longer relies on the original inspiration, and then I write it down. Sometimes I even send it out 🙂 occasionally it gets published, too.
Travel inspires – even short trips, like a walk in the woods!
Oh, woods and mountains, always make me want to write.
Most of my writing comes from my own life experience combined with imagination and ideas I get from other sources: television, movies, books, etc. Travel is actually a large component,
too, and I sometimes base my work on trips I’ve made.
I’m not sure I sleep enough to dream! My ideas typically come from my own life, something that seems innocuous. But then I let my imagination run wild, wondering what would happen if I took the most extreme route or reaction possible or what the worst possible outcome could be. I’ve always struggled with worrying. Now I have a creative outlet for it.
Wow. Love that dream. I rarely remember my dreams. I used to have the recurring dream of going to school without my pants on. Typical high school vulnerability thing. But other than that…I’ve only had a couple of dreams I’ve remembered later.
Almost all of my ideas have come from novels I’ve loved. When I want to start a new novel I think of the novels I love best. I ask why I love them and I try to put my characters into similar emotional places but different physical landscapes.
One novel I started but never finished came from a story I’d seen on the news. But that was my first novel and I didn’t know how to plot. I may plot it out and finish it one day. It had a pretty good inciting incident, now that I think about it.
Just last night I dreamed I found a baby in a trash can and called 911, then years later the child and her adopted sisters came to visit me and I showed them around an amazing town where I lived. Hmmm. Maybe that should give me some good plot ideas.
My first WIP was inspired by my real-life experience running, and living in an all-male dorm. Being female, it made for some interesting dynamics. The second in the series was inspired by the many women I’ve met, both as a counselor and in my personal life, who’ve had abortions. There were several tragic commonalities in their stories and I felt the need to tell them. One thread in the first story came from a visual that ran in my head like a continual video loop. I kept thinking I needed to add it to the story in order to get it to stop. I did and it stopped. whew!
LOVE your dream about the grilled cheese robber! ROTFL. That is a good one.
My WIP idea was inspired by a movie. Have you seen MIDNIGHT IN PARIS?
If you haven’t…rent it. I LOVED it! I didn’t think I was big on historical legends but the way Woody Allen wrote the script, he really brought the characters to life and I learned a lot on how they really were as a person. It was really intriguing to me. It’s possible it hooked me as well because the MC is a novelist. I love writer movies.
I’ve been wanting to watch it again I loved it so much.
So in short, actually I’ve had several movies spark ideas out of nowhere. And ever since I got hooked on Save the Cat by Blake, I never see another movie the same again 🙂 They are all learning experiences and they so spark great creativity.
LOL @ your dream — mine are always odd like that, too! I had one dream before that I thought might make a good book. I guess I should get started, huh? 😉 Thanks for the ideas!!
I started out writing for children but while reading a manuscript to my local writer’s group my family and I adopted child with special needs from Uganda. The group was more interested in the adoption than my story. At their urging I began writing about it for the local newspaper. Now, seven years later and after tragically losing our daughter to an unknown complication from cerebral palsy, I’m working to write her story as a book to raise money for other children with disabilities in Uganda. Some day, I hope to get back to writing for children!
The benefit of coming to read after work is that you get to read everyone’s intriguing responses.
Rachel, I wouldn’t be so sure there isn’t a story spark in your dream. My mind immediately went to work on it.
And that’s how it works for me. I get ideas from just about anywhere. Just a few examples – a man a few rows in front of me in church had a stuffed bunny sticking out of his back pocket. I know I shouldn’t have been plotting in church but I couldn’t help it. That bunny had me asking all sorts of questions in my mind and before you church was over, I had the rough outlines of a story.
Another time I saw a huge white dog all alone on the street. I looked down, looked back up and he was gone. I have a story from that too.
Of course not all ideas are strong enough to support a story, but the spark is so much fun. There’s nothing like the rush of a newly inspired story idea.
Thanks for asking such a great question today. Just thinking on it has me pumped.
I grew up hearing my grandmother talking about her childhood and sympathizing with her at a young age. So much so, I could visualize “scenes” from her childhood. My first novel, The Vision of a Mother’s Heart was inspired by her stories. I am currently working on the sequel, using stories she and her siblings told, but giving them a happier end. Books 2 and 3 will be more fiction as I put myself into their shoes and am making life a bit easier for them. Years of research made writing this series very interesting and emotionally draining at times.
I am also working on some children’s books about a very independent cat. We have had several cats in the family and I have taken their personalities with their cute and quirky ways as the characters in the books.
Basically I listen, observe and pray that the Lord will help me to write stories that point others to Him.
Thank you for allowing us to chime in!
First of all, I’m a little curious about what happened to number four. Was there one?
For the most part, I get my ideas from what ifs that I mull over for long enough. For picture books, I often get them from funny things that I’m thinking about, or sometimes from quirky titles that come up when I’m talking to my kids.
The lack of a number 4 was . . . to inspire your creativity! What could it mean? What could have happened? Who would have deleted? When did it happen? Where did it go? Why was it removed?
🙂
It went golfing.
My first novel, which took two years and remains in a drawer, started with a “What if…” We hosted an exchange student from Spain. He was awesome and I prayed my daughter would find a man like him one day (Jorge and Faith are 10 years apart).
Then I thought, “What if an exchange student and his family stayed in touch over the years and …
Someone forwarded me the link to this post. Why? Because, just this week, I blogged about a dream I had for years! It was a nightmare really–a horrible one that I DIE in. Ugh. What a horrid thing to go through as a child. Anyway, a full-length historical romance came out of it. ha! Here’s the post if you want to read about the nightmare. It was so weird writing about it. Even after all these years it still is so vivid in my mind.
http://jmpowersromance.blogspot.com/2012/06/screams-and-dreams.html
I hope you don’t find it inappropriate to post my blog on yours. If so, just delete this comment.
Thanks!
All of my ideas, brilliant or not, usually come from viewing a single object and an image popping into my mind as the aftermath. For instance, I’ve always loved the striking beauty in bright blue or green eyes against a face surrounded by thick dark hair. My mind took the image of the blue eyes and concocted my current WIP (a dysoptopian novel) off of that single image.
Another case happened tonight. My mom and I were licking our ice cream cones and driving through the country where cows and farms abounded. We came upon a deer farm in the process. My mind imagined myself being able to walk up to the fence and touch the deer. It’s always something I’ve wanted to do as I love the gentle nature of those creatures. My mind immediately came up with a semi-plotline to a novel.
Because of this method, I’m constantly being bombarded with ideas that I either take off on or leave. 🙂
I had a dream about a woman who met a girl at an entrance to a cave. Then the woman saw another girl that only she could see. Her girl only conmmunicated to her in sign language, she didn’t remember knowing sign language.
After a couple of days (while driving around in my truck) I developed a story of the woman who reports the Battle of Armegdon. Current tentative title: Make Believe
Yeah, caught me by surprise too. Now if I can only add about ten more hours to each day so I can put it all together.
Wow, what a unique dream! I wonder what inspired that one.
Like Jennifer (and others) described in the comments, many ideas I use come from my passion for the subject, along with life experiences and Scripture study. Devotions written focused around Scripture often look at how the biblical characters may have felt/learned or how God’s truth can be applied in our lives now. It’s a bit of history mixed with life experience.
Hi. Yes I know it’s been said a lot already but dreams are one source for me too. I also draw on mythology (one of my lifelong interests). For the trilogy I’m working on at present, I told my nieces about a story idea I had and one of them said that sounds like the myth… She looked it up for me and sent me the transcript and the story just flowed from there!
I thought I was different for dreaming my stories, it’s nice to see that others get their ideas this way too!!
The sandwich dream would be enough to trigger a story. Who was he? What did he really want? What if he asked you to take him somewhere? I’ve based stories and poems on less.
Travel usually gives me ideas, even short trips. I might not even actually write about the place I visited. But when you travel, you’re usually alert to your surroundings, and you see things in a different way.
I’ve also been inspired by bits of overheard conversation, something I read, or just something that pops into my head for no apparent reason. I have short story that was triggered by a memory of looking through my friend’s baseball encyclopedia many years ago (I was probably 11 or 12) and finding a player who played in one game in 1890. The encyclopedia listed only his last name. I didn’t write about Budd, but I wrote about a young man who was trying to make it in baseball, who dreamed of being a Major Leaguer and getting his name in the records, even if only for one game.
Thanks to all of you who have commented! My trip is going well.
Perhaps my dream should become a book. You all seemed to like it! Lol!
What a weird dream! My WIP came to me in a dream. I almost hate to admit to this, since I feel like it sounds kinda cheesy. But I have very vivid dreams. I’m hoping I have another dream that will turn into a book idea.
My ideas for books just show up when I least expect them. I’ve learned to write them down quickly before they get away.
And for those of you asking about poor #4, I can’t remember if there actually was one at one time. I think that I had “Family History” as its own line at first and then combined it with #3.