People often ask me where I get my ideas for stories. The best answer to that question comes from Stephen King. When he was asked that question, he answered, “I have the mind of a five year old—I keep it in a jar on my desk.” I suppose Mr. King was trying to say, what most writers know, that the ideas just come to them. I, for one, do not have a particular exercise in which I conjure up ideas for stories, nor do they come to me in the same way. Each story is not only unique in concept, but it is also unique in its inception.
I have had ideas come to me in dreams, news articles, while walking, talking with friends or family and just out of the blue when the last thing on my mind was a new story idea. A good example of this is the book, ‘The Blonde Shooter’. The idea for that book came to me when I wasn’t thinking of writing a book. The initial idea was that a woman came into Emerson Pryne’s office, pulled out a pistol and shot him. He, nor I, had any ideas who she was or why she wanted to shoot him. The rest of the book was the development of those two questions as well as getting Emerson into and out of a series of messes.
As ideas come to me, I’ll place them in a file for future development. When I finish a project, if I don’t already have an idea for the next project, I’ll go to my file of story ideas and, either select one that is already there, or use some of the ideas contained there to conjure up a new, unique story. I’ll talk more about the development of ideas in a future post.