"Where do you get your ideas?"

Although I am not a famous author (yet), I still get asked this question quite frequently.  The short answer is “Lots of places”.  The longer answer would also be “lots of places”, but with some detail.  I’ve gotten story ideas from, in no particular order; my life, chance encounters, overheard conversations, current events, people saying ‘You should write about (fill in the blank), television, even newspaper or magazine articles.

The point is you have to pay attention to the world around you because ideas are everywhere.  For example, in my book “The River”, there’s a mysterious parade of animals in the middle of the night.  This came from something I read years ago about how animals will flee before a forest fire with little regard for their proximity to their natural enemies.  When I first worked on the short story that eventually became the novel, I wondered what it would mean if this behavior took place without the threat of a fire.  What would it mean?  Could it happen?  What would cause it.  Eventually it became a scene in the book.

In my short story “Dark Glasses”, I was in a store trying on sunglasses and it suddenly occurred to me how cool it would be if I found a pair that allowed me to see the future.  Voila!  A story was born.  I have a short story that’s currently about half done that I started after watching one of those paranormal shows on TV.  You know the ones I’m talking about; they play a tape that purportedly is of some otherworldly being.  I hear “Hisssssssssssss, ahhhhhhhhhhh”, but the guy on the show always says something along the lines of “Did you hear that?  He said ‘Four score and seven years ago…’  It’s the ghost of Abraham Lincoln!!”  That became the basis for the story, but it has a couple of plot twists that exist only in my imagination.

The bottom line is I get my ideas from anywhere and everywhere.  I would guess most writers would tell you the same thing.  They’re out there, floating around in the cosmos.  (The ideas, not the writers)  The difference between writers and non-writers is the writers have finer-tuned receivers.