Mary Rosenblum writes SF, mainstream, nonfiction, and also mystery as Mary Freeman. To date she has published seven novels and more than sixty short stories.  Her eighth novel, Horizon, will be out from Tor Books in November 2006.  She is a LR instructor and the web editor.

 

Finding Ideas

 

By Mary Rosenblum

 

 

            It never fails…at every conference or writers workshop, someone always asks you:  Where do you get your ideas?   A favorite answer among writers for some time was ‘A post office box in Poughkeepsie.’    And while that post office box might seem like a very nice idea on the ‘barren days’, the reality is that ideas are like leaves in the autumn, like pollen, like dust…they are everywhere. It’s not a matter of finding them, it’s just a matter of learning how to see them.  Believe me, you’re up to your knees in them. 

            So why don’t you see them?  First of all, ask yourself this:  Are you looking for an idea or are you looking for a Pulitzer Winner Idea?  Be honest now.  That ‘got to be a blockbuster idea’ stops an awful lot of new writers.  And you know what?  A cool idea is great, but it’s not required.  Let’s face it.  Everything has been done at least once.  It’s not the idea that wins the Pulitzer, it’s the story.  That’s the combination of a good plot, very real characters, and a rich setting.  You can start out with something as simple as the Three Bears in nature and it can grow into something that will win you that Pulitzer as your story grows and comes to life, as your real characters walk off the page and leave readers remembering them forever. 

            So relax.  Stop looking for the Pulitzer Idea, and start noticing those ideas like drifts of leaves all around you.  Start with the daily paper.  Pick up the front page as you sip your coffee or tea in the morning.  What do you find?  International news, but here’s an account of a local man who robbed a convenience store.   How familiar.  Nothing there.  Or is there?  Grab a pad and write that down… Man robs convenience store.  So what can you do with this?  Give yourself fifteen minutes and see what you can come up with.  Hm…he robs the convenience store and recognizes his long lost brother across the counter.  So what does he do?  Contact his brother later, after the holdup?  And what happens then?  Or the store owner is magically protected by a small demon…a charm he purchased from a neighborhood curandera.   The demon begins to make the bandit’s life miserable until he returns the money.  Or the clerk is a young woman and this is the bandit’s first inept attempt at a holdup.   He falls in love with her on sight and a humorous romance results as he tries to woo her without ending up in jail.   Hmm.  Not bad for one small column about a too-common holdup, eh? 

 

Mental Exercise

            Just as your muscles get stronger with exercise, your creative muscles get stronger, too, with exercise.  Make this story generating exercise a regular daily habit.  On your coffee break, during your commute, while waiting in the checkout line, make up stories.  Realize that you don’t actually have to write them, so you have the freedom to experiment.  Use news stories, overheard scraps of conversations (cell phones are a wonderful invention for writers!), or scraps of water cooler gossip and make up stories.  The more you do this, the better you get at it.  The more story ideas you come up with, the more often one will really stand out, and you’ll find yourself scribbling down notes, thinking about just how you’re going to do this.    Write the good ones down and stick them in a file labeled ‘ideas’.  When you need a new story and come up blank, leaf through that file full of scribbled story notes and see what jumps out at you. 

 

Visual Basics

          A picture may be ‘worth a thousand words’, but it can stimulate a thousand words…or three…just as easily.  If you run across a striking picture in a magazine and you can do so, cut out that picture and save it.  Stop in at those card shops you see at the strip malls.  Amongst all the Hallmark greeting and get well cards you may well find some unusual cards created by local artists.  If anything catches your eye, buy it.  Take it home and add it to your file of pictures cut from magazines.  You can capture images on the internet as well and either print them out or save yourself that expensive ink and merely save them to your harddrive. 

            An excellent creative exercise is to choose a picture and create a story to explain it.  My very first sale, ‘For a Price’ to Asimov’s Magazine, in 1988, was a story created in just such a manner as a writing exercise.  I still have the card that inspired the story. 

 

What If?

            A writer’s most potent tool is that simple question, What if?   What if he doesn’t come back?  What if a storm caught them on the road?  What if the bridge washed out?  What if the power went out?  What if a burglar broke in?  What if a cougar stalked them?  Almost any situation can turn into a story after a session of ‘what if’.  If your story idea seems bland and uninteresting, give it a try.  Okay, they go on a cruise and argue the whole time.  What if the boat is hijacked by pirates?  What if they get quarantined because of a disease?  What if her former lover shows up?  What if a vengeful former lover of his shows up?  What if a killer starts stalking the cruise guests?  Even the most mundane story can perk up with the right application of ‘what if’.  J

 

Lift Those Creative Weights

            Whether it’s turning news stories into story ideas, coming up with ideas from pictures, or asking what if until you turn something mundane into something wonderful, stretch those creative muscles as often as possible.  The more you stretch those creative muscles, the more easily you’ll come up with a story idea on demand. That’s a very important skill to cultivate.  As a published writer, you often are invited into anthologies.  That means you get handed a theme and are expected to come up with a story by a certain deadline.  While you don’t have to do these, the pay is nice, and most writers love to receive anthology invitations.  But it does mean you need to come up with that story ‘on demand’.  So a little creative weight lifting will have you fit and ready, next time you need a story for a LR assignment or an anthology invitation.