You have to have an idea before you can farm it into a story. This blog discusses where to find overall ideas for stories.
There are three sources for ideas that I use with regularity. First, we’ll look at each as an independent entity.
Catalog #1: Real-life.
Events recorded in history are excellent sources for ideas. They nearly always have a ring of truth to them, and they usually provide key plot points you can incorporate.
Betrayal in Blue, now in ARC review and scheduled for a 5/27/2020 release, is an example. A friend, and former police officer, told his story of why he left the police force and became a pastor. Since the idea of transitioning from police officer to pastor intrigued me, and the minimal details he was allowed to provide based on the circumstances of his separation from the force provided significant tension, I thought it was an ideal story idea.
So I wrote a novella about it.
After my friend read the manuscript, he returned it saying, “Thank you.”
“Oh, no,” I replied. “I should be thanking you.”
“You don’t understand,” he said. “Now I know how the story ends.”
That’s what a fiction writer dreams to hear.
When you use material from real-life, and your book is a work of fiction, you must be careful to augment your characters’ names, looks, and actions/situations so that they only resemble the real-life versions. Putting a disclaimer in your front matter is also essential. Below is my disclaimer.
Betrayal in Blue is a work of fiction. All characters and locations, certain procedures, and the ultimate ending of this story are fictional. With the exception of verified historical events and persons, all incidents, descriptions, dialog, and opinions expressed are the products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
Catalog #2: Published material.
You can’t copyright an idea, so existing stories often provide ideas for new stories. That’s a good thing because there is a limited number of plot situations possible.
“Georges Polti was a 19th-century French writer [who] described 36 situations that may be found in many stories, based on the list identified by Goethe who said it was originated by Italian Carlo Gozzi (1720-1806).” From: http://www.changingminds.org/disciplines/storytelling/plots/polti_situations/polti_situations.htm
Polti’s list is extensive. It also reads like a list:
The link after the quote about Polti above takes you to a website that explains each situation.
When teaching high school biology to mostly seniors, after the Advanced Placement Biology Exam, my AP Bio students wrote a science fiction story. AP Biology was their 3rd or 4th science and they listened to my stories for at least a year.
To be fair, I also wrote a story while the students were writing one.
To even the playing field a bit, since I was writing short stories regularly, I allowed the class to pick three numbers from 1-36. Those were the required plot situations to include in my story. In addition, they got to select two major characters—ranging from students in the class to Sponge Bob and Chuck Norris (in the same story!). Finally, they were allowed the select the science upon which my story was based.
That is not the best way to mine your story ideas, and many of the stories I wrote were cheesy. However, teachers used two or three of those forced plotline stories to pique interest in a topic for various science classes. The basic outline of one of them is the structure for “DNA Trek,” a story in the original Traveler’s HOT L book.
Catalog #3: Dreams, etc.
Never discount your brain as a rich source of inspiration. I learned to get out of bed and write down ideas when I wake up in the middle of the night. Sometimes I read skdf solsnof soo s alsno or some such iteration of what I was thinking. But, most often enough of the dream is there to allow me to recall my thoughts and use them.
Moral of this story: Keep a pencil and paper on your nightstand!
Next Blog: Idea farming—growing your plot
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