Comments on: Mining for book ideas

By: Songea

Songea — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 16:22:02 +0000

I cut a snippet from my life and take it in a completely different direction, far beyond or far different from anything I would ever attempt in my “real” life. It makes the writing project personal and exciting, even when it’s extremely difficult.

By: D.C. DaCosta

D.C. DaCosta — Sun, 05 May 2013 05:13:27 +0000

Interesting point about the first line. That’s important.

I always find the LAST LINE (or last paragraph), too, before I write anything down.

By: D.C. DaCosta

D.C. DaCosta — Sun, 05 May 2013 05:11:37 +0000

I do get a lot of ideas from short (3 column inch) stories in my newspaper.

I also think of famous people and how things might have been for them if one event of their life had been different. What if Elizabeth Taylor had married Roddy McDowall? What if Bob Hope’s family had not moved to America?

Or I take real people or events of my own experience and muddle them up with other people or events that I can imagine. (This is easier than either of the above approaches.)

The ideas aren’t the hard part. The hard part is using one’s free time to get it down on paper, and then to stop polishing it to death.

By: Dave Sosnowski

Dave Sosnowski — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 10:48:14 +0000

For me, fiction usually starts with empathy and a question: What would it be like if X, Y, or Z happened to me? The response to that can cook for a while until I chance upon a first line that seems to have a bit of the voice of the piece and I follow it to see how far it goes.

By: jeffo

jeffo — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 23:02:00 +0000

For me, ideas usually come from multiple sources spinning about my head over a period of time. As an example, a conversation with my daughter about someone she knew sparked a character that I just *had* to write about. I had no idea what the story was, or anything else, just what this character was like. A Facebook friend request from a person I went to high school with but quite literally never, ever talked to gave me an opening scene. Finally, I typed a line that came out of nowhere, and I had a story. Everything else flowed pretty well from there.