Where Do Writers Get Their Ideas?

Of all the questions people ask writers, “Where do you get your ideas?” might be the most common. It’s also one of the hardest to answer without sounding like a pretentious asshole. People seem to expect some fascinating explanation involving elaborate creative rituals or a visit from some mysterious muse who apparently has nothing better to do than whisper plot suggestions into our ears.

I hate to disappoint anyone, but most of my ideas come from considerably less impressive circumstances. Something in the news might catch my attention, or I’ll overhear a conversation that sticks with me for reasons I can’t immediately explain. Sometimes an idea comes from something I’ve experienced myself. Other times, it’s a perfectly ordinary observation that takes an unexpected turn somewhere inside my head.

Most of these ideas begin with the same question: What if? It’s a question I’ve asked myself more times than I could possibly count. They can turn an otherwise unremarkable observation into something worth exploring. They can also send you down some pretty disturbing rabbit holes, particularly if your imagination has a habit of wandering into places where respectable people probably shouldn’t follow.

A Questionable Way of Looking at the News

A while back, I came across a news story about a child abuse case in Roane County, Tennessee. A child had suffered terrible neglect and malnutrition, eventually dying after being confined in a basement. It was the kind of story that makes you wonder what the hell is wrong with people.

I kept thinking about the basement and wondering what kind of horror story could grow from that setting. Eventually, I started imagining a child with a supernatural affliction, something so dangerous that her parents believed they had no choice but to keep her isolated. That raised another problem: what would happen when someone outside the family discovered her?

That became the foundation for my horror story, Hide Katie.

The original tragedy was real, and I don’t want to minimize what happened by treating it as entertainment. The fictional premise grew from asking how the circumstances might look if something impossible were happening behind the scenes. Once I introduced that possibility, the story became something entirely different.

I had to figure out what kind of affliction could justify keeping a child isolated and how the parents would live with that decision. Then there was the problem of somebody from outside the family discovering the situation and interpreting it through an entirely reasonable understanding of child abuse. The reactions of the people involved interested me as much as the supernatural threat itself. The premise gave me somewhere to start, but I still had to work out how the supernatural threat would behave when somebody tried to intervene.

Everybody’s a Cameraman

Another story, Fear and Other Transfer Lines, came from a considerably more modern source of inspiration: watching people behave like complete assholes on the internet.

Spend enough time on Reddit, YouTube, or TikTok, and you’ll encounter an endless supply of videos featuring public arguments, fights, confrontations, and spectacular demonstrations of poor judgment. Somebody starts screaming in a restaurant, another person pulls out a phone, and before long the entire incident becomes entertainment for thousands of strangers.

What interests me almost as much as the incident itself is the behavior of the spectators. People stand around recording something awful, apparently more concerned with capturing footage than doing anything useful. I started wondering what might happen if one of those spectators recorded something terrible, uploaded the footage, and suddenly found themselves the target of everyone’s outrage.

That question became the starting point for Fear and Other Transfer Lines.

I was interested in how quickly the outrage could shift from the original incident to somebody who merely witnessed it. People watching through a screen can be remarkably confident about what a stranger should have done, even when they know almost nothing about the circumstances.

Figuring out who that spectator was and what happened afterward took considerably more work.

Ideas Are Cheap. Writing Is Expensive.

Coming up with an idea is usually the enjoyable part. You can imagine a few scenes, perhaps even a spectacular ending, without having to worry too much about how you’ll connect everything.

For a brief moment, the story seems practically finished. You know what it’s about, you can picture the characters, and you have a pretty good idea where everything is going. All that’s left is to sit down and write the damn thing.

Unfortunately, that last part contains most of the work.

An idea doesn’t explain how you’re supposed to get from that exciting opening to the ending you’ve imagined. It certainly doesn’t help when you discover halfway through the manuscript that your protagonist has no compelling reason to do anything you’ve planned.

I’ve accumulated more story ideas than I can reasonably expect to finish. Some seem promising until I start developing them and discover there’s barely enough material to fill a few pages. Others begin as ridiculous little observations and gradually develop into something worth pursuing.

The frustrating part is that I can’t always tell which is which until I’ve invested some time in them.

The Trouble With Having an Imagination

There’s another problem with finding inspiration everywhere. Once you develop the habit of asking “What if?”, it becomes difficult to stop.

A strange headline might suggest a horror story. An argument overheard in public could become the basis for a character. Some obscure historical detail might lead to an entirely different version of events. Even a terrible movie can be useful if it leaves you wondering how the premise might have worked with a different approach.

None of this guarantees that the resulting idea will be any good. Plenty of them go nowhere, and some probably deserve to stay that way. But I enjoy following those possibilities, even when they lead to projects I may never write.

I also think the obsession with having completely original ideas gives the initial premise too much credit. Two writers can begin with the same question and produce entirely different stories because they bring different experiences and interests to the material. That’s why I’m generally more interested in what somebody does with an idea than whether anyone has thought of it before.

What If I Actually Finished All of Them?

So where do I get my ideas? Pretty much anywhere. The world provides enough strange behavior and questionable decisions to keep me occupied for several lifetimes. Most of the time, all I have to do is wonder what might happen if the circumstances were a little different.

The difficult part comes afterward, when I have to decide whether that interesting question deserves a story, and whether I’m willing to spend the time necessary to find an answer.

I’ve got plenty of questions waiting their turn. Some will eventually become finished stories. Others will probably remain half-developed premises that seemed brilliant when I first thought of them.

And occasionally, when I’m supposed to be working on one of those stories, I’ll encounter something else that makes me wonder, “What if?”

Which probably explains why my collection of unfinished ideas keeps growing.

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Photo by prostock-studio: A messy desk with a large stack of papers.

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