Your job.
Hey, it worked for Robin Cook, former surgeon and author of Coma and other medical thrillers. And it worked for John Grisham who is a lawyer turned author. But, you say, I work in a small-town factory that makes tire wire. How is my job going to turn into a best seller? No one knows the nuts and bolts of a job like a person who does it. What is the process for making tire wire? Who could use that process for sinister ends, and what might those sinister ends be? Who might want to sabotage the process? Why? What research is done in the tire-making process--what new discovery could be made and what would the company do to keep the discovery a secret? Who might sell that secret and at what cost? All of the sudden making tire wire isn't so dull anymore.
Your family members and the things they do.
Is there a romantic novel in the way your aunt and uncle met and fell in love? Did they have to overcome obstacles to be able to marry? Do you have an eccentric relative? What makes him/her eccentric? Do any of your relatives have intriguing jobs--Operates a vineyard? Owns a bed and breakfast? Worked on a coffee plantation? Loves being a lumberjack?
Places you've gone and things that have happened there.
Let's take, for an example, our dear friend Liz. Liz flies to Jamaica for a vacation and ends up getting bit by a cat. What if the cat was "planted." What if this cat systematically bites newcomers, and most of them go to sleep and wake up forgetting that they ever lived anywhere else? Except for our Liz. Liz keeps remembering bits and pieces of her former life and sets out to solve the mystery. Sure it's "out there" a little bit, but you get an idea of the process.
Experiences of friends--near escapes, traumatic events, issues they face. All of these can be turned into story ideas.
Your personal life is just one area where ideas hide. What are some others?
Reading is another good source. Newspaper and magazines articles can make good jump off points. For example, I recently read a newspaper story about a small Appalachian town where every high school student has been issued a laptop and has net access through the school. What kind of impact might this have if say the community was an isolated mountain community where the older ones still prefer plowing with mules and have little contact with the outside world?
Don't forget to read advice columns, personal ads, even advertisements. My current YA work in progress stemmed from reading an ad for a grandparent/grandchild cruise. The ad led to: What if grandmother and granddaughter are strangers, thrown together by circumstances and using the cruise to build (or resist building) a relationship with one another. Weave in all the family history that made them strangers and voila--a story.
Read not only to mine for ideas but also read to increase your fund of information. All reading deepens interest in and understanding of life--both valuable to a writer. Never miss an opportunity to read!
Besides using your eyes, also learn to use your ears. Listen to stories people tell you--customers, clients, associates or complete strangers you strike up a conversation with. If you find yourself waiting at the airport or doctor's office, you may want take up extremely discreet eavesdropping! It helps pass the time and can yield all kinds of potential material. While you listen, observe. Note people's mannerisms, their stance and what it conveys, their speech. Invent lives and situations for them.
Have you noticed how wonderful writing is for making productive use of down time? Writers need never be bored! <G>
Get in the habit of asking yourself questions like, Suppose…..? Or what if….? What if something in your life had gone differently? Suppose the choice you made at that all-important moment had not been available at the time?
Once the juices are flowing and the ideas being coming in, get in the habit of writing them down. Most writers carry notebooks the way a sheriff in the old west carried a six-shooter. Standard equipment--strap it on first thing in the morning and it goes wherever you do; take it off at night and it goes right by your bed in case you need it in the night. Use the notebook to jot down everything: thoughts, observations, snatches of dialog, character sketches, records of all kinds. Learn to write in your notebooks without your internal censor. Let the ideas flow as they come. There will be plenty of time to sort, sift, fix and discard later.
You're also going to have to have a system for filing old notebooks, or taking them apart and storing the information you want to keep. Right now my "system" consists of a shelf in my school room packed with notebooks. (My husband insists the Fire Marshall would label it a fire hazard! <G>) On the back I write the dates started and stopped and a brief "table of contents" so I know what's in it without paging through it. Occassionally I'll be writing and think of something in the books that would be just right, and I'm so tickled to hunt it up and use it. Other times I just get them out to read for fun, and most often am pleasantly surprised by my own words. It's neat!
One last thing about notebooks--DON'T WAIT to write down any good idea. Neglected ideas take offense quickly, will set sail on you and never come back home.
Ideas seldom come to you full-blown. Most are seeds from which story ideas will grow. Eventually you get to a point where you have to decide if an idea is a keeper or not. How do you tell?
A good idea is one that when incorporated into a story will meet the readers' needs. What do readers want? They want new and interesting people. They want a strong sense of place--vivid colors and strong smells that lift them temporarily out of their own mundane setting. They want characters who take action, who make things happen, who fight all odds to reach an important goal. So if your idea can encompass all these things, chances are it is a keeper. Watch out for ideas that only satisfy you as a writer--it may be familiar, or important to you and it may have actually happened. That's great because that cuts down on a lot of research and the need to "make stuff up." But if it ONLY satisfies you as a writer, and you can't couple it with the elements that the reader seeks, it's an idea that needs some more work.
Lastly when an idea keeps coming back to you, pay attention. There are those ideas that will keep nagging you, more insistently as time goes on and more developed each time they return. These are the ideas worth your first and foremost consideration.
Exercise:
Get your notebook
See if you can record an idea seed from each of the following areas:
Your life
Reading
Listening
Observing a stranger and inventing a life for them
Share the results with us.
Pick a favorite--of these or one you've had in the past--to work with for the next several weeks.