Every time I speak to groups about writing, one of the first questions I get–after “Are your books going to be movies?” and “How much money do you make?”–is “Where do you get your ideas?”
A cousin of mine, way back when we were kids, when asked where he’d gotten his blonde hair since his parents both had dark hair answered, “From the Get-It Store.” I wish there really was a Get-It Store! You could walk in, get the perfect story idea off the shelf, and walk back out to go write.
Sadly, there isn’t a real Get-It Store, so I’ve had to make my own. I have a little notebook that I show to my audience where I write down every scrap of a story or character idea that comes to me. The one I’m currently using is almost full, only three blank pages left. I’ve been using this one so long that the original idea snippet for Troy High is in there:
June 4, 2006 – Story based on Helen of Troy, in modern high school. Two schools are huge football rivals, play pranks. MC likes guy from rival school.
That was it, and is what most of my original ideas are like. Very basic notes, scribbled down in my notebook and dated. A few months later, there’s another entry in my notebook where I went back to this idea and started creating characters. After that, I moved to my big story notebook dedicated to that book (which used to be an actual paper notebook, but is now all digital) and fleshed out the idea and began the writing.
My little notebooks are my Get-It Store. When I’m looking for a new book to write, I can go through and see what idea catches my interest. My ideas are inspired by random things. Troy High was, of course, inspired by The Iliad, but also from my experiences going to a high school that had such a huge football rivalry with another school. Something to Blog About was inspired by an event that happened to me.
The Boyfriend Thief was inspired by an idea I had been trying to write since I was sixteen, about a girl dealing with the aftermath of her mom’s leaving. It was a basic idea, not something from my own experience, but I did move 700 miles away from my parents during my senior year of high school (by my own choice–I moved back to my hometown) and so I could understand the loneliness and need to grow up fast that Avery feels. Different pieces of the book did come from other inspirations from my own life: Zac’s job came from my own experiences working for a locksmith after college. Avery’s job came from a place near me called Ma’s Hot Dog House (which sadly does not have a giant hot dog standing on the sidewalk). The business Avery and Zac put together was based on the same kind of thing my high school did as a fundraiser one year. The business economics class they’re in was inspired actually by two classes I took in high school.
I always tell the groups I speak to that the easiest way to find ideas is to take things that have happened to you and then make them worse. Much worse. The thing may have been a little blip in your life that really doesn’t mean much and had no bad outcome for you, but in a book you can turn it into something huge. Something that changes your characters’ lives. Add in some drama and a lot of made up details, turn it into something else, and there you go, your own Get-It Store for inspiration.