I am often asked, "how do you come up with your ideas?"
The truthful answer is they just come to me. I know this is overly simplistic, and not very helpful, however, it is how my mind works so in order to make this useful I have to deconstruct my thoughts to work out what it is I am actually doing.
Everything starts with the smallest of things. It could be a line someone says in a conversation about nothing at all. Those phrases that stop you in your tracks and make you think about the words that have just come forth from the person who is talking "Oh she had a right face on her." What about her left face?
These moments I store in my memory banks. Some writers have to write them in a notebook, whatever best suits you to record these pieces of gold.
You may use them as dialogue verbatim or twist it to say something similar. I have used them to create characters. By extrapolating the conversation I'm able to see the people who are talking. That leads to a back story and this, in turn, takes me on a journey as to how they would fit in another story. What was happening that lead up to this phrase being said? What happened afterwards?
All these little questions create a scene. For me, it is usually an end scene so I have to then work out how to get there. Writing friends of mine quite often say these scenes are at the beginning for them and they see where it leads.
So a lot of my ideas start very much in the world around me. Tiny little moments that get me thinking. Then I play with them till they become unrecognisable from the original incident, the original conversation.
So be observant. Not just for the most interesting of things, but also for the most mundane. It is in the ordinary where the extraordinary lives.
