STORY IDEAS - WHERE DO THEY COME FROM?

The answer to that question is ANYWHERE.  All you need to start a story is a spark!  It could be someone you passed on the street yesterday.  A newspaper article you read this morning while drinking your coffee.  A bit of gossip you heard at the gym.  The list goes on.

For example, the story idea for The Celtic Dagger began with a news item about a scientist whose car was found on a bridge with the keys still in it.  The scientist was nowhere to be found.  I never heard anything further about this, but for some reason that news item stuck in my mind and I started to write The Celtic Dagger.  Albeit, the scientist turned into an archaeologist, and instead of an abandoned car on a bridge, I ended up with artifacts stolen from a museum.  But that doesn’t matter.  It’s the spark of an idea that gets you started.

My work in progress, Once Upon A Lie, started when I was taking a morning walk in the leafy suburb of Waverton in Sydney.  There I passed by a beautiful old house that looked somewhat neglected.  Straight away, I envisaged what it must have looked like in its hay-day.  A manicured garden, what we would now call vintage cars in the driveway, house parties in the 1920s.  I walked passed that house three times while my imagination conjured up the person who now lived inside.  A lady in her 80s whose fiancé did not return from the Korean War.  And so Esme Timmins jumped onto my page when I started to write.

So, when you’re next out and about, be aware of what’s around you because your next story idea might be right in front of you, waiting to be noticed.  But remember, this spark will go nowhere unless you start writing.  And who knows where it will take you!

Where do your ideas come from?