Imagine a crossroads in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps you’re struggling to come up with a viable idea. Try the Greyhound Bus Challenge for Writing Ideas Need help writing your novel? Click here for my ultimate 12-step guide. You’ve got to start getting words onto the page. The note-taking and research has to end at some point. The best villains don’t see themselves as villains. Give them motivations as strong as your hero’s. A character might be an amalgam of one person’s gender, another’s look, another’s personality, another’s voice…ĭon’t allow your villains to be one-dimensional, evil just because they’re the bad guy. Two failsafe ways to build credible characters:Ĭharacters live inside you because of the people you’ve met.īrainstorming interesting, quirky, inspiring, influential people and mix and match them. That means characters must feel real so readers will buy your premise. Invent characters from people you know.įiction must be believable, even if set in a land far, far away centuries from now. Being old school, I like the famous Moleskine™ notebook. (In fact, until you complete your first draft, take off your perfectionist cap and turn off your internal editor.)Īnd carry a writing pad, electronic or otherwise. Write it down.įree write without worrying about grammar, cliches, redundancy or anything but getting down the basics. If it fades or loses steam, I lose interest in it and know readers will too.īut if it holds my interest, I nourish and develop it until it becomes a manuscript and eventually a book. I find myself telling my wife or sons the idea and embellishing the story more each time. I know a novel idea has legs when it stays with me and grows. Learn to recognize those germs as they emerge. That imagining became Margo, the novel that launched my fiction career. I could imagine the ultimate dilemma-desperate to hide the truth while being responsible for stewarding it. That’s all I had-along with its obvious ramifications. My first novel was about a judge who tries a man for a murder that the judge committed. That’s the germ of an idea that can become your story. Most fiction starts with a memory-a person, a problem, tension, fear, conflict that resonates and grows in your mind. I can’t promise story ideas that rival those classics, but you CAN unearth story ideas buried in your head. He had no idea who the girl was or what she was watching, but she intrigued him enough to cause him to create his novel. William Faulkner says The Sound and the Fury began with the image of a young girl in muddy drawers up a tree, peering through a window at a family gathering. Rowling got the idea for Harry Potter travelling by train from Manchester to London King’s Cross in 1990. Both featured young people, images blurred, and Katniss Everdeen came to life in her mind’s eye. Suzanne Collins says her idea for The Hunger Games came while channel surfing between reality TV and war coverage.
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