THE IDEA MACHINE

by John M. Floyd

If you’re a fiction writer, it’s a question you’ve heard a lot, whether it was from customers at book signings or cousins at family reunions or neighbors at the grocery store: Where do you get your ideas?

It’s also a question that’s been discussed at this site several times (see the Mystery Masterclass essay last Monday), and will be discussed again, probably on a regular basis. And the answers are always as varied as the writers who provide them. Some authors have heard it so many times they sound tempted not to answer it at all. Lawrence Block says that one of the certainties of life is that when you introduce yourself as a writer, you will immediately be asked foolish questions, and that this one is the most foolish. (Stephen King, by the way, once said he always gives the same reply: Where does he get his ideas? “Utica.”)

So where DO they come from?

I’m not sure it’s a foolish question, but it’s sometimes hard to answer. My usual response is that ideas are everywhere, and if you’re at all observant — and can ask yourself the question “what if?” — you can usually come up with an idea for a short story. Some of my writer buddies have told me their ideas spring from a setting, or a situation, or an interesting character. Others say they get their lightning-bolts from such common sources as newspaper headlines or the evening newscast on TV, or from just watching their spouses and friends and co-workers during the day.

I think many non-writers believe these ideas pop into our heads fully formed and ready to write down and sell, which — for me at least — is rarely the case. Often I’ll hear or see something that gives me a faint glimmer of an idea, and later I’ll get another piece of an idea which, when put together with the first, provides what I consider is enough for a workable story. Here’s an example: A few years ago, on an IBM trip to Alaska, I worked with a guy who liked to go scuba diving in the Caribbean. He said the only bad thing about it was that he had to be careful not to fly home to Anchorage within 24 hours of a deep dive because a high-altitude flight can cause decompression stress (the bends). What an idea for a mystery story, I thought. I didn’t use it right away, though, and I later made another business trip, during which I crossed the International Date Line in the Pacific. When that happens, of course, a traveler loses or gains a day (in calendar time) depending on which way he’s going — which I figured (after the lightbulb switched on inside my head) could be important to an investigation involving an uncertain cause of death. I put that fact together with the DCS idea from before, and I had my story. I wrote it on the plane and sold it later it to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

Creative thinking

Some of my non-writer friends have also asked me if I feel that the reservoir of ideas in my head will eventually dry up, that my efficient little idea factory will one day issue a weary wheeze and shut down for good. Again, a reasonable question. All I can say is, it hasn’t so far. I honestly believe that the more stories you dream up, the more are lurking out there somewhere waiting for you to latch onto them. That part of writing seems to get easier rather than harder.

At the risk of attracting a fusillade of electronic rotten tomatoes, I’ll give you another of my silly poems, which I published last year in Writers’ Journal:

Feeding the Idea Machine

“To expand a short story,” Joe said,
“Plan ahead before going to bed:
Eat some chili with beans
So you’ll dream a few scenes,
Then wake up with a novel instead.”

One reason that little ditty is silly is that if you have a great idea while asleep or half asleep, it’ll most likely be AWOL when you wake up in the dawn’s early light. My advice is, when an idea does sneak across your mind-field, grab onto it and don’t let go, and if you happen to be sacked out at the time, consider hopping out of bed and jotting it down on the pad you keep on the nightstand — or on anything at hand, even if it’s the back cover of Sports Illustrated. Now and then, just before nodding off, I’ll think of a super idea for a storyline, and if I don’t write it down right then, the only thing I’ll probably remember the next morning is that I had a super idea for a storyline.

The chili approach does have some merit, though. At the very least, your dreams would be in Technicolor.