How do you get ideas?
One of the
questions I was most often asked when I began writing book-length works, was:
Where do you get all your ideas? I imagine many of you get this question too. We're all different. And most of us have our own way of accessing ideas for our next plot.
A lot of the ideas behind my stories are based on things that
actually happened. I’ve taken them and let them drift from reality into fiction
– e.g. Lantern Light, which is definitely fiction but includes many incidents
based on true ones and many major large-scale life events. Like my protagonist
Ali, I taught in PNG, for a while in Madina High School (aka Barrington Place).
It was a fairy tale setting – an immaculate English style school with beautiful
gardens, hedges and vegetable patches, all set in a surprising capsule of
English style beauty, surrounded by the sprawling jungle.
I really did know a couple who had their own river incident
(I won’t elaborate or I’ll spoil it for you). It made them turn to God at the
time. And the 1974 Brisbane flood awaited me at home after my time in PNG. Soon
there were rooftops peeping above brown swirling water. Never-ending rain.
Floods.
And yes, it was the beginning of PNG’s self-government. Flying
home, we were stranded in Port Moresby for about fifteen hours because the
local people were still learning how to work the airways system.
Not all my
novels are inspired by real life. I’ve found I can get lots of ideas by
thinking of an ordinary situation and asking myself: What if …? For example, in
the prologue of Mirage, Bronwyn is
shopping on a wet evening. She is shocked to see her best friend Miriam –
because Miriam is dead. Or so everyone believes. So Bronwyn has traumatic
dreams and finally decides to ring Miriam’s aunt, Anna, who has been her
‘mother’ all her life.
This situation was inspired by an incident one day when I was out shopping. A mop of curly hair appeared through the crowd. My heart beat a frantic rhythm. It was John (not his real name), a man I’d nearly married. Recently I’d realised God was not blessing our relationship at all, so I’d broken it off. Not an easy time as John didn’t want to stay friends at all after this. I felt wrecked. And then, without warning, there he was! Should I run away in the opposite direction? Or …? I was not feeling ready to face him yet. A moment later, I saw his face – and it was not John! Phew! Thank you, God. But what if it had been? Would we have ended up getting together again? Or what?
My mind raced on, excited by this premise. What if a close
friend died and you went to her funeral. Soon after, you saw her in the street!
Would the ‘dead’ person really be the one you used to know? What was the story
behind her reappearance after everyone thought she had died? Imagine all the
ideas you could follow from this concept.
And so I began Mirage, where Miriam is believed dead – and Bronwyn sees her in the
street. What is going on? Is Bronwyn
‘losing it’? Or is it an identical twin Miriam had never mentioned? The initial
part of Miriam’s story in a cult is based on a true story I’d begun. It had
been accepted for publication, when the publisher went bankrupt. I decided to
make it a novel and try elsewhere.
Take any
situation. You’re expecting guests for lunch. They arrive but they’re hiding a
secret: they’ve become involved in serious crime. Will they murder you? Or lead
you into a life of crime? Or – if it’s a Christian novel, will you ask God to
show you what to do? Perhaps it will become a complex plot that ends with their
repentance?
So – try it if you’re feeling stuck. Take any normal
situation and ask: what if? And view the many options. It’s fun.
