Well, sometimes I use a random image/word generator like the image above. But! I’m going to be opening up my idea pad to you today.
I keep a notepad app on my phone. It’s great for things like “what do I need to take on this upcoming trip?” or “What am I getting/have I gotten people for Christmas?” or “I should jot down that cool song/show/book so next time I’m buying music/dvds/books I can remember it.” It’s also great for my long long list of “Ooh, cool idea, I’ll jot that down so I don’t lose it forever.”
Some of these ideas are for character, some are for plots, many are just dialogue bits. I stole some from kids at school when I was a substitute teacher like the teenager who was utterly lackadaisical about me telling his teacher he was slacking off and being insubordinate. (There were some who were confrontational but the utter nonchalance was unique to this kid.) What if an alien were describing a person and mentioned how grossly dry they were? Where can I find a place for someone to describe their friend as “playing 3D chess! Which is unfortunate because the current game is Jenga.” or some other game.
Some are for idioms. Have you heard the idiom “Hard as a woodpecker’s lips?” It’s evocative and makes you stop and think and chuckle. I’d love to be able to come up with some of those on the spot but they’ll likely take time. Or idiom reversals. “Stop making molehills out of these mountains!” “Oof, that is very organized; unfortunately not my ducks, not my row, I gotta deal with my monkeys and my circus over here.”
Names are a good one, or wordplay. A bar named Bottled Dreams. A building called the Illuseum or the Eyebrary. What would be hosted there? Pirate ship names like Dark Victory, Bleak Justice, Laughing Death. What’s your gastrological sign and how does that affect your life?
Some random setting ideas like “what if you had replicators and could print out what the cooking show you’re watching is making?” Looking at what Hurricane Andrew did with the Burmese Python and Lionfish problems in Florida. A futuristic world where the day starts with you drinking a quick solution, blowing your nose, depositing the tissue in a diagnostic machine, and getting a daily update on your health. Encoding secret messages in how the lines look on the back of a cross stitch. Cyber society where some people become “dryads” who can hook up to trees and borrow some of their energy. A contribution from my eldest when she was five– magical teleportation portals that are coded with a password. Or the lamest superpower, having a pulletproof suit.
Character tidbits like someone who’s so boring their favorite color is beige. The Personal Assistant of a wizard who keeps them on track instead of running off mid-quest. Someone who uses an eyepatch but makes it a fashion statement, glitzing it up in different ways each time you see them. An immortal who gave up their mortality for someone they loved, only for that person to reject them and move on; what do they do?
Then there are notes of things to remember in a story. If your character is in a dark place, where are they getting their light? What kind of environment can this story be in? Not everything has to happen in generic-Medieval-Europe; even then, what cool bits of the environment are often overlooked? Is there weather? Not every day is a perfect partly-cloudy 80 degree windless day. Shake it up. What scarcities affect the story? What scarcities in real life are we ignoring? Like if you’re in a desert city, how are you making sure that whole city has water? Or if you, as a random non-specific example that maybe comes from a book my friend read, are on a small island with few to no exports and your chosen hobby is making jam, where exactly are you getting all that sugar?
Basically my idea notebook is pieces of fruit ready to go into a blender and become a lovely book smoothie. I see bits, looking through it, that are going into current stories. Sometimes I’m good about marking them off, sometimes not; it is, after all, growing to be quite a ponderous long list these days.
So where do they come from? Everywhere. I watch a story about Rapunzel and wonder why the witch told her birthdays exists. Story idea. My kid tells me the magic powers she’s using. Idea. In the document it goes. I’m sitting around waiting for the car to get fixed and something pops into my head. Write it down. Inspiration can strike at the weirdest times and my memory isn’t going to hold all this for me, so I write it on my idea pad (with cloud backup) so that down the road, I can use it if I have a place for it. Ideas are cheap but writing them down is invaluable.
Intellectual Property of Elizabeth Doman
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