Where Do I Get My Ideas...

Creation is a tricky thing. It is the willful act of trying to create something out of nothing. It can be frustrating, tiring, and extremely difficult. But when it happens, when creation perches itself on my brain, I can feel His spirit run through me like a bolt of happy lightning.

So, where do I get my ideas? This is the single most cliched question asked writers and I suspect there are as many answers as there are writers. I believe it was Charles Schulz that used to tell people that he had them delivered from an idea mill somewhere in the midwest. If only I had the address... ;)

My ideas always start visually, and that's probably where most of them should stay. I am a visual writer - I need to see what it is I'm describing, I need to imagine the scene completely before I can write it. So, its not too surprising that my ideas arrive in my brain as snippets of visions - like scenes from a movie not yet imagined. I will be minding my own business and I'll suddenly have this powerful vision of a dam exploding and a hero character leaping away on to a helicopter at the last second. Everything in my brain stops at once, like we can freeze frame that one scene and that one moment, and just examine it. Why did the dam explode? Who's the guy leaping from the top? Where'd the helicopter come from? Is this the end of the story, or the beginning? What kind of hero is this? What kind of villain do we have? I'll get this blank expression on my face for as long as it takes me to run down this vision's information. Viola. I've just started a story.

To fully understand me, it might help you to know that I get ideas like this about four or five times an hour. Most don't last in my brain more than the split second it took me to imagine them. Occassionally one will float in there for a few minutes, idly taking one question and answering it, to reveal more questions and answers. But most of the time, I get bored with the story in about 30 seconds to 5 minutes. About once a week, I'll get an idea that stays with me all day long. About once a month, I get an idea that stays with me for several days or a week. And about once a year, I get a keeper.

The process of creating a story is the same from the moment of inception until the moment of writing. Take a scene, break it down, ask the questions, find the answers, move on to the next scene. As the scenes pile up together, the story begins to take shape, and the questions and answers become more complicated. Often times, the scene that started the whole process won't even make it into the final story. The questions and answers are constantly changing throughout the process and some answers lead to tougher questions which lead to better answers which change entire sections of a story. Characters come and go, motivations change, scenery evolves, plot points are as liquid as the brain patterns that created them. But eventually, the story sits on a precipice and I just know I'm ready to write it.

For some stories, this process lasts only a week or so and I just charge right in with the writing. For others, such as the novel I'm writing, the process started years ago (1985 for my novel, for instance). In the last interview he ever gave, Philip K. Dick described it perfectly, "It's like those commercials that say we'll sell no wine before its time. Well, I won't start a novel before its time. It takes at least two years for a story to find its way to paper."

When you look at the final words of a story, just remember all the hard work and thinking that went in to putting those words there. Hundreds of thousands of possible permutations were likely considered for every possible aspect of a book. The physical creation of a thing isn't nearly as complicated as the thinking behind it. Just imagine how complicated was the thinking behind your own creation - what God must have thought about your contribution to the great story of existence. Doesn't it make you wonder? I know where I get my ideas... but where does He get His?