Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

I have been asked that question countless times for my fiction in culinary mysteries, romance, science fiction, paranormal, and women’s fiction. “Where do you get your ideas?” I am always puzzled by the question because I am constantly bombarded with story concepts and premises. Isn’t everyone? Apparently not.

I think one reason I am a good crit partner is that I can see alternative paths, twists and turns, and plot points laid out. Story ideas bubble over and when someone extends one of my ideas, I get three more. That’s just how my brain works.

But the question is a whole different one with historical fiction and biography.

What really happened, who really lived are the triggers. Authors don’t need to create them. They only need to explore them from a unique perspective.

I find myself attracted to eras or odd discoveries or ordinary people who do extraordinary things. Topics for historical fiction and biography are even more prevalent in my brain than fiction tales.

In large part I credit this prevalence to my curiosity and wide-ranging interests. When I was touring the New York City Transit Museum and happened on Elizabeth Jennings Graham and her role in the pre-Civil War desegregation of the New York City transit system, the idea to do an Intrepid Women biography series for middle graders was born. Once I had that idea, intrepid women were everywhere. I stumbled across so many, I won’t be able to tell all their stories.

My nascent historical fiction of a Singua woman in northern Arizona about 1400 C.E. is born from a flashback/deja vu I had while visiting Walnut Canyon the first time. She didn’t live (did she?), but someone very like her did. And don’t you find the latest discoveries establishing the accuracy of pre-Clovis peoples just too exciting? Let’s tell their stories, whoever they were, who left little evidence.

We watch movies and TV shows based on the forgotten women in NASA, the relationship of an aging queen with an Indian companion, attempts to kill Hitler, the Kennedy assassination and more.

Someone was intrigued by a kernel of truth and wanted to explore it. Historical fiction and biography, to a lesser degree, are a meld of fact and fiction. How much of each varies from author to author. But the story ideas? They’re true and they are everywhere.

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Facebook: Caroline Adams asks “Where do story ideas come from?” and she thinks she has some insights. http://bit.ly/2zItkFA

Twitter: @Caroline_Adams9 asks where story ideas come from and she thinks she has some insights. http://bit.ly/2zItkFA