One of the most frequent questions I receive is: where do your ideas come from? I suppose that to those who don’t craft 100,000 words into a cohesive story that says something about who we are as people, the idea of doing so probably seems daunting.
The truth is, like most authors, I see inspiration everywhere. I have a writing community made up of friends who send around regular prompts – a one-line idea based on which we each submit a short work of fiction. Sometimes these intrigue me more than I expect and I find myself sucked into the world of a character. A world and person that I long to explore.
Like all people, I have my own history of learning experiences, personal pain, and things that meant the most to me. I have dreams – the literal, nocturnal sort that come with all sorts of latent meaning. And many of these things spark a story idea in my mind.
But I don’t write most of them.
Why??
Because I’ve learned that the stories that I can craft into the most impactful fiction are the ones that come from a place of truth. They haunt me. And I welcome them to do so.
I’ll give you an example.
The book I just finished stemmed from a series of dreams that I had over several years. In each one, a girl would slip through a secret door or passage into a part of a house that no one else could access. In each case, she would explore her [sometimes very bizarre] surroundings. Sometimes she entered the secret areas because she was pursued by a malevolent person or entity. Sometimes she just wanted to hide away in a quiet place of solitude.
As is common in dreams, these meanderings never had any discernible plot or meaning. But I relished them. Something about the idea compelled me to learn more. At the time I was working on an extensive writing project that I still plan to complete in the future. However, these dreams wouldn’t leave me alone.
I began to ask questions: who is this girl? Why would she want to be in these secret places? I considered these things on both a plot level and a deeper, symbolic one. By that I mean – what surface story would require her to use secret passages in a house? And beneath it all, what are these passages to her? Are they something more – some part of her soul that she refuses to face? A past to which she is unreconciled? An aspect of her identity that she won’t admit? A secret guilt that she harbors? Maybe all of the above.
The answers came to me simply because I asked them to and because the story wanted to be written. By day and by night I felt it gestating within me. And that is, in my opinion, the best way to get to the story that you must write – ask it questions, but give it room to grow. Let the story come to you fully formed. Because if you’re meant to write it, it will reveal itself to you.
It will haunt you until you free it from the deep well of your soul.
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