How to make up stuff for a living

I do often get asked where I get my ideas. (And sometimes the tone implies a certain concern for the inner workings of my brain.)  I love Neil Gaiman’s take on the question. He’s tried the flippant answers: Idea of the Month club. A corner shop. Pete Atkins.  Now, he just tells people the truth:

‘I make them up,’ I tell them. ‘Out of my head.’

What most people want to know, though, is how to do that.  Every writer has a different way of coming up with ideas. Actually, the idea isn’t the hard part; it’s developing the ideas into a story that’s killer. (An idea isn’t the same thing as a story, but that’s another post.) Here’s what works for me.

1. Be curious.  Ideas come from being fascinated with something, exploring it, and asking a lot of questions. Observe. Obsess. Absorb.
2. Read.  Magazines. Books. Web sites. Whatever interests you.  Even watch TV (gasp).
3. Keep an idea file. Tear out pages of magazines, and/or print out articles. Write them in a notebook. Bookmark things. (Read it Later is a great plug-in for Firefox .) Don’t limit yourself to ideas, per se.  Collect characters and settings, if that’s what inspires you. (I do a little of both.)
4. Cull from your own life.  What’s fascinated or pissed you off in your life? Did you have a traumatic incident in your childhood? What was your family like?
5. Put ideas together. Sometimes you’ll have an interesting idea but no story to go with it. If you combine it with another idea or a character or life incident, you might get an amazing story from it.
6. Trust your own instincts. For me, a good idea resonates somewhere in me. I get that feeling.  That oh-this-is-good feeling when the idea is right. I have rarely gotten that feeling from an idea someone else has come up with and offered to me (thinking they’ve done the hard work).
7. Use limitations and restrictions to your advantage.  This is going to sound counter to what I just said above, but sometimes a theme or word limit can really spark your creativity.

Sorry, couldn’t think of 10. 😉  In the next post, I’ll break down a short story of mine and share how I came up with the ideas behind it. 

In the mean time, though, how do you come up with your ideas?