WHERE DO WE GET OUR IDEAS?

Legend says Keith Richards, lead guitarist and co-founder of the Rolling Stones, woke in the early hours of May 7, 1965, turned on a tape recorder and laid down a riff. He dozed off, and when he woke some time later, hit playback and heard about 30 seconds of music followed by 45 minutes of snoring. He’d played the riff while half asleep, on an acoustic guitar, at a slow speed. Mick Jagger said it sounded like country music and not something the Stones would play. Keith refused to give up and continued playing with the riff. By May 10, 1965, that half-minute riff was on its way to becoming the Stones’ greatest hit: (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.

 

Did Keith dream the riff? Did some rock and roll angel (or alien) implant it in his brain while he slept? Who knows?

 

That’s how it happens with writers, too. JJ and I would be driving to the grocery store and one of us would say, “Hey, I just had an idea. What if…” And then ideas started bouncing all over the car.

 

When back-to-school supplies were on sale, we’d stock up on spiral notebooks. There are now notebooks all over the house with parts of scenes, lists of ideas, names for characters… I keep a small notebook in my purse so I can jot ideas that come to me when I’m doing errands. Stop at a red light and make a note. Get to a supermarket parking lot and make a note. Sometimes I spend more time sitting in the parking lot writing ideas than I do shopping. The other day I sat in the bank and wrote a full page.

 

A piece of music can inspire a scene. A cut from the soundtrack from the video game  Mass Effect 3 inspired the scene where Foster… Oops, no spoilers! JJ typed with her headphones on, listening to music on You Tube. The group Two Steps from Hell (particularly Archangel) became major inspiration for both of us. Song lyrics can also inspire a scene or a character’s motivation. The line “Like a rollin' thunder chasing the wind” from the song Lightning Crashes inspired a description of a thunderstorm in book 4.

 

TV shows or movies inspire. Some shows are incredibly formulaic and predictable. You know exactly what’s going to happen, and hope the writers took the story in another direction. They didn’t. So you begin to think, “What would have happened if the character chose path B instead of path A…” Another great idea.

 

One of my grade school teachers posted a picture on the wall or played a piece of classical music, and we were to write whatever it inspired. We were graded on spelling, grammar and punctuation rather than subject, and it was fun. A black and white photo hanging in our living room inspired a scene of a foggy night with pools of light at the base of street lamps and an old fashioned car on the road. A Michael Parkes print in my bedroom inspired the beginning of a story about gargoyles.

 

So to tell you where we get our ideas, I have a simple answer: I don’t know.

 

Sometimes we do get some satisfaction.