THINKLINGS BOOKS
  • Home
  • Writers' Cafe
    • Submissions Guidelines
  • Readers' Nook
    • Blog
    • Join Our Email List
    • Become a Reviewer
  • About
    • Our Staff
    • FAQ
  • Books

What We're Tolkien About

Where Do You Get Ideas for Stories?

10/13/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
​Let me chat about my serial novel The Midnight Files, because it perfectly demonstrates one method of getting ideas.  (And how you can get them, too.)
 
But let me go back and explain.
 
Last November (2020), I decided to do National Novel Writing Month.  Only, instead of a novel, I would get myself out of my writing slump by writing short stories to prompts.  My prompts went like this: each day, I would go to the alphabetically next part of my bookcase and look at the first three authors.  The first book I owned by each author was my prompt; the author’s name of the third book was the name of my character:
​Day 1: A.  The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, The Art of Veiling by Tantz Aerine.  So I wrote a short story about a hitchhiking goblin.  The goblin’s name (if we’d ever learned it, which we didn’t) would’ve been either Tantz or Aerine.

When I got to “L,” my prompts were: Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. 6: The Vampire Affair by David McDaniel (his name wasn’t on the cover.  Fatefully misfiled on my shelves!) and The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence.

That meant my prompts were: a skeleton detective with supernatural powers and a partner who saves the world; a top-secret international agency with its polar-opposite partners going up against a supernatural foe outside its parent show’s genre, and Lawrence of Arabia’s memoir.

Throw in how many episodes of The X-Files I’ve seen, the first two seasons of Supernatural, innumerable Agatha Christie detectives, my history with The Protectors of the Plot Continuum, and . . . well, the story practically wrote itself:
*Action-packed suspenseful dark fantasy drama with an odd-couple team*
 
Romance coerces strangers into “love”; Mystery pops out armchair detectives; Humor prat falls on banana peels. And then there’s Horror. Agent Lawrence has survived in Horror for 12 years, partly by letting her partners die. Now, she’s been assigned ex-Romance agent Daisy Allen, who pretends to be sweet while she manipulates people’s thoughts. Who refuses to die.
 
This is going to be one epic partnership. . . .
This story was actually my third try at writing a partnership.  You’ll find the two others in my book of short stories, The Day the Exclamation Marks Came: And Other Stories and Poems.  They’re called “Burning Bright” and “Unsympathetic Magic.”  But although I tried to write other stories in the same universes as those, they never turned out.  I fully expected The Midnight Files (that first story was then called "Surviving in Horror") to be the same—a standalone.  Not for it to become merely “Assignment 1” in a much longer series.

So what happened?

M: The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne
P: Shadow Prowler by Alexey Pehov and Tom’s Midnight Garden by Phillipa Pearce.

Or, in other words, Assignment 13.  Which is coming out in December. 

And after that popped out--

After that, I just sort of kept going.  I found myself interested.  I wanted to know more.  And all by itself, the story developed a shape.  Each arc of it will be novel length, both episodic and continuous.  And if ever I get stuck . . .

Why, I’ll just pick a letter, go to the library, and let myself be prompted.
Picture

Deborah Natelson

Deborah lives with a fluffy member of fauna named Flora. She is the author of Bargaining Power, The Land of the Purple Ring, The Midnight Files​, and various other books. Her author website is www.deborahjnatelson.com.

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019

    Categories

    All
    About Us
    Authors
    Book Promotion
    Book Recommendations
    Book Reviews
    Books On Sale
    Diverse Books
    Fun
    Genres
    Gift Recommendations
    Help Your Author
    Interviews
    Marketing
    Nerdy Stuff
    Our Books
    Our Business Model
    Playlist
    Publishing Industry
    Shop
    Staff Spotlight
    Street Team
    Why Read
    Writers' Collective
    Writing Advice
    Writing Styles

    RSS Feed

Thinklings Books Logo
Books
Submissions
Join Our Email List
​
Our Linktree
Blog
About Us
FAQ
​
Privacy Policy
 As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
  • Home
  • Writers' Cafe
    • Submissions Guidelines
  • Readers' Nook
    • Blog
    • Join Our Email List
    • Become a Reviewer
  • About
    • Our Staff
    • FAQ
  • Books