One question I am sure to get anytime I do a reading or happen into a conversation with a non-writer about writing is, “Where do you get your story ideas?” I ask you this: “What was that Montauk Monster that washed up on the Long Island beach?” If you’re a writer of fiction or someone who often sits around and contemplates the “What if?”—much like what I did in junior high school which the teachers labeled daydreaming—you would probably be coming up with all kinds of ideas. Before you know it a short story or a novel would be brewing.
Back around 2000 or 2001 I was watching the Discovery Channel. It was a piece on the 11,000-year-old sabretooth cat remains that had been found in southern California. At the end of the program there was speculation as to whether there was any viable DNA. At the time I lived in Montana. I began thinking about sabretooth cat DNA and Montana wilderness, and how it could make a story. I daydreamed about 800 pound sabretooth cats bringing down elk, grizzly bears, and, of course, man. That’s all I had in mind when I sat down at my laptop and began writing. I had no idea yet how this DNA would be discovered; nor did I know that it would fall into the hands of a wealthy entrepreneur with good intentions, good intentions that go awry. What I did have was faith, faith that once I created the first scene with the first character, that that character would lead to the next character, and the next, and that before I know it I would be sitting on the edge of my seat, eager to find out what was going to happen next. It lead to the publication of my third novel, Smilodon.
Story ideas are everywhere. Here are a couple of examples . . . I’m creating these as I write this blog.
#1 – My wife and I often go out for a walk in the desert not far from our southern Arizona home. In the middle of a dusty jeep track is a thirty-foot saguaro. (pronounced sa-war-o) The track—could be called a road—virtually splits around it. We wonder about this because a saguaro of this size is hundreds of years old; it was likely a youngster when the locally famous Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino (Jesuit Missionary who traveled from Italy to the Americas in 1689) left his footprints in our Pimeria Alta region (today’s southern Arizona and Sonora, Mexico). Maybe he walked around this very cactus when it was knee high. Maybe he created the dirt track that we walk on. Maybe Padre Kino wasn’t the first Jesuit Missionary. Maybe he was preceded by another, Padre Romano, who discovered the lost city of gold and gave up his mission for riches. Maybe Padre Kino also found this lost city, and Padre Romano on his deathbed. Maybe . . .
#2 – True story: our neighbor was driving in Utah this summer when in the dark a bear jumped in front of her. She wasn’t hurt but needless to say the bear didn’t survive and her car required extensive repairs. End of true story. Now the what if. What if after she got out of the car and while waiting for the response to her 911 call, she heard an animal’s cry and with her flashlight spotted two young bear cubs in the trees? What if she comes back later with her son, who she has previously not been getting along well with because of his stand on the environment and animal rights, finds the cubs and brings them home? What if she is a state congresswoman against everything that her son stands for? What if . . . ?
#3 – There is an exit off of I-19 between Green Valley and Tucson, Arizona that goes nowhere. Both directions lead about fifty yards into the desert. What is the story behind this? What could one make up? Could it involve sex, money and death?
The point I’m trying to make is that the ideas are all around us. They just need a daydreamer to turn them into a page-turner, edge-of-your-seat novel.
By the way, if you publish a novel based on any of these three ideas, don’t forget me in the dedication.
James
Novels
Desert Bookshelf