That was Elizabeth's question for me this week: How do you get your story ideas? (Do they come in forms of dialogue, images? Do you meet the characters first? Does everything hit at once or does it come in pieces?)
I have a philosophy: if I have to work too hard for an idea, I'm not going to be able to write it.
Most of my ideas are just in my head; I don't have to work so much to get them. Sometimes, writing one book (or one scene) will lead to another idea. It was writing about the difference between werewolves and shifters in The Sands Of Time, that gave me the idea for some of the storyline for the Eye Of The Storm series.
The idea for The Witching Pen literally "fell out of the sky and onto my lap" when I was trying to figure out what to do with my domain name.
'Til Death Do Us Part, I didn't think about at all - that book was fuelled with pent up anger that I simply had to get out of my system. I started writing it, because if I didn't write something, I would explode, and that book just became what it is.
And I have some ideas for other stories there in my head. Sometimes the ideas work out and sometimes they don't, but I'm a character-led writer: Start with good characters and just one scene, and the characters will lead me to where they (and me, as they are me) want to go, and eventually (hopefully) I end up with a book.
I have a vague idea of the end - sometimes a concrete idea - and I roughly know what's supposed to happen in the middle, but other than that, I let it all flow and see where I end up. Sometimes, it's not where I thought, and that just makes both the writing and the story all the more exciting, as far as I'm concerned :)
All of my current ideas, can now be downloaded from Amazon ;)
Dianna xxx
I have a philosophy: if I have to work too hard for an idea, I'm not going to be able to write it.
Most of my ideas are just in my head; I don't have to work so much to get them. Sometimes, writing one book (or one scene) will lead to another idea. It was writing about the difference between werewolves and shifters in The Sands Of Time, that gave me the idea for some of the storyline for the Eye Of The Storm series.
The idea for The Witching Pen literally "fell out of the sky and onto my lap" when I was trying to figure out what to do with my domain name.
'Til Death Do Us Part, I didn't think about at all - that book was fuelled with pent up anger that I simply had to get out of my system. I started writing it, because if I didn't write something, I would explode, and that book just became what it is.
And I have some ideas for other stories there in my head. Sometimes the ideas work out and sometimes they don't, but I'm a character-led writer: Start with good characters and just one scene, and the characters will lead me to where they (and me, as they are me) want to go, and eventually (hopefully) I end up with a book.
I have a vague idea of the end - sometimes a concrete idea - and I roughly know what's supposed to happen in the middle, but other than that, I let it all flow and see where I end up. Sometimes, it's not where I thought, and that just makes both the writing and the story all the more exciting, as far as I'm concerned :)
All of my current ideas, can now be downloaded from Amazon ;)
Dianna xxx
I'm big on going with flow. I always make notes of any ideas I have and usually they just grow until the story is there. I never push my characters to show me what's next because I know I will hit a wall, but what do you do if your characters aren't cooperating?
ReplyDelete"...but what do you do if your characters aren't cooperating?" - That's a tough one. Usually I find that it happens when they're trying to show me a different way to go, or something I'm just not seeing, but it's hard. One of my characters went their own way a few weeks ago, and I haven't quite caught up yet. In doing so, though, they showed me a new plot twist that I hadn't even considered. I still find it quite hard to write it how "the character" wants it though, and a particular scene needs tidying up... Yes, we writers are a little schizophrenic ;)
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