#2: A postcard from Schenectady
"So where do you get your ideas from?" and the not-so-abstract questions writers get
I know I said this would only come out monthly, but I’m blaming Dave White for this one.
Dave, if you don’t know, is the author of the Shamus-nominated Jackson Donne novels, purveyor of the worst puns on Twitter, and one of the most thoughtful individuals I know when it comes to talking about writing.
In a Twitter thread discussing what leads writers or directors to make specific character or scene choices, Dave said:
“For instance, I don’t think we need to cast such a cynical eye at ‘Where do you get your ideas?’ I think the basis for that question is ‘How did you get the idea for this book?’ I think there’s value in discussing the brainstorming, or connections our brains work.”
Dave has a point, and I wanted to talk about it. Writers tend to get glib when asked where they get their ideas. Science fiction writer Harlan Ellison used to famously answer, “Schenectady. There’s this idea service and every week like clockwork they send me a fresh six-pack of ideas for 25 bucks.”
It’s the answer you give when you’ve been asked the same question for decades. The truth for most writers, however, is complicated, and it deserves a better response than rote sarcasm. Because ideas are rarely discrete, singular items, individually wrapped like a stick of gum. There may be an initial spark, but a spark alone won’t start a fire. It needs oxygen, kindling, and time.
Most story ideas are a confluence of things, a snowball rolling downhill, picking up more volume and weight but also grass, leaves, twigs—things unexpected and unplanned but somehow still part of the whole—until arriving to a stop in a final form.
Nikki Dolson said her story “Neighbors”—selected for BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE 2021—came from both “my obsession with broken marriages and how people lose their identities once married and a summer spent researching con-artists and grifters.”
“I had a vision of a happy neighborhood and happy couples with their happy kids and this very picturesque life and how easily the right person can upend things. I wanted to write about unhappy couples but it ended up being about Val and Anika, two black women on very different paths.”
I love this because it shows how the idea that begins the journey and the story which is the final destination can be different creatures.
When I coming up with ideas for the UNDER THE THUMB anthology, I struggled finding a story that felt appropriate for the theme of police oppression. All I knew was I wanted it set in a specific time period—the early 2000s—and a specific place—my native eastern Kentucky. I played a lot of music from that period, and kept being drawn to specific songs by The Chicks, Reba McEntire, and Garth Brooks. I thought about the heroizing of both small-town sports heroes and cops. I considered the rate of domestic violence in police families, and women’s friendship. And I listened to the cry of the cicadas outside my window every morning. Once I had enough of that in my head, the rest was easy. It only took months to get there.
A snowball rolling downhill, gathering mass along the way.
The seemingly random way two or more disparate, fragmented ideas come together as a whole fascinates me. Hector Acosta talks about this with his story “La Chingona,” which was selected for BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE 2022.
“A lot of my fiction involves wrestling, in some way or another. I'm not only a fan of the sport (and yes, it’s a sport), but I’m also fascinated by so many of the aspects which come with it. For a long time I’ve had this image of a wall covered with masks in my head, but never had the right story to go along with it. When Colin Conway invited me to participate in his EVICTION OF HOPE anthology, I had a heck of a time finding an angle until I came across an article about video-game streamers. The article detailed how so many of them had a persona they put on for their audience, and I began to see parallels between them and wrestlers, with their larger-than-life gimmicks.”
This is only a few examples, obviously. Every writer approaches that initial idea—the spark of inspiration—differently. For some, they may indeed arrive fully in bloom; for others, it’s a more gradual process, the chiseling away at a piece of marble to discover the shape hidden underneath.
However you work the process, what matters most in the end is, well, the end, and the story itself.
What I’m reading/watching/listening to:
I had somehow never gotten around to reading Gillian Flynn, so I recently started with DARK PLACES and goddamn, but that was a ride. More than her absolute mastery of tone and pace and voice, Flynn’s structure left me in awe. Everything is a series of gorgeous and terrible reveals, stunning reversals and incredible character revelations. Amazing stuff. I hate I was so late to this one.
I don’t read many traditional mysteries, but I enjoyed CLARK AND DIVISION by Naomi Hirahara. Set in 1944 Chicago, the book tells the story of a young Nisei woman looking for the truth about her sister’s death. It’s entrenched in heartbreaking detail, with an incisive portrayal of a family struggling to recover from mass incarceration.
That’s all we’ve got for now. Thanks for coming. See you next time, and hey, let’s be careful out there.
The spark and the nurturing of the fire. I had the beginning of a story last Friday and I wrote a solid 800 words in one running lap, and then... where was this going? I didn't touch the thing for 3 days. Now it's Tuesday and I woke up with the ending. The process that happens behind the curtain always amazes me. It's one of the great joys of writing: the brain leaps. You may like my post on Thursday. It's a different tack on the idea mill.