Much of my teaching is about sparking ideas in writers but where do the ideas come from? The answer is everywhere. It is worth examining how other some writers go about it. Here‘s three examples:
1. Jonathan Swift was one of the great satirists of his age. He wanted to make the point that the men in power were small-minded so he invented a series of mystical worlds and ordered his book into sections, each one designed to make a specific point. In this world there were, among others, tiny people and obsequious courtiers who spent their days crawling across the floor until their mouths were full of dust.
2. Writing about something you know can work well. My Blizzard detective novels stories are set in a world I know well
3. Could be something in your own life. My mum’s grandfather was a widower and lived with two animals, a budgie and a cat. The man loved the budgie and the cat but the cat hated the budgie and saw it as lunch. For years, the cat waited its chance then one day the usually vigilant old man dropped his guard and left the cage door open. The budgie fluttered out - into the mouth of the cat. The distraught old man saw the feathers and drowned the cat. Inside two minutes he was left with no one. A terrific short story if ever there was one.
John Dean
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