“Where do you get your ideas?”
It’s a common question, and the answers are as varied as the writers. Did you know that a bonsai tree is genetically identical to the full-sized tree grown in nature? It’s the same seed, but nurtured differently. How many Cinderella stories do you know? Or Batmans? Your seed idea doesn’t have to be original. Your execution and your voice are what make your story unique.
For my new story, Ship Whisperer, it started with a prompt. It was a chilly October. (Or maybe not. I don’t remember the weather.) My writing critique group was meeting at the local Wegmans Café. I had just published my first novel, and my second was slated for rapid release a few weeks down the line. I was knee-deep in writing my series. (I had a five year plan.) At the end of the critique session, we had some time, so our organizer put forth a writing prompt. We had three words and fifteen minutes to incorporate those words into a story. Those words were: blue, Hawaiian shirt, and dog.
These words don’t really scream “sci-fi story” do they? They didn’t to me, either. I could have written something contemporary, but I wanted to practice my brand of sci-fi. So I created a color-sensitive telepath who used an AI dog to communicate with her crew. The concept of my ship-whisperer had formed. None of the prompt elements survived to the final novel, but from them, I had a character that intrigued me and I wanted to write more of.
Using the character from the writing prompt, I then wrote a short story for my writing group to critique. That was when the military aspect came out, the alien war, and the idea of psychic imprints. The general feedback was that the idea was too big to be contained in a short story. Although, that may have been reader bias. Hardcore sci-fi readers can fill in a lot of blanks from established tropes. But I loved my characters and wanted to play more with them, so I added the story to my “To Be Written Pile.”
I poked at it between other stories, testing my thoughts, seeing what developed. Letting ideas percolate is all part of the process. Then I draft, I workshop, I get input from beta-readers and ideas evolve further. The tree doesn’t resemble the seed.
What would you do with that seed? What would you create? Take fifteen minutes and just write. See what you come up with. Stick with your favorite genre. Practice. Not every prompt inspires a novel, but it’s a fine place to start.
Ship Whisperer hits the shelves October 2021
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