When I teach writing workshops a lot of students get stuck on the first step – coming up with an idea. They just sit and look at the blank page. I think the problem is that they’re trying to come up with a really good idea and can’t think of one. But you don’t need a really good idea. You just need an idea. You can turn it into a good idea as you write. Often really simple things will make great ideas for stories. The trick is recognising a simple thing that has potential and then running with it.
Here’s an example of something I found this week…
Some council workers knocked on my front door and asked where the manhole was in my garden. I told them I didn’t have one – not that I’d seen, anyway. They got out their special cameras, shoved it down the storm water drain further up the street and discovered that I did have a manhole. It was in my chicken run. I’ve lived in this house for 9 years and never realised it was there because the chicken had scratched so much dirt over it.
Now a normal person would have had a look then got on with their day. But I’m not a normal person – I’m a writer. I was deeply intrigued. The idea of a manhole in my own garden really captured my imagination. I started wondering – what does the manhole lead to? (I realise the answer is probably just a storm water drain, but I was not going let myself be side-tracked by reality).
I wondered if, since it was a manhole – could shove a man in there? It made me think of crime novels where people have to hide bodies. Then I started thinking of all the other things I could hide in the manhole – chocolate I don’t want to share with my children, Christmas presents I’m trying to keep secret (it would be hard to get a bicycle in there, but I’m sure a sledge hammer would do the job).
Then I started thinking that I live right at the base of Mt Gibralter and Mr Gibralter used to be a volcano (several million years ago), and evil villains always have their lairs under volcanoes! So what if the manhole in my garden was the entrance to an evil villain’s underground lair?
This all made me curious to see inside the manhole. This made me wonder – would I be able to lift the manhole cover? What tools would I need? It was in my garden – would I be allowed to lift it? Would I be breaking the law? If so, what law would I be breaking? If it was the entrance to an evil villain’s lair would there be booby traps? Would the booby traps be like the once at the beginning of ‘Raiders of the Lost Arc’ and would I have to outrun a giant bolder running towards me?
Which made me wonder – what was the evil villain under Mt Gibralter working on, anyway? Bowral is a pretty tame area – not much exciting happens here – except for Tulip Time. Perhaps the evil villain is working on a device that will turn tulips into deadly missiles! Perhaps next Tulip Time when the gardens are full of tourists the evil villain will set all the tulips off and they will shoot up into the sky in a spectacular ballistic display! Now I was starting to feel proud of my manhole. I felt like leaving a cup of tea and a biscuit right by it for the evil villain when they popped out next, no doubt to buy milk or cat food.
So that’s how my brain works. I see something simple and I start to wonder. So my writing advice today is this – don’t wait for a good idea. Just pick a simple idea – use your imagination to make it good.
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