005: Coming Up With a Book Idea

If writing a book has been something you've always wanted to do, this episode is for you! Often it's a struggle to think of what exactly to write about. This is especially common if you read lots of different genres. How do you know which genre to write in? How do you know which idea is worth exploring? Learn my favorite methods for coming up with story ideas.

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Coming Up With a Book Idea

Hello, welcome back. I'm excited for this week's episode, because it's something that came up in a training that I did on Instagram Live. It was a two part training that I did to help people people prepare for NaNoWriMo. We talked about developing characters and conflict and how to find writing time, and all the things that we talked about will be helpful for you beyond November, not just in November for NaNoWriMo. So you can check out that training if you want. It's on my Instagram @thekatiewolf.

But one of the things I talked about was this idea of generating an idea for your book or for your story, whatever you're going to be writing. I think people who aren't writers are sort of mystified by the process. That's often something that I've noticed, interviewers will ask authors and writers say like, well, how did you get the idea for this? Like, this is amazing, especially if it's something really complex and like fantasy, or sci fi or something people always want to know, like, Well, how did you come up with the idea? And if you're new to writing, it can be, it can be sort of confusing, like, how do you how do you come up with an idea? How do you even start that process? So this episode is going to be talking about that. And even if you've written multiple books, hopefully you'll still get something out of this, this episode, maybe you can get a new idea, a new way to brainstorm something you haven't thought about. So let's dive in.

Okay, one of the first things I want to say about this is, there's no just like a lot of writing advice, there's no one right way to do this. There's no one right method, I'm just going to present a couple of different options, things that I've used things I've learned that are helpful for sort of getting the creative juices going and generating ideas, I find it so helpful to give myself time to just sit and think and it sounds so obvious. But you'd be surprised how difficult it is to actually make myself do this. And what I mean is setting my phone aside, turning it on silent, making a commitment to myself to not look at social media, not check my email, not do anything else, not listen to music. I'm gonna be talking about music later in the episode. But for this exercise, no music, just you and your thoughts. It's like daydreaming, right, it's just letting your brain wander. See what comes to you giving yourself that gift of having that uninterrupted time for your brain to just go and for you to start thinking of things.

If you find something interesting, like giving yourself permission to pursue it. Even if you end up on a weird tangent and you start thinking about something that happened to you in second grade, like it's okay, just let your brain wander. You can keep a notebook next to you if you want to jot some down some ideas, either while you're daydreaming while you're letting your mind wander or afterwards. And one thing that's helpful, I think to do here is to set a timer for yourself. I do this when I meditate. And I also think it's helpful for any brainstorming that way. For me, like, I always have this tendency to look at my phone, I always have a tendency to wonder how long it's been because my my natural sense of time is not great. It can be five minutes, and it can feel like 30 minutes or it'll be 30 minutes and it can feel like five minutes, I just have no idea how much time has passed.

So if you set a timer, that way, you know, okay, I've got 15 minutes, I'm gonna give myself 15 minutes to do this exercise and just sit and think and see what comes up. Next, look at your own life for inspiration. Now, you might be like, wait a second, I thought for novels or for fiction. You can't do that. Well, no, absolutely not. I mean, it's not a good idea to just, you know, write exactly, you know your life story or something that happened to you and just change just change the main character's name. Like that's not what we want to do. But you can absolutely draw from your own life. If you have an experience of something that happened to you that you want to explore, in a fictionalized world you can do that. Maybe there's something from your childhood that happened maybe there is someone that you have in your life who went through something and you want to take that little bit of experience that they had or that you had and expand upon it, you can do that.

Another thing to consider is what? What do you want to write about? What I mean by this is, is there a topic or a subject, or something that you want to explore that you're interested in diving into, for example, my very first book, I didn't know who the main character was, I didn't know what the conflict was what the setting was, I didn't really know anything about the story. But I started with this feeling that I had that I wanted to write about a young woman who was an alcoholic and the effect that that that had on her life, and maybe how it had sort of been a generational thing that affected her family. That was it. That was what I wanted to write about. So when I started with that basic story idea, I was able to fill in the gaps and work from that point. So just ask yourself, like, what do I want to write about? Maybe there's some topic that comes to mind.

Another way to do this is to think about crazy dreams that you've had. If you've read Twilight, and you read any interviews with Stephanie Meyer, the author of the Twilight series, she mentioned that she got the idea for Twilight, just from this image that came to her in a dream, I think it was, like the meadow scene where Edward and Bella were like in a meadow or something, I don't remember exactly what it was. But that was it. That was the image that came to her in a dream. And so everything kind of came off of that one image that she had, it was so powerful. She felt like there was a lot that she could explore there. So that's, that's something to consider. And I had something similar happen to me, I have this this like, young adult fantasy novel that I'm drafting oh, well, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure that it's going to end up being young adult, but it is fantasy.

And I just had this image that came to mind, I don't even remember what I was doing or where I was when this image came to mind. I don't remember if it was a dream, I don't think it was. But I got this one image. And it was very cinematic, it almost was like it was I was seeing it from a movie or something. And I'm not going to share what it is because it's a big part of the plot and the world and the story. But that was enough to get me excited about the idea of this. And I've had other ideas come to me in the past, and I haven't, I've sort of explored with the idea a little bit i've sat with it, and then doesn't really go anywhere, because I'm not actually that excited about it, I don't want to pursue it. It's just an idea that goes nowhere that can happen. But you don't know which kind of idea it's going to be until you go down the road of exploring it.

One other thing that can be helpful when thinking about what kind of book you want to write. Think about the book that you wish was out there in the market that you want to read that hasn't been written. Or think of a genre that you will love to read that you adore. Maybe there's a certain type of character that you love reading about a certain trope, a certain set of circumstances that you just can't get enough of as a reader. And you wish that there were more stories like this out there. You can do something about that that's a sign that's an idea worth pursuing. If you've got a genre or type of book that you just absolutely adore and want to pursue. So again, biggest takeaway from this episode, it does take time to come up with an idea if you're not immediately struck with something brilliant, like, don't worry. A lot of us as adults have sort of lost the ability to really use our imagination. We're just sort of, we're just out of practice with it. So if this doesn't come naturally to you, it's okay. Give it some time. Give yourself that gift of just sitting with your thoughts sitting, seeing what happens.

Oh, I want to mention too I mentioned music at the beginning of this episode. That's another thing you can do is just put on music. Something that evokes the emotion of A story that you want to tell. So for example, I have this playlist that I have on Spotify that I listened to when I read like fantasy or sometimes like angsty romance novels. Just kind of funny for me to say out loud, but to admit that, but that's true. So when I was drafting and outlining and kind of thinking about this fantasy book that I wanted to write, I put that playlist on because that's, those are kind of emotions that I wanted to evoke. Even though I didn't know the full story. Even though I didn't know the full world, I was still figuring it out. Music helped me get into that frame of mind. So music can be super powerful. Okay, good luck generating your ideas. Remember, just giving yourself time to sit and think and daydream doesn't always feel productive, but I promise it is productive. Good luck.

Happy writing and see you next time.

Katie Wolf