People ask authors all the time where they get their plot ideas. The answer is simple - from the Plot Idea Store, of course. For $19.99, you get a ready-made plot for a 90,000 work romantic suspense…not.

Ideas come from everywhere - newspapers, things you see, things you think about, things that happen to you or others. Everywhere. Having the idea isn’t the key. That’s the easy part. The actual plotting and writing and selling - that’s the really hard part. Most people can think - sure, that may be debatable and we can all offer examples showing how this premise is flawed, but let’s assume. If it is true most people have working brain cells and can come up with books ideas, it’s also true most can’t translate that thinking into a manuscript. Into a salable manuscript? Yeah, the percentage gets lower and lower.

As an example of the ideas-come-from-everywhere theory, I offer this: Laura Hillenbrand wrote Seabiscuit. She suffers from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, some days can barely move, and considered swallowing a bottle of Valium, but she pushed through to become the successful writer she is today. Seabiscuit was a NYT bestseller and stayed on the list for 120 weeks. Between the hardcover and paperback, 42 of those weeks were at No.1. She sold the movie rights and, well, I’m assuming paying the mortgage isn’t an issue for her.

Hillenbrand’s next book is about Olympic runner and WWII POW Louis Zamperini. She came up with the idea one day when, while reader as newspaper clip about a racehorse named Seabiscuit, she flipped the clipping over and saw a story about Zamperini. If she hadn’t checked to see what was on the other side of the article, who knows what she’d be writing right now.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 16th, 2006 at 7:10 am and is filed under About Authors, About Books, About Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.