by Kris Neri, with the Femmes Fatales
Readers often ask, “Where do you get your ideas?” The question is actually meant to be flattering. They mean the plotting of a writer’s novel is so unexpected and clever, they wonder how anyone could think that creatively.
Taking it literally, though, none of us know where our ideas come from. And we all get them — ideas, I mean. Not writing ideas, necessarily, just creative bursts that relate to different aspects in our lives. Something just sparks in our minds, and it excites us enough to make us run with it.
For instance, you might have thought it was a good idea to combine
that deep red couch you bought with your bright turquoise carpet. Hey, don’t feel bad. I get some bad ideas, too.
But just like you, I also get some good ones. I can’t tell you when I first began getting ideas for the storyline of Hopscotch Life, my just-about-to-be-released (Tuesday, 3/17/20) novel. But I can tell you
when the sparks of inspiration about the protagonist, Plum Tardy, began.
I realized early on that Plum’s deepest need was to be more ordinary, more conventional — less quirky, in essence. Yet at the same time, she so completely epitomized someone who marches to the beat of a different drummer, she didn’t believe if she could ever pull off conventional and ordinary.
Here’s what HL says about that:
Plum often thought that if life were a race, complete with starting point and finish line, while other people sprinted or jogged through that racecourse—she was off somewhere playing hopscotch. Taking a jump here, another there, with no pattern that ever made sense to anyone else. Or even, sometimes, to Plum.
Hopscotch accentuated how different Plum was, and made her wish that she could be
more like everyone else, and less like…her. She couldn’t have said exactly what “like everyone else” meant, but just as with the Supreme Court’s definition of porn, she knew it when she saw it.
… Plum sometimes wondered if everyone else had received a rulebook at birth, complete with guidelines for every eventuality, which guaranteed a successful life. She knew that she not only hadn’t gotten one, she couldn’t even imagine how it might read.
I also look at a character’s backstory. In Plum’s case, her history related to her mom, Crystal. Crystal is so uniquely offbeat, and also so self-involved that, unlike Plum, it doesn't occur to her that anyone would want to be any other way. It was that influence that produced Plum.
Still, it usually takes one aspect to make a character click and begin to come to life.
For Plum, that point was the unique way that Crystal quoted proverbs, and the fact that Plum was the only other person to find wisdom in Crystal’s versions. Some of her proverbs proved to be:
It never rains unless it stalls.
You can lead a horse to the water trough, but you can’t put him in it.
A woked pot never boils.
In for some penne, in for some pounds.
And my favorite, a comment Crystal made about Plum’s and her fiancé’s troubled relationship:
You’re like ships passing on the Nile.
So, there you have it. I might not know where my ideas come from, but I know when I have a good one. And I absolutely love following where the good ones lead. Especially when they end up at the kind of goofy adages that sound like something I’d say myself.
How about you? What’s the most offbeat idea you’ve ever gotten, and where did it lead?
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