Where do story ideas come from?

It’s a beguiling question. Coming up with story ideas is such second nature to me now that trying to put the process into words left me stumped. But I had to find an answer for Kirsty, a Manchester-based book blogger who runs Blatant Biblioholic.

So I sat down and scratched my head and drank some coffee, and eventually decided that the source of all story inspiration is two simple little words. Which ones, you ask? You’ll have to check out my guest post on Blatant Biblioholic to find out.

In the meantime, where do your ideas come from? What inspires your writing?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: being an indie author means being more than just an author. You’re your own gatekeeper, editor, and publicist. A lot of responsibility lies in your hands: you’re accountable not only for the content, but also the style.

I had a lovely conversation yesterday with John Rakestraw (listen to my interview here), in which we discussed the challenges and joys of being indie. One of the subjects we covered was how difficult it is to get design elements right — cover images, formatting, etc.

Our conversation got me thinking about an age-old publishing debate: style versus content.

What makes a bestseller?

Obviously, writing interesting content is a key factor to success. A bestseller becomes a bestseller partially because it’s aimed at the right audience, it fills a gap in the market, and it has creative, compelling content.

But even if you had all the above, you could easily ruin your chances of success with a poorly-planned style. You also need a great cover, legible and consistent formatting, and (in the case of ebooks) accessibility in the right formats.

So what’s more important in a book – style or content?

The short answer is that style and content are equally important. A book needs to have high-quality, creative content in order to sell, but it needs a well thought out style in order to sell well. In short: what distinguishes a successful indie author from the crowd is that they offer both professional content and style.

The standards of style are pretty much set in stone for print books, to the point that readers do not even notice them. Flyleafs, copyright notices, page numbers, headers and even the way chapters always begin on the right-hand page — the placement of all of these are design choices.

Yet it’s an entirely different ballgame when it comes to electronic publishing. Page numbers on ebooks are pointless. Why choose a particular font when a reader could change it in their ereader? Why worry about keeping the sacred 400px width, when readers may be accessing our content on their tiny phones or their iPads or their widescreen desktops?

Some could argue that there’s no point worrying about style, because with e-publishing, the reader can tweak things to suit their personal preferences. But I would argue that it is our job to make sure that readers don’t need to tweak our book — whether online or in ebook format, we should make sure our content looks good.

Authors as publishers

In traditional publishing, it is the author’s job to worry about content, and the publisher’s to worry about style. But in the case of indie publishing, the author is the publisher.

Our job is not only to produce that creative, commercially-viable content, but also to make sure the design matches the quality of our work. Yet while certain platforms (eg, Feedbooks, WordPress, Pandamian, and others) aim to simply the task somewhat for those of us publishing online who lack coder knowledge, there is still a plethora of nigh-illegible webfiction sites and ebooks out there.

Yes – e-publishing means that independent authors no longer need the publishing behemoths — but that is because we have taken their jobs upon ourselves. Independent authors are more than just authors.

As MCM once told me: “I like to draw a line between [online] authors and other writers. We’re not writers, we’re PERFORMERS. We do our writing without a safety net, so when we shine, it’s because we’re that much better.”

One of the greatest downsides of being an author is that you often end up trapped in awkward conversations with strangers. You’re at a house party, people ask you what you do, and you reply with those fateful words: “I’m a writer.”

The problem is, of course, that the man you’re talking to fancies himself to be quite the writer, and begins to talk as if you’re kindred spirits. For a moment you are fooled—you begin to chat about genres, preferences, writing styles—then you realise that you’re talking to a rainy day writer.

RAINY DAY WRITER
[rey-nee dey rahy-ter] noun
1. a person who is only able to write under particular pre-defined emotional, physical or meteorological conditions: Rainy day writers only write when it’s raining

Now, I am far from perfect. After having worked closely with a rainy day writer in my day job, I’ve come to realise that this impractical, indulgent view of writing rubs me the wrong way.

“But don’t you think,” this man told me, “that writing by hand has more meaning? Imagine using a stone tablet where you can’t cross things out. Every word you write will be there forever.”

“I’d have to make sure I write the right story the first time around or get severe hand cramps from rewriting,” I replied. “At the end of the day, writing is about telling a story. Whether I write by hand or using a laptop, the story I want to tell remains the same.”

He shook his head. “That’s only true if you think of all writing as a draft.”

I paused, flummoxed. Of course writing was a draft. Of course I would edit, shape, hone.

Later, when I told him about posting my rough drafts online, about scribbling Friday flashes out in ten minutes, about daily writing targets and writing when uninspired, he recoiled in horror. Apparently my short story from a sock’s point of view was not ‘a real story’ because it was about socks. And don’t get him started on my zombie love tales!

Needless to say, I chewed his ear off about people who think writing is some mystical, bohemian, artistic endeavour and sit around with leather-bound journals in coffee shops waiting for the rain and for inspiration. “A writer writes,” I told him. “If you don’t write, you’re not a writer.”

Now, a little hung over, I feel guilty for taking it out on him. I should have accepted that we were looking at writing from two very different perspectives and left it at that.

As I said in my guest post for The Inner Bean, for me writing is a business. As much as I enjoy the artistic, creative side, I have to be practical as well. I have to write every day, I have to set targets and treat it like a job because to me, it is a job.

So for someone to come along and tell me he would write if he had the luxury of time and the inclination, and that I am not being true to myself because I edit and incorporate reader suggestions and write for an audience rather than just for myself….

In the end I used the ultimate house party getaway technique: “I’ll be back in two minutes,” I told him, holding up a hand apologetically. “I just need to go find the bathroom.”

For all I know he’s still waiting there.

I recently picked up a book and was thumbing through when I came across the author’s biography. Like many other bios, it said something along the lines of:

Ms Author always dreamed about being a author. She’s been an avid writer since before she exited the uterus, tracing stories on the womb’s lining with her barely formed fingers. She won writing competitions at the tender age of 3 for her insightful dinosaur adventures and never looked back. She could never imagine being anything other than a writer. Bow down and envy her awesomeness.

Okay, okay. I’m guilty of writing a similar bio myself.

But to tell the truth, while I’ve been writing stories for a long while now, I never really began to dream about being an author until recently.

Why? I’ll let you in on a secret: as a child I was a terrible reader. I was slow to learn; my parents had to sit down with me every evening to help me catch up with my classmates. I hated reading (or so my parents tell me — I don’t remember).

Then something in my head clicked, and from having to shove me in front of a book, my parents couldn’t get my nose OUT of one. By the time I hit middle school, I had devoured most of the books in the school library and even made a point of telling the librarian which books I wanted her to get.

And when I couldn’t find the stories I wanted to read, I scribbled them out. I lived them, I breathed them. The stories filled my head with dreams: dreams of being invisible or being able to fly or shapeshift, or being a secret undercover spy who had to save the world. I dreamed about unfamiliar situations and adventures and about anything — anything — that would take me away from real life. I wasn’t writing stories because I dreamed about being an author; writing was just something I did because it was the only way to get at all close to my dreams.

The reason I love writing is because it is my chance to be the things I’ve always dreamed about. To be magical. To be a heroine. To find meaning and beauty. To be part of something greater than myself. To be involved in a story worth hearing about rather than my humdrum life.

But I’ve come to realize that something in my mind has clicked again. Something has changed. And now the dreams of being magical and heroic and worth knowing have competition from a new dream: being an author.

I’ve been writing about my dreams for a long time now, but it is only recently I’ve begun to dream about being an author. Why? Because I want to be the person who can give others the gift of dreams, as so many authors have given me mine.