So Where Do Ideas and Plots Come From?

How do you come up with compelling plots for fiction writing? The truth is, most of us have no trouble with the idea part. Ideas are plentiful. Developing an idea into a novel takes a wee bit more work.

The Idea

Ideas for stories will come from your writing exercises, events, observations, dreams, conversations, questions, writing prompts, visual art, music…just about anywhere! You are keeping a writer’s notebook, right? Put all your ideas, snippets that catch your attention, photos you love, etc, into your writer’s notebook or an online “swipe file.”

Here’s an example using a very old song, The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia. I chose this because it was actually in my swipe file, complete with character names. I don’t plan on using this idea, anyone could come up with it, so if you are so inspired, go for it!

Say you are driving in the car and listening to the lyrics of a song possibly older than you are. It occurs to you to wonder about the little sister. What was she like? Why did she do it? How will she live without her brother? What was the wife like? Did she cheat a lot? Why did Andy decide to tell? Was it guilt or had he learned something new or was he jealous and angry because she had a new lover? How did those events transpire and what was the result?

There’s your idea.

The Premise

You find yourself thinking a lot about the characters in the song, and asking what if. What if the wife was cheating with the sheriff (or sherrif’s son), the judge, or other prominent people in town that might want a scapegoat that won’t leak their involvement. What if the sister wasn’t quite right in the head or was mentally undeveloped (possibly explaining why she lived with her brother, if she did)? Or, what if she couldn’t speak…was deaf or dumb? What if Andy tried to resist his friend’s wife, or, conversely, what if he simply didn’t want to hurt his friend with the knowledge that he married a woman who was never faithful? And what if the sister, who knows the truth about most of these events, but is unable to speak them, has to live in the aftermath without someone to look out after her? Or would the guilty parties make sure she was taken care of out of guilt?

From these questions, you begin to form ideas of the character personalities and motivations. If you can work them into a cohesive piece, you have your premise. Let’s say the sister cannot speak and has a mild mental incapacity. Let’s say a lot of things happen in front of the sister because she can’t tell or repeat. The wife has done pretty much everyone in town, and the only question is why the convicted man didn’t find out sooner. One of the things her brother does with her is target practice. It’s a way for them to be close to their father, who has been dead a long time. This gives to the fact that the sister can shoot and knows how to handle a gun. Lets make them fairly young…the sister around 17, the brother 23, and his wife 19 and not from their town. Let’s set a time frame between 1928 and 1932.

Mind you, this is a literal translation as an example. The song might have sparked completely different ideas, such as a child accidentally killing someone he thought was hurting mommy, a brother committing a crime for the benefit of his family…really, the sky is the limit. Where your imagination takes you is where you should begin.

The Plot

Let’s assume you want to follow the plot of the song (you certainly don’t have to, this is your idea). Here’s where you work out the kinks. You lay down the time line, work out the back story, develop your characters, and identify your sub plots. Some writers prefer to write from the premise alone. Others prefer to have the plot fairly nailed down before they begin to write. This stage is called pre-writing, and it can be a very good tool to determine whether you want to put the time into the project or file it.

As the wife makes plans to see a man, the sister and the wife have an argument in which the wife belittles her and tells her to keep quiet, it isn’t any of her business. Perhaps the sister sees her brother’s wife take something from the house that implies she is leaving or no longer cares if her husband finds out. And perhaps this is the moment the sister gets her gun. She finds a way to dispose of the woman’s body. While this is going on, Andy and Brother are meeting at Web’s. Little Sister, having finished taking care of the body, heads to Andy’s house because she is shaken and scared. When Andy arrives home, he flips out and they argue. The gun goes off, whether by accident or design.

The brother goes over to Andy’s, finds his body, and fires a shot into the air to flag down the sheriff. He’s arrested and his trial is rushed that same night (this occurred in the past, of course) because the prominent men in the town, such as the judge, the sheriff, the attorney, or their grown sons have all been involved with the wife.

One your kinks are worked out and your story arc is in place, you have your plot. Don’t worry about every little detail, and don’t worry if, as you are writing, things shift or change. That’s normal.

From here, you either embrace the origin of the idea (which might entail getting permissions) or you change enough details to avoid problems. You write a few scenes, become comfortable with where the story is going, and get to work. In fact, the basic plot of the song is that someone was convicted of someone else’s crime. Add in family relationships, and you have a plot that travels. In my file I have notes and a premise for a story set in the very early thirties in which a girl with a mental handicap killed someone who was threatening her family, only to have someone close to her be convicted of the crime. While the song was my inspiration, and the premise would sound familiar, the details of the story were far different.

The process of having an idea and even through developing a premise is not difficult. Most aspiring writers experience difficulty with plotting or with the actual production of a novel length work. Discipline first, then enjoy the ideas!

EDIT: I went looking for a link to the lyrics and finally got to see Reba McIntyre’s video of the same song. The video likely followed many of the steps above to work out the story line.

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