The Best Ideas Come From Life
I am often asked where I get the strange ideas for what write. My ideas mostly come from what goes on around me and what happens in my life. I have found that those things are the easiest to make a story out of.
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When our puppies were led off through the pasture of extremely tall grass by their mother, I thought for sure they would return around dinner time that evening. Not all of them returned, but a few did. The ones who had returned soon wandered off again through the same pasture and stayed gone. It didn’ t take long for me to figure out that they wouldn’ t be returning. My soon-to-be-published first book for children, Buck & Katie’ s Ginormous Adventure in the Sea
Lisa Binion- Author of Softly and Tenderly
of Grass, came from that sad event, but the book is in no way sad. Although I pretty much know the fate of those puppies, writing the book helped me to imagine them out on a wonderful adventure.
That horrifying day when a spider crawled inside my ear and tormented me for hours was the inspiration for a novel I’ m working on. I had gone out for my normal jog. The spider must have landed on me when I ran under a tree. When I was cleaning up, I felt something on my ear. I reached up to get whatever it was off of me, and it crawled back inside my ear. That really didn’ t do a lot for me, but I figured whatever it was would come out soon enough. Well, it didn’ t. After moving around inside my ear for what seemed like an eternity and causing me to have several nightmarish thoughts, I guess it decided it had spent enough time in there. It finally came out of my ear and crawled across my face after I poured hydrogen peroxide in my ear for about the fifth time. I screamed, and my daughter came running. She told me it was a spider and that the spider was still alive. That horrifying event inspired the idea for Whisper, a horror novel I am writing.
My mother died when I was nine years old, but the memory of her death still haunts me. Death isn’ t easy for anyone to deal with, and it is especially hard for a child. Inspired by a comment a friend of mine made, I wrote a story about her death and funeral. I never intended for it to be published. I never even intended for it to turn into the horror story it did, but it sort of happened anyway. Softly and Tenderly is my first horror novella.
The things that happen in your life hold the best writing prompts and can be turned into any type of story you wish to write. For me, that tends to be horror. For you, it could be mystery, thriller, romance, fantasy, science fiction, or a combination of any of those.