Folks are always asking where writers get their ideas. There’s no one reliable answer though I’m partial to Harlan’s Ellison’s reply which went something like this: “Poughkeepsie; there’s a warehouse there that I send money to and they send me a handful of ideas every month.”
The truth is ideas come from everywhere. From your past, your present, even your future. From the turning of a little girl’s head, to the dancing of leaves down a lonely street. Often times the best storylines are formed when two thoughts collide and merge into one great idea.
For me, the senses play a big part in ideas that stick. Memory is a part of that but the sights, smells, tastes, and touch bring the fragments to life. Just a couple of days ago a friend posted a pretty picture of a bed of purple petunias and wrote this wonderful line: “My mom loved petunias, this is how she says hi to me.” That’s a story right there.
Some examples of stories I wrote that started as sense memories would be…
- Feeling the heat of a summer day while taking a walk helped me recall running down a gravel path one August day when I was eight with new tennis shoes and heading for the rusty Orange Crush sign that hung from a little red store that held great, sugary treasures inside. A story formed about a man and a boy who ending up helping each other in that store.
- Standing high up on a ledge overlooking a valley and feeling the wind slap at my face when an image of a young man dangling from the bottom of a runaway air balloon blossomed in my mind and the story was off and running.
- The smells of a freshly carved pumpkin overwhelmed me one night and the story of a man looking back on his life and one, particular Halloween that had haunted him all of his days made me run to the keyboard.
- Looking out over a deep lake one spring day, I saw a ripple, with tiny waves moving out from it. I stared at the otherwise glassy water and before long I couldn’t help but imagine a Plesiosaur breaking the surface to the astonishment of the tourists on the shore. I remember laughing at the wondrous but ridiculous image. But the absurdity didn’t stop me from putting the down the story over the course of the next week.
Songwriters tell great stories with only a handful of words. They bring their senses to play to immediately create a time and place. Neil Diamond is a master at this. Who can’t picture the little boy looking out his bedroom window on those Brooklyn roads or see the man in a sparse room crying out for significance with only a chair to hear his plea?
Just yesterday I borrowed an old truck from a friend and as I got inside the embedded smell of cigarettes wafted up and I actually had to get out for a second. Not because the cigarette smell was overpowering – it was, but not in a bad way. The smell instantly took me back to when I was in junior high and I’d climb into my Dad’s Ranchero when we’d go to town together and it was exactly the same smell. It was as if he was suddenly right next to me. I stepped out of the truck for a second because I was caught off-guard by the emotional power of the smell. I’m sure there’s going to be some ink on paper using that in the near future.
Because ideas are everywhere. Even right under our own nose.
