I've always believed that ideas are all around us. In John Irving's The World According to Garp the main character sees a red glove in the gutter and develops a whole story around it. From that we invented the game we call "Tell Me". I mostly did this to keep my kid's mind busy when we were in places where they could get unruly. (I figured diverting their attention was better than correcting it. Kind of the head-them-off-at-the-pass theory.) In the game someone picks an object somewhere in the room and challenges the person to tell a whole story behind the object. Amazingly we've found a spoon that dated back to the Civil War and once fed General Grant's horse!
So now I'm collecting ideas. I want to make a file of basic plot lines to have on hand for when I need a challenge or hit a block.
Anyone else do this? Does it help?
1 comment:
I haven't even started querying yet, still working on edits of my first MS, but your method of writing one makes complete sense to me. In fact, I'll probably try to do that myself when I get to that stage. So thanks for sharing!
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