In search of ideas

[John Dean]

I have just completed my latest Jack Harris novel and have been casting around for an idea for the next John Blizzard book, which got me thinking once again about where ideas come from.

For some writers, stories always start with a place, somewhere that strikes them so forcibly that the story unfolds around it.

Other writers start with a character, someone so interesting, so intriguing, that they can almost tell the story on their own.

Other writers begin with the story itself, an idea inspired by everything from a newspaper snippet to something someone says or a sudden sense of ’what if?’

Normally, I start off with a place but the idea I am working up for the new novel is a person, for once, a heavy-duty criminal who is a mass of contradictions, contradictions that intrigue me.

Whatever a writer’s motivation - and there will be many others - one thing is certain: if it drives you to sit down in front of that computer or lift up that pen, it’s got to be worth writing about