What happens when the writer is not looking

[John Dean]

As you may know, I run online creative writing courses, including crime fiction ones, and one of the themes I explore with the writers I teach is the way that ideas seek out authors.

As part of my ongoing research into the theme, I came across a quote from American crime writer Patricia Highsmith, who when asked where her ideas came from said: “Ideas come to a writer, a writer does not search for them. Ideas come to me like birds that I see in the corner of my eye and I may try, or may not, to get a closer fix on those birds”.

All writers have tales to illustrate the veracity of that quote. In my case one of the ‘birds’ was actually a young man.  

I walk the dogs through a wood near my home and that includes the bottom path which runs along the base of a sheer, wooded rock face. One day, I was doing the walk when I suddenly had an image of a young man careering recklessly down the rock face, hurdling fallen tree stumps, grabbing frantically for trailing roots to slow his pace. A young man who was running for his life.

What I saw of him fascinated me and I knew immediately that I had to explore his personality in my writing. He’s an animalistic young man, lithe, sinewy, with dextrous fingers and darting eyes.The vision of him I saw on my walk with the dog became a crucial scene in what became my DCI Jack Harris novel, The Killing Line (The Book Folks). I instinctively knew that Harris was his pursuer.

The young man became a  central character in the book and his story  drove the novel, which was published several years ago and is available in e-book and paperback format on Amazon.

Just goes to show what comes to a writer when he or she is not looking!