Every author, fiction or nonfiction, is looking for ideas. One fear of most authors is ‘running out of ideas.’ Successful authors will say that there are ideas everywhere, in everything…it’s just a matter of looking for them and spotting them.
Robert Bruce’s recent post on copyblogger, “The Art of Finding Ideas” addresses the issue of finding ideas. He begins by suggesting that we steal them—that is, they come from outside of us. He offers two areas of “idea repositories”:
- The modern media. It is a vast, instantaneous universe of ideas. The only problem is finding “trusted curators”
- People. In this case, Bruce is speaking of writing copy for a client—let them talk, and they will give you everything you need. (I suggest that, even for fiction, this works. If you are writing a character who is a fireman, meet with firefighters and let them talk about what they do. You’ll have more than you can use.)
Bruce closes the post with this:
Eugene Schwartz summed this up for me perfectly:
“You don’t have to have great ideas if you can hear great ideas.”
I stole this post from him, and he stole it from many others.
Listen more. Talk less.
Read less. Read better.
What you do with the ideas you find out there is your contribution, your voice, your original work.
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