Weave Magic into your Story Idea

My latest book, A Home Run Friendship,
for 8-to-12-year-olds, weaves humor, preteen
challenges and angst into a heartfelt story 

By Linda Wilson   bit.ly/44Dx1t9

Where do you get your ideas? It’s a frequent questions reader ask. Do we tell them that we authors have a sixth sense? Or we wear antennae on our heads? Or do we tell them the truth. Story ideas come from as many places as you can think of.

  If you ask AI the question, you will come up with answers that are familiar to us, the authors:

Ask the “What-if question”

Ask Who, Wants, and What’s in the Way

Keep an Idea Journal

Try your hand at writing prompts

In my experience, the story ideas for books come from more than one experience, set of facts, people we know, and much more. 

Look for Magic in your own Backyard

My good writer friend and I run our story ideas by each other to see if we think they will work. Sometimes the ideas are already whole and intact. The idea is already fully formed, even if we don’t realize it. Other times we have a fragment of an idea. Saying it out loud gives it a measure of credibility. If we think it will work, then we are driven to develop the idea further. 

Of course, some ideas don’t work. Those either morph into a better idea or are rejected. The good news for rejections is that they make room for new ideas.

Here are some examples of how our published books came to be:

     The inspiration behind my Abi Wunder ghost/mystery trilogy:

On a special occasion, we had an overflow of guests and needed a place for some of them to stay. I paid a visit to a B & B down the road from us. The proprietress regaled me with tales of the many renovations her husband had recently completed. The kitchen, modern, yet decorated with antique earthenware jars, pitchers, teapots and tin boxes, had been his latest project, she crowed.

On our way upstairs to see the bedrooms, I thought she said, “Oh, here’s my husband now.” I turned, expecting to see her husband climbing up the stairs behind us. But I saw no one. Her eyes fell on a silhouette stenciled on the wall. I followed her gaze, of a man in overalls and straw hat, lantern in hand, appearing to hurry up the stairs beside us. Without another word, she continued up to the second-floor landing.

I followed, perplexed. Where was her husband, I wondered? I asked her, still expecting to see him. She looked surprised, tilted her head in the oddest way and said, “Why, I lost my Herbert a year ago, to this day!” She added, “I painted Herbert’s silhouette on the wall, as he so often looked on his way to bed.” Color rose to her cheeks, “I suppose it’s silly, but it’s my way of keeping him close.”

I wanted to say, Herbert, dead? But he’s here. I can feel his presence. He hadn’t yet left your side.” I didn’t have the heart to voice my thoughts out loud. Why I thought that I’ll never know. 

Perhaps you can see why I’ve never been able to forget the experience. One eerie incident turned into a trilogy of stories in my Abi Wunder series.

    How my friend’s story about a pet pig came to be:

My friend read about a 1-year-old, 50-pound pet pig running along a major freeway in our town. He was caught by a policeman and taken to an animal shelter. The incident was in the papers and on TV. When his owner couldn’t be found, he was put up for adoption. A couple adopted him after seeing his dramatic escape on the news. He was joined by a few curious dogs and a female resident pig. And has lived happily ever after.

That wasn’t quite enough for a story. Then my friend read about a contest for Pet Mayor taking place in a nearby town. Voila! She had a story!

    A tapestry woven from my own experiences with kids:

The idea for my latest book, A Home Run Friendship, first took root many years ago. A friend told me that her dog longed to go next door to play with the neighbor’s dog. He would stand back and make a run for the fence, never quite making it over the top. So, my friend’s family propped ramps on both sides of the fence. Both dogs happily ran up and down the ramps for daily visits from then on.

Again, that wasn’t enough for a story. I’d been wanting to write a story from a boy’s point of view. All my characters so far have been girls, using what I learned from raising two daughters. I was in for a surprise. After many years teaching elementary school, I didn’t realize how much I had observed about the boys in my classes. Before I knew it, Bo and Iggy became my main characters, their voices ringing in my ears. Juan, a boy from Mexico, moved in next door to Bo, and the fireworks began.

The result: A story with lots of humor from memories of the things boys in my classes did. And a heartfelt story of a boy from a different culture seeking to be accepted among Bo’s and Iggy’s friends and classmates.

In my opinion, the advice given by AI is excellent for jotting down ideas. Taken a step further, when you take an idea you’ve jotted down and add to it an additional dimension, then a story is born. 

Readers are given a craft to make a bird's nest
when they purchase Cradle in the Wild and 
the Spanish version, Cuna en la Naturaleza,
formatted and illustrated by
1000 Storybooks.com.