Thursday, January 22, 2009

Where do you get your ideas?

This is a question authors get asked a lot. One answer I often give is that authors of historicals have a handy-dandy idea source: our research. I can't tell you how many times I'll be researching one story and find a really fascinating bit of information that doesn't fit the current work, but provides inspiration for another story. Simply put, research gives me ideas.

But what really separates a writer of books from those who don't is what a writer does with those ideas. How does a writer take what might be a few sentences or paragraphs and create a story and characters? To demonstrate some of my process, to show rather than tell, I've started a new blog called Story Seedlings.

During the course of researching A LOVER'S KISS for Harlequin Historical, I discovered that the proceedings of the Old Bailey are now online. Not only that, they give a link to a different case every day - a great source of ideas, or as I like to think of them, seedlings.

Over at Story Seedlings, I take a case and show you how this writer would use it to develop characters and plot for a historical romance. I hope you'll stop by.

If you're interested in what I'm currently working on and what else might be going on in this writer's life, please stop by my other blog.

No comments: