I had an idea in the beginning to do a book about some of the events that I had covered, just various stories that I've covered. Reporters spend a lot of time telling each other tales about how they covered stories, and that's what this book started out to be.
I tend to be drawn more to people than pure story ideas.
Sometimes I'll have an idea for a story or have a subject, and that will inspire lyrics, but most of the time, hopefully, they already exist somewhere else.
I do see myself as someone who has a lot of story ideas.
I think I always have many ideas for books in my head. It's like a forest full of mushrooms. Some are big, some are small.
Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day.
When I journal, I write about images that I've seen that I think might make good stories. I write about things that I hear that I think I can turn into a story. I write about the story that I'm working on and where I think it might go.
If what you know and what you love are the same thing, that's great. But if not, write what you love. I love history, secrets, conspiracies, action, adventure, international settings.
At one time I used to keep notebooks with outlines for stories. But I found doing this somehow deadened the idea in my imagination. If the notion is good enough, if it truly belongs to you, then you can't forget it-it will haunt you till it's written.
It came about as follows: over the years when I was involved in dianetics, I wrote the beginnings of many stories. I would get an idea, and then write the beginning, and then never touch it again.
I've never dreamed of a story idea. I have such boring dreams.
Wes Anderson's mind must be an exciting place for a story idea to be born. It immediately becomes more than a series of events and is transformed into a world with its own rules, in which everything is driven by emotions and desires as convincing as they are magical.
Whenever I start a novel, I'm always looking for two things: a bit of science that makes me go 'what if?' and a piece of history that ends in a question mark.
It's like these ideas, these characters, kind of bubble up inside me, and one day they're not there, and the next day they are there. They're alive, and they're whispering in my head and all that stuff, and I want to write about those things.
Whenever I finish a book, I start with a blank slate and never have ideas lined up.
'A Fair Maiden' existed in notes and sketches for perhaps a year. When I traveled, I would take along with me my folder of notes - 'ideas for stories.' Eventually, I began to write it and wrote it fairly swiftly - in perhaps two months of fairly intense writing and rewriting. Most of my time writing is really re-writing.
I keep my options open about my next story, there will always be those vague discussions at home.
The ideas for stories that thronged my brain would not let me rest till I had got rid of them by writing them.
I'm often asked how I get ideas for my stories. The answer is there's no single way; every story is different.
I've always had a lot of story ideas rattling around in my head, but 'Nimona' felt very tangible very early. I knew the ending. So I just started making more and more pages, and then I made it a webcomic, like, 'OK, I'm really gonna do this.'
I have these huge black foam boards on the wall, and tacked to them, I have these white punch cards with my story ideas, scenes and notes.
She drinks pints of coffee and writes little observations and ideas for stories with her best fountain pen on the linen-white pages of expensive notebooks. Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationery.
I am never not thinking about stories. 'The Bone Season' is 90% of my brain - 10% is interacting with the rest of the world.
In the summer of 2010, I had decided to get into film and TV writing, so I wrote scripts for six different ideas I had developed, and the pilot for 'True Detective' was one of them.
Writing is the thing that pervades my whole day - I'm always wondering how I might describe something or improve my understanding. I'm constantly trying to remember an eavesdropped conversation or an idea for a story.
