How To Get Ideas For Short Stories. Always Start With The Edge.

I’m not saying this is the only way to get ideas, but it’s how I get mine.

Firstly, I will never sit down to write a story without already having an idea. I know some people just sit down and write and see where the characters will take them, but I prefer to know where I’m going. It’s like taking a train ride. I know the destination, but it doesn’t mean I know what’s going to happen on the journey itself.

So first things first, and the question most writers get asked, “where do you get your ideas from?” Well, from The Ideas Shop of course.

But if you’re not lucky enough to have an Ideas Shop near you, I would recommend a subtle blend of curiosity and instinct (and if anyone ever manages to bottle that, I’d certainly dab a couple of drops of it behind my ears!).

Of course, when people ask “Where do you get ideas from?”, what they really want to know is “Where can I get ideas from?”

Any creative person worth their salt is intensely curious about everything and everyone around them. Leonardo Da Vinci, who had more fingers in more creative pies than most even coined a term for it — Curiosita (no need for Google Translate with that one!).

So how does it work in practice? Occasionally you’ll get a big idea, all shiny and new and fully formed. But more often than not, you’ll see something that’s got potential and you’ll make a note of it.

Imagine a story is like a jigsaw. You start with the edges. They create a frame for your story. Then you have to find the pieces to complete the jigsaw and that’s easier said than done.

Here’s an example of two edges that I found. One that I actually wrote as a story and one that I still haven’t worked out how to turn into one. Ironically the one that jumped out at me as being good story material, is the one I haven’t been able to turn into a story.

Let’s look at that first.

I was rambling around online when I came across this:

Basically, for six years in the 1940s, Agatha Christie lived in the same block of flats as a Russian Spymaster. It was also where she wrote her only spy novel.

To me, that seemed like a great basis for a short story. But I haven’t been able to find it. I think one of the problems is, it’s such a big fact, it’s hard to know what to add to it or where to take it.

I will slot it back into a compartment in the dusty drawers in the back of my mind and wait to come across something that will bring it to life.

The next story came from listening to a podcast called The Ratline:

In it, Philippe Sands investigates the mysterious disappearance of senior Nazi Otto Wachter in a story of love, denial and a curious death.

It’s a very interesting podcast and I thoroughly recommend you listen to it. If not, have a read of the book:

But what gave me the idea for my story was one small incident. When Otto Wachter fled Germany after the war with the aim of getting to Rome and then to South America; he went via the Austrian mountains to keep away from the Allies. He said he stayed in a shepherd’s hut high above the valley where American, British and Jewish groups searched for Nazi’s who were trying to escape.

This gave me the edge for my story. Now I needed to fill in the pieces. Call me old fashioned, but I like a short story with a good twist at the end. So before I tell you about the ending for this story, I recommend you read it first. It’s under a thousand words, so it will only take a couple of minutes.

So for me, the edge of the story was a German SS officer hiding in shepherd’s cottage high in the Austrian mountains and who get discovered by a Jew who had been in Auschwitz. I started by thinking the Jew could pretend to be a fellow escaping SS officer. That was a start but for me, it still wasn’t a great story.

Then It came to me — the connection that creates the twist at the end. Both the SS and the prisoners in Auschwitz had tattoos.

Now you are going to ask me where I got that idea from and you’re going to hate me because I’m going to say I don’t know.

The fact that the SS had tattoos of their blood group tattooed on them is something I already knew. Again this goes back to the importance of vacuuming up random bits of interesting information. Many of them will never be used for anything. But the more you know, the more interesting connections you can make. If you want to test your vacuuming skills, take my ‘apple’ associations test in this blog:

You just need something to spark a connection. Take the ‘apple’ associations for instance. I came up with 9 to start with, but then the Rene Magritte one came when I was helping my son with his art homework. The Adam and Eve (I don’t know how I didn’t think of that one at the start), I must have seen something that sparked this off but I can’t remember what.

So to sum up. Get a good edge for a story and keep it on the back burner. Your mind hates unfinished projects, so when it sees something that will complete your story, it will offer it up to you. Then you just need the instinct to know what is good and what isn’t.