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eBook Category: General Nonfiction
eBook Description: In plain, unambiguous prose, writers will learn where all writers from Shakespeare to J.K. Rowling get story ideas. Theory is married to practice as writers learn how to generate compelling--salable--story ideas instantly, repeatedly and effortlessly in any circumstances. Time needed: less than 90 seconds. Equipment needed: not even a pencil! Designed primarily for new writers of genre (plot-driven) short fiction, the notions presented here may also benefit advanced writers, writers of literary fiction and longer works, and nonfiction writers.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Media Man! Production, 2005
Fictionwise Release Date: April 2007

9 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [304 KB], eReader (PDB) [92 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [70 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [63 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [118 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [132 KB], hiebook (KML) [194 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [137 KB], iSilo (PDB) [59 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [72 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [121 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [102 KB]
Words: 20084
Reading time: 57-80 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
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All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

"Ken's presentation on idea generation is as practical, inspirational and engrossing as anything I've ever heard..."--James Van Pelt, author of Summer of the Apocalypse

"I highly recommend Ken Rand's book From Idea to Story in 90 Seconds if you struggle with finding story ideas."--Ken Scholes, author of Last Flight of the Goddess

At any writers' conference, workshop, seminar, or similar event, somebody asks professional writers where they get their ideas. It can happen any time: at a panel, a reading, a signing, or in a room party, a hallway, a restaurant, a bar, a restroom, on an elevator, in the question-and-answer session after the Guest of Honor speech, at the airport, or during an awards ceremony.

Professional writers expect it. Many dread it.

Their answers vary based on their personality, what they had for lunch, the numbers on their last royalty statement, how tight their underwear is, or the alignment of the stars.

The answers vary in content and style, but they are too often impatient, dismissive, callous, uncivil, contemptuous, unresponsive, or simply too short.

Harlan Ellison once wrote, tongue planted firmly in cheek, that he gets ideas from a service in Toledo. They send him a few ideas a month, he uses what he wants, and sends the rest back. In another article, he wrote that his idea service was in Schenectady. Roger Zelazny also said he subscribed to the Schenectady service.

To be fair, many pro writers do try to answer the question, or at least be civil to the asker, knowing they too faced a similar quandary when they started writing. They recall they too were once amateurs.

Pros know that often the asker just wants a magic bullet. The asker wants to be an author, rather than a writer. The difference between "author" and "writer" is akin to the difference between "refuse disposal technician" and "garbage collector." It's more than semantics--it's attitude: Authors have written, or, rather, want to have written. Writers write.

Still, seeing how easily a pro knocks off bestsellers for big bucks, how effortless her prose seems, how poised, confident, glamorous, and rich she appears, the asker thinks there must be some secret. "Tell me your secret," the asker pleads, "so I can be rich and famous, appear on Oprah, and have nice hair like you."

It's the amateurs' fundamental, naive assumptions that prompt many pros' discomfort with the question. Pros know. They've been there. What can they tell the novice who wants a shortcut? "There ain't any." "Write every day." "Success is ninety percent perspiration and ten percent inspiration." "Apply the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair." "Scribendo disces scribere": (By writing, one learns to write.)

All true, but also all stale answers to a stale question.

I spent more than two decades as a reporter (not a "journalist") and editor for newspapers and radio asking questions some people didn't want to answer. Hogwash and balderdash ruffled my feathers, and I prided myself on my doggedness (though not on my mixed metaphors). I've embarrassed politicians saying things like: "A fine speech, Congressman, but you didn't answer the question. Shall I repeat it?"

So, when I first heard the question (if I ever asked it myself, I've conveniently forgotten) I wondered what was going on. Why do pro writers respond to the question like politicians with dirty laundry or a cat with feathers in its teeth?

What was the answer, and why couldn't they spit it out?

The answer--an answer (lest we forget Kipling's nine and sixty ways)--came to me in my work as a reporter, and while writing a few thousand nonfiction articles and interviews, two-hundred humor columns, more than a hundred short stories, and two dozen books.

Ideas do come from a definable, understandable "somewhere," and finding ideas--and translating them into story--is not a mysterious process. Everybody taps the same idea source in much the same way. However new you are to writing, and no matter what you write--fiction or nonfiction, any genre, any length, and for any purpose, be it commercial, academic, or hobby--you can come up with more ideas than you can use in a lifetime. Anybody can get good story ideas any time, any place, in any circumstances--instantly. And do it over and over again.

You don't need to carry notebooks wherever you go to scribble every observation, every over-heard restaurant chat, idea, suggestion, or comment. You can if you want to, but you don't need to.

More, and to the point: anybody can come up with a Good Idea in ninety seconds or less. Equipment required: none. Not even a pencil.

This book will show you how.

For commercial writers--those who write for profit, whether fiction or nonfiction, freelance or staff--knowing where ideas come from and how to generate them fast may lead to more sales, to better markets, for more money.

For the student writer, understanding the process may lead to better grades.

Hobby writers may find greater satisfaction in expressing themselves better.

For all writers, knowing where ideas come from and how to get them will lead to greater productivity, greater reward, and a permanent end to writer's block.

First, I'll discuss where all artists, young or old, new or pro, no matter their artistic discipline, experience, or degree of talent, go to mine ideas. Theory.

Then, I'll demonstrate how I use this theoretical base to come up with story ideas instantly. Practice.

I tried to sell an earlier incarnation of this book as a "how-to." Several (too many!) publishers rejected it, citing two main reasons: it's too short, and it's too heavy on theory and too light on "how-to."

Yes, the book is short. It's no longer than it needs to be to get its idea across. A writer's time is best spent practicing his or her craft--writing--rather than reading "how-to" books, even this one. Besides, my background as an editor compels me to "eschew surplusage," as Mark Twain put it.

It took a while to realize, though, that the book is as much a "why-for" as a "how-to," if not more so. Why a "why-for?" As John Gardner put it: "Seize the trunk of any science securely, and you have control of its branches." E.D. Hirsch Jr. wrote: "Once the relevant knowledge has been acquired, the skill follows." And from James Webb Young: "In learning any art the important things to learn are, first, Principles; and second, Method. This is true in the art of producing ideas."

In the practice section, I do demonstrate how I do it, but I also emphasize that my method is modular; that is, writers will adapt it to their own way of doing things, and no one will--or can, for that matter, as I'll explain--do it exactly as I do. I believe that once a writer understands the theory behind the methods described--that is, how the brain functions in the creative process--they will naturally, inevitably, develop their own way of applying the theory. The practice section, then, is simply a demonstration of one way to do it--the theory at work. It's by no means the only way, or the right way. It's my way. That's all.

A "why-for," then, not a "how-to."