This is one of those questions people often ask, and it’s nearly impossible to answer satisfactorily.
My jerk answer? LIFE!
But allow me to try and explain and build that answer out more so that maybe, just maybe, it might be of some value.
I don’t know that any writer out there has a source, or well, of ideas that they pull out when they need them. I certainly don’t.
So when I say “LIFE,” it may be flippant, but that’s where mine comes from. I go about my life, and the things I encounter are often the impetus and spark for some random idea. And those ideas that stick with me for longer than a few seconds, I’ll jot down in a file or pad and revisit later.
For instance, I’ve discussed the inspiration for Sasquanaut and how a search for some sweet new tunes to listen to while I work uncovered the EP called SASQUANAUT for the stoner rock band LoPan. And my fascination with that word and my enjoyment with it, and then my subsequent HUNT to find and read or consume more stories about Bigfoot in space. It spoke to me in a way that few things do, and I needed more. And when I couldn’t find more, I determined to make it.
That’s a pretty specific example of the way it works. It’s honestly the only time it’s ever worked like that. I’ll often encounter someone or see something that sparks a bit of daydreaming and then write that down.
I vividly remember driving in my truck with my friend Tony who was visiting from Mexico. I don’t know where we were going, but I remember EXACTLY where we were when another idea electrified me.
Without revealing too much (as I hope to one day bring this story out), it involved my seeing an elderly Japanese man who had a very HARD look about him rolling down the sidewalk and into the streets on his electric wheelchair like he owned them all. Everyone should get out of his way or suffer his wrath. He wasn’t ostentatious or particularly standout-ish in his appearance. He was just an old Toshiro Mifune-looking man who looked hard as steel despite whatever infirmities he combats daily while also being utterly infirm in an electric wheelchair.
I want to tell his story. It will be crazy and zany and fun, as many of my stories are, but yeah. I wasn’t looking for an idea or a person to get my creative juices pumping, but it was just as I was going about my daily life.
That’s a perfect example of how it happens, moments of epiphany from some external or internal source. One of my new projects started as a bit of a love letter to the TV show Magnum PI, and as I began swapping out bits and pieces and adding characters and instances that I knew or that happened to me into the story and idea, it became something else. I still see the bones of the idea and some autobiographical bits, but they have all been through a blender and changed to dial it all up a few notches on the “oh crap” meter.
Our lives are full of drama and things that touch our lives in a challenging and meaningful way to each of us. We can use that because while those challenges may be unique to us or those around us, the EMOTIONS resonate with people and help make a story stick.
So the adage “WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW” applies that way.
OBVIOUSLY, I don’t actually KNOW ANYTHING about a Bigfoot galivanting around the cosmos.
Nobody does because it’s a fantasy.
But the motivations, interactions, and emotions are what I draw upon for the story. I use my imagination to help ramp up interactions, conversations, and events in my life to try and meet the needs of the characters and make something compelling.
Each character is a piece of me, even those that I feel are the absolute worst or polar opposite of myself do embody some aspect of me. I can’t deny that. Hopefully, expelling the worst parts of me into fiction can help me be better in person. It’s a theory anyway.