From Idea to Book

Where ideas come from

Few writers find ideas by waiting for them. They notice. An idea tends to arrive in one of a few shapes, and knowing the shapes makes them easier to catch.

• An image. A woman sweeping sand out of a shop at dawn. A child’s shoe on a hotel roof. An image is a compressed story: something happened before the picture, and something will happen after it.
• A voice. A sentence in someone’s particular way of speaking, real or imagined. This is how many narrators first announce themselves.
• A situation. Two sisters inherit one flat. A town votes on whether to close its only school. A situation comes with the pressure already built in.
• A question or an argument. Why do some families stop speaking for decades? What does a good teacher actually do in the first five minutes of a lesson? Most nonfiction begins here, and plenty of fiction too.
• A collision. Two unrelated things placed side by side: a beekeeper and a bankruptcy court, a lullaby and a war. The spark lives in the gap between them.

Keep a notebook, on paper or on a screen, for these scraps, and write each one down as a full sentence rather than a single word. “Lighthouse” will mean nothing to you in a month. “The lighthouse keeper has never told anyone he can’t swim” will still be alive.

Finding the central question

An idea becomes usable when you can say what question it raises. In fiction this is usually a question about a person: will she find her brother, will he forgive his father, what will the town do when the school closes. Readers keep turning pages because they want the answer.

Beneath that plot question there is often a second, quieter one: what the book is really about. Whether she finds her brother is the plot. What we owe the people who leave us is the theme. You don’t need the second question when you start. You do need the first, because it gives you a direction.

In nonfiction, the central question is the reader’s. Someone picks up your book because they want to understand something, solve something or see something differently. Write their question down in their words, not yours. “How do I talk to my teenager when every conversation turns into a fight?” is a book. “Communication in the family” is a subject.

Try to write your question as one sentence that ends with a question mark. If it takes a paragraph, you may have two books, or not quite one yet.

Growing a small idea

A scrap is small on purpose. To grow it, ask questions that force you to choose. For a story, these five do most of the work:

1. Who is at the centre of it?
2. What do they want, badly enough to act?
3. Why now? What has changed today that didn’t change yesterday?
4. What stands in the way, outside them and inside them?
5. What will it cost them to get it, or to fail?

For nonfiction, change the questions. Who needs this book? What do they believe now that you want to change? What will they be able to do, understand or feel after the last page that they couldn’t before the first?

Another useful habit is to push the idea forward with “but” and “therefore” instead of “and then”. “She opens the shop, and then a customer comes in” goes nowhere. “She opens the shop, but the key no longer fits the lock, therefore she has to ask for help from the neighbour she hasn’t spoken to in ten years” is already a story.

What kind of book is it?

The same idea can become very different books. A family secret might be a literary novel, a thriller, a memoir, a picture book for children or a work of history. Deciding early doesn’t lock you in, but it tells you what readers will expect and what you are promising them.

Ask four questions. Is it fiction or nonfiction? Who is the reader, roughly, and how old are they? How long does it want to be: a picture book of thirty pages, a novella, a long novel? And what experience are you offering: suspense, comfort, laughter, understanding?

A useful exercise is to name two or three existing books that your reader might also love. You are not copying them. You are finding your book’s place on the shelf, so that you know which conventions you are keeping and which you are choosing to break.

In Ideoria, the kind of book you choose when you begin (a novel, nonfiction, or a children’s picture book, or no choice at all) shapes how the book is organised: in chapters and scenes, in chapters and sections, or in pages. You can begin without being sure.

Does it have enough material?

Many promising ideas are short stories in disguise. Before you give one a year of your life, put it through a few honest tests.

• The ten-scenes test. Without stopping to judge, list ten things that could happen in the book. Then ten more. If the second ten come easily, the idea has room. If you stall at six, it may be a short story rather than a novel, or it may need a second line of conflict.
• The middle test. Beginnings and endings are easy to imagine. Ask what happens in the middle third. If the answer is “more of the same”, the idea needs a complication that changes the situation halfway through.
• The cost test. Does chasing the goal cost the main character something they care about? An idea without a cost tends to become a book without tension.
• The contents test, for nonfiction. Draft a contents page: eight to twelve chapter titles, each answering a smaller part of the central question. If several chapters say the same thing, the book is thinner than it looks. If you can’t stop adding chapters, it may be two books.
• The week test. Leave the idea alone for a week. If you keep returning to it in your head, that counts for more than any checklist.

Failing a test is information, not a verdict. Often the fix is to add a second character with an opposing goal, a deadline, or a secret.

Starting without a complete outline

Some writers plan every chapter before they begin; others discover the story by writing it. Both produce good books, and most writers end up somewhere in between. What matters at the start is not a complete plan but enough of a compass to keep walking.

A one-page compass is usually enough: the central question in one sentence, who the main character is and what they want, the situation on the first page, and a guess at the ending. The guess can be wrong. It is there so that every scene moves toward something, even if you change the destination later.

Then start where you can see most clearly. That is often not the first chapter. If you can picture the argument in the kitchen in chapter seven, write it. Scenes written with conviction teach you more about your book than outlines written in hope. Keep a running list of open questions as you go (What does the brother know? When did the shop close?) instead of stopping to answer each one.

Common mistakes

• Waiting for the perfect idea. Ideas improve by being worked on. A modest idea written with care almost always beats a brilliant one that stays in the notebook.
• Mistaking a subject for a story. “A book about loneliness” is a subject. “A night watchman who starts leaving notes for the morning shift” is a story that might be about loneliness.
• Putting every idea into one book. If you have three strong ideas, you may have three books. Choose the one with the clearest question.
• Planning instead of writing. Planning can become a comfortable way to avoid the page. Set a date for writing the first scene, outline or not.
• Writing for everyone. A book for every reader is usually a book for none. A clear reader in mind makes hundreds of small decisions easier.