Susan Meissner ~ Dipping into the Well of Ideas

Susan Meissner is a multi-published author, speaker and writing workshop leader with a background in community journalism. A devotee of purposeful pre-writing, Susan encourages workshop audiences to maximize writing time by planning ahead, mapping the writing journey and beginning from a place of intimate knowledge. She is a contributing writer to the Christian Authors Network marketing blog and the leader/moderator of a local writer's group. When she's not writing, Susan directs the Small Groups and Connection Ministries program at her San Diego church.

I’m often asked where I get the ideas for my novels. Usually the ideas come when I’m not looking for them. In fact, they come most often when I’m simply participating and observing life. Most of the ideas for my books fell upon me while I was doing something else, the majority while I was reading a newspaper or magazine. It has happened just like this: I’ll be reading a news story (could be long or short) and a snippet of human drama that revolves around one of the universal needs will jump out at me, or whisper to me. When that happens, I let that concept begin to marinate in my mind. I let it stew inside my creative juices for days, maybe weeks. Sometimes a story idea is born that same day, sometimes weeks or months later.

Here’s what I mean. I once saw an AP photo in the Minneapolis Star Tribune of three teenage girls holding teddy bears and walking in a funeral procession just behind a tiny casket. Drawn to the photo, I read the caption. The girls had found an abandoned baby in a trash bin. The baby had died of exposure. The girls were allowed by the city where they lived to name the baby - who was never identified - and to arrange for his burial. That’s all I knew of that story, but the image was burned into my brain. I knew those girls would forever be affected by that one experience, that it would bind them in a way that would shape their adult lives. I saved the photo and began to imagine identities of my own for these girls. I gave them new names, dreams, desires, flaws. From this one image with just a lone caption, I wrote The Remedy for Regret, a story with a vastly different plot line, but nevertheless inspired by that photo.

Several years later I read a string of articles about the human trafficking of young Hmong teenagers in St. Paul. From those very heart-wrenching stories came my first Rachael Flynn Mystery, Widows and Orphans. Much earlier, I had read a story of a couple whose daughter returned to them 18 years after she’d been kidnapped. From that article came my idea for the plot behind A Window to the World.

And just this month, my newest release hit the shelves. Blue Heart Blessed is the story of a jilted bride who desperately wants to move past the heartache of rejection. She opens a used wedding dress boutique to sell her custom-made gown of her dreams. That idea came from a conversation I had on the way to visit someone in the hospital. The person I was riding with was telling me about her roommate’s wedding dress and how beautiful it was. I said aloud that it’s too bad such an exquisite dress only gets to be worn once. In the next moment I was already thinking, “What if?” What if someone decided to open a secondhand wedding dress boutique? Who would want these beautiful gowns to be worn again? Who would open a shop like that? What would be her motivation? What would be her deepest heart desire? That idea for a used wedding dress shop came from an ad for a business like that in the newspaper.

You can’t always find great ideas in the newspaper, and like I said before, my best ideas were hatched when I wasn’t looking for them. But if you begin to observe your local world with a very keen eye, you might be surprised at what you are able glean from it.

I took today’s San Diego Union Tribune and made a notation of all the articles that had deeper story appeal to me. Here they are with my take on the need or they could easily address in italics:

A shy teenager is about to embark on a European tour with her high school orchestra. She is afraid she won’t be able to break into the already-formed cliques - Acceptance

A woman wants to know if she can remain friends with her best friend’s ex. She just found out it wasn’t his fault the marriage ended - Justice

A local high school deals with racial hatred when a noose is found in a boys’ bathroom accompanied by degrading epithets -- Justice

A troubled man walks into a city council meeting, open fires, and kills five - Justice

A teenager who tried to coax a fireplace into action with gasoline cannot save his young cousins when the house catches fire – Forgiveness

The man in charge of the bells at Notre Dame brings music back to the tolling – Beauty

A young man who made it big as a child actor dies of a heroin overdose – Self-worth

Each one of these basic concepts has the potential to become the backbone of a great story. And this is just the Saturday paper! Sunday papers are gold mines for story concepts. It’s a great idea to keep a file going of stories, articles, even obituaries that intrigue you, even in the smallest sense. A terrific story may be hidden within them, one that only you can see. One that only you can tell!

Visit Susan at her website