Where Do Story Ideas Come From? by Nancy L. Eady

During the Writers Who Kill annual holiday break from Thanksgiving through New Year’s, we take a breather and instead of daily blogs spaced out on a schedule, members volunteer to provide short stories as a gift to our readers. I’ve been a WWK writer for many years now, but never had I volunteered to write one of those stories until this past Christmas. I was a little scared, to be honest; I rarely write short stories, and I wasn’t sure how I would do with producing one on demand. I worried around with it in the back of my mind, where I allow things to percolate, and somewhere from its depths a story beginning with a blessing of the animals at an Episcopal Church right before Christmas, with the owner of a golden retriever, a rescue cat with lots of Maine Coone Cat in him and an African Gray parrot, popped in my head. Actually, it was the first phrase that popped into my head: “I had no idea why Father Donnelly decided to schedule a blessing of the animals on December 16….”  The story morphed over time. Originally, I thought the golden retriever would be the narrator, but eventually I settled on the pet owner instead. And both you, my fellow blog mates, and you, our loyal readers, were kind enough to give my little story a good reception. 

The point of this post, though, is that I have no idea where that phrase came from. Other writing ideas emerge from news articles I come across. A few years ago, I came across one about an outfit that trained military dogs somewhere in the Carolinas, and how certain activities of that outfit were questionable, one of which was the fact that the dogs, which were rented to the military, were not allowed to remain with one of their military handlers but were instead returned to the company where, according to the article, there were rumors they ended up working for certain, shall we say, less than legal outfits. I have a start on a story centering on that idea. 

Another interesting article talked about a company that processed e-commerce transactions, illegitimate ones, for a huge profit. It sat in a quiet office park in a small city somewhere close to the boondocks, the last place anyone would expect an illegal enterprise to exist. That knowledge is still swirling around in the primordial soup part of my brain waiting for the right circumstances and characters to match up with it when I least expect it.

Last week, for the first time, I came up with two titles that might lead to good mysteries. I haven’t tried this approach before, but I’ve stuffed the names into the same primordial soup they emerged from. I think Potiphar’s Wife and The Last Will and Testament of Iliana Marquette are both good names for as yet to be determined mysteries. 

How do you come up with ideas for your mysteries? Do you start with a plot, a phrase, a character, a title or some combination of all three?