Or an overly philosophical discussion of inspiration

You know the question. It’s such a cliché that you don’t even hear it anymore. “Where do your ideas come from?”

Every writer I know (and every writer I’ve read) hates this question because there’s no real answer. Or rather, no real satisfying answer. The interviewer is usually looking for something pat and interesting. A dream, a single distinct moment, or a sudden flash of brilliance.

The truth is, inspiration and ideas are work. Fun work, yes. A kind of directed imaginative play where you ask yourself, “What if?” and follow that path to its logical (or illogical) conclusion. But work still.

Today, I want to answer the question of “where do ideas come from?”. Or to put it another way, I aim to explain what having an idea is.

First, let’s see what a few of the craft’s luminaries think the answer is.

Where Stephen King Thinks Ideas Come From

Stephen King needs no introduction from me. Even if you aren’t a horror fan, you know who this man is. He’s a titan of horror and American literature. You can see his influence in almost any work of English horror (and some works of non-English horror).

I’m going to stop you right now, hypothetical reader I made up to prove a rhetorical point. The answer to “Where do Stephen King’s ideas come from” is NOT cocaine. At least, not since the late 80s.

The King has actually told us where he thinks his ideas come from. I’ll give it a full review in a later article, but you owe it to yourself to buy and read his book “On Writing”.

In it, Stephen King suggests that ideas aren’t created so much as discovered.

King often starts out with a “What-if” scenario as his seed for his ideas. But he believes that’s his judgement stumbling upon a story that wants to exist. The idea is external to him. His internal work is discovering the true shape of it.

Where Eugene Schwartz Thinks Ideas Come From

On the other hand, you might not have any idea who Eugene Schwartz is. One of the (if not THE) greatest copywriter to ever live, he specialized in direct mail and headlines. Like King, he was at the height of his powers in the 80s.

His friends described “Gene” Schwartz as the most curious man that’s ever lived. He devoured any book you put in front of him. Took his wife to see every major popular release to understand the pulse of the people. He even read the Weekly World News at the check-out counter for ideas!

He also wanted to know everything he could about his clients and would talk to them for hours. When asked, he would often suggest that his incredible headlines weren’t his ideas. They were something he heard the client say. All he did was identify that and turn it into copy.

This may be true, but it still takes a certain talent to know when you’ve heard gold.

Thus, to Schwartz, ideas are also both internal and external. As far as he was concerned, the copywriter’s job wasn’t to make up ideas for their clients. It was to listen to their client’s story. To find the most concise, most persuasive way to tell that story.

The writer is like a prospector panning for god. They filter in the river of the world around them, looking for nuggets of golden truth.

Where David Lynch Thinks Ideas Come From

David Lynch is the favorite director of every annoying film student you’ve ever met. He is that good, though. Rather than try to convince you or list his filmography, I’ll show you a clip from Mulholland Drive. He creates tension and terror in an off-brand Denny’s in broad daylight.

Lynch famously doesn’t explain his movies. Lucky for us, he did explain his process in a Masterclass video. For Lynch, finding ideas is more like fishing and tuning into a TV channel at the same time.

Don’t give me that look, hypothetical reader. This is David Lynch we’re talking about. Consider yourself lucky that asking him where ideas come from didn’t result in a spirit journey through an electrical outlet.

Ideas are within you, made up of your memories and experiences. It’s like fishing because you drop your line into the pool of ideas and wait for something to bite. It’s like tuning into a channel because you refine the signal until the picture becomes clear.

Lynch is a known practitioner of Transcendental Meditation and believes in the importance of daydreaming. It’s no surprise that inspiration is an internal process for him. But even then, the external is present. All your experiences and memories go into that pool you’re TV fishing into. The creative’s job is to tune into the ideas present in that mess of experience and memory.

Where I Think Ideas Come From

I’m no Stephen King, Eugene Schwartz, or David Lynch. However, I have read a lot of their work, and I can synthesize it into one concrete answer.

Ideas come from internally processing inspiration into creative stories. Inspiration comes from taking in the external world and filtering it for truth.

In other words, we writers are giant processing and meaning machines. The world is a deeply complex place. We take it all in – folklore, relationship drama, scientific advancement – and process all that into a story. A creative output that helps the world make sense.

I admit, this is all super heady and not very actionable. I apologize for that, hypothetical reader. In my defense, you did keep interrupting me with sophomoric jokes about Stephen King’s struggles with addiction. Not cool, bro.

But it’s important because it gives us a clear idea of how we can have even more ideas. We can grease the wheels of both ends of the process—stuff coming in and stuff going out.

In this first series, let’s talk about ways we can have more ideas.