KT Articles on other sites
A Where do you get your ideas from?
Different people get their book ideas in different ways, and there isn’t a single right way. The key thing is that you find the way that works for you.
Ideas from a chicken
The secret to finding your ideas as a writer is to keep your eyes, ears and mind open.
For instance, what ideas might spring to mind if you woke up from a nap to discover a chicken wandering through the house, pillaging the cats’ food bowls?
Goodness me, that’s just not normal!!!
Ah, well, you see now…
That only makes sense if we know what normal actually means. “Don’t be silly KT! Of course we know what normal means!”
Ah, but do you really? And is it the same as the man next door thinks it is? And that’s the point. Normal means different things to different people, and that’s a key part of good characterisation in your novel.
Birds and their brains
We make a lot of assumptions in our day to day lives, and we have the axioms to prove it. Take the phrase “bird brained”, meaning small minded or stupid. We see a bird with it’s small head, and correctly deduce that it must have a small brain, and from that we assume that it must therefore be stupid. Every time we see that kind of bird doing something that appears unintelligent to us, it reinforces that belief.
The question is, is it true?
How many of us have actually sat down and properly observed, and then thought about what we’ve seen? It’s a neat trick to give a writer a new insight into the world, and that could be the key to an entire book…
Culture and how it sets our world view
Every single one of us grows up in some kind of culture, which influences our world view, our behaviours and our values. When cultures meet, all sorts of assumptions get challenged and that’s gold for a writer.
