Winter 2000

Dear Mr. Tapply,

I've been a fan of Brady Coyne since Reagan was in office. I am continually entertained by your novels--I feel like maybe I should have "caught on" by now, but I still find that the stories are unpredictable and surprising. How do you keep coming up with new ideas? Where do they come from?

J.W., Burlington, VT

Dear J.W. --

Oh, dear. That question again.

Listen, J.W. I appreciate your kind words. But you have asked the Number One, Most Common -- and, to us writers, hands-down the Most Aggravating -- question we hear.

"Where do you get your ideas?" Aargh!

Ask a less helpful, more sarcastic writer than I and you'll get an answer something like this: "Well, see, once a year I climb into my truck, trek over highway and byway to an unmarked turnoff a little past the lightning-struck oak tree. I follow the rutted dirt road to its end, then I wade across a roaring river, slog through a swamp, and climb a high mountain. There lives a wizened little old man -- or maybe he's a little old woman, or a troll, or an alien -- who silently slips me a slip of paper folded and sealed with wax. That's where. And no, I will NOT give you a map."

Okay. I know. You asked a serious question and you expect a serious answer.

Where do ideas come from? Inside my head, that's where. Ideas don't come bursting forth in an explosion of inspiration. A workable idea only seems to come -- at least to me -- when I'm desperate for one. I spend a lot of time staring at the insides of my eyelids. I miss turnoffs when I'm driving, and I sleep poorly, and I make note of my dreams. I scan newspapers and magazines. I watch afternoon talk shows and late-night talk shows and the Shopping Channel, all the while wondering if I'll ever have an Idea again.

The desperate search for good ideas is what drives writers to drink, and worse.

Sure, writers like to say that ideas are everywhere, that they never want for an idea.

Truthfully, I don't believe them.

Actually, I come up with plenty of ideas. I discard 99% of them. You can't make a full-blown novel of any kind out of just any idea, and ideas for mystery novels are even harder to come by. But when I'm alert -- "desperate" is the operative word -- for an Idea I can use, I sometimes meet somebody with an intriguing problem, or I see a place where something like murder could happen, or I overhear a snatch of conversation, or I hear rumors about a relationship gone bad . . . and it sticks. I play "what-if" with it, thinking up scenarios and options and possibilities, and I follow the logic of each of them. Mostly, they're dead-ends. But once in a while -- well, for me, about once a year -- one of those scenarios works.

It's an Idea, the nut from which the tree of a novel springs. It grabs me and won't let go.

That's where, J. W. Aren't you glad you asked?

For more on plotting a mystery novel, see my Writing Tip.