Where do you get your ideas from?

It’s always interesting where ideas for stories come from. Even I don’t always understand—or remember—where an idea for a story came from.

Often, an idea will come to me, and I start writing, and half an hour later, I can’t remember exactly what the original idea was. It’s already changed dramatically from the original concept.

Some stories are based on people I see, and I try to imagine a back story for them. Other stories are based on situational ideas that come to me after reading something.

Sometimes a story comes to you pretty whole, and sometimes it comes in parts. You have an initial idea, you write it, but then you need more. And more. And you slog away at it.

And sometimes you get really lucky, and you encounter something that fits perfectly into your story.

I'm currently working on a story about a guy that falls in love with a footballer. (English football.) I’ve already written a few thousand words of the story, but at the moment it is really more of a sketch. It needs a lot more to turn it into something more than just a boy meets boy, argues, then eventually falls in love story.

And then, this past week, the universe stepped in!

A rookie player on the New England Patriots football team tweeted a Shakespeare quote, on Instagram. Then the (older/grizzled) Patriots quarterback replied that he should be reading his playbook (rather than reading Shakespeare!)

Awesome! Suddenly I had an interesting conflict idea to add to my story!

Thanks, Tom Brady!

Boston Globe: Chase Winovich quoted Shakespeare on Instagram. Tom Brady told him to ‘study your playbook.’