A Bucket Full of Seeds: How to Develop Ideas for Your Book | The Exceptional Scribble Show, Episode 253

This is the complete interview segment from Richard Lowe’s monthly third-Tuesday appearance on episode 253 of The Exceptional Scribble Show with host Sage the Poet, joined briefly by caller Mr. Boston, broadcast live on March 19, 2019, lightly edited for readability. The show started late due to technical issues, making this a shorter session; segments outside Richard’s time are omitted.

The introduction

Sage the Poet: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to episode 253 of The Exceptional Scribble Show, Tuesday, March 19, 2019. We’ve had a series of technical disruptions tonight, so we’re jumping right in. In the spotlight, as every third Tuesday: Richard G. Lowe Jr., best known as The Writing King, bestselling author, ghostwriter, and senior writer for The Writing King, where the services run from author blogs, book coaching, and cover design to copywriting, ghostwriting, LinkedIn profile optimization, branding, publishing guidance, and technical writing. Tonight’s topic: how to develop ideas for your book. Richard, the mic is in your hand.

Richard Lowe: Good evening, and thank you for that great introduction. Tonight we’re going to talk about getting ideas for your book, fiction or nonfiction.

Nonfiction ideas: passion first, research later

Richard Lowe: With nonfiction, the idea should generally start from something you’re passionate about, especially for your first book or two or three. I’m passionate about artificial intelligence, so I might write about that. You’re passionate about needlepoint? Write about that. Then narrow it: needlepoint for children, for adults, for a religious audience? Refine the idea until it’s specific, then see if there’s a market.

It’s best to start with something that doesn’t require a lot of research, meaning something you already know, because you don’t want to fight the research and the writing at the same time. After a couple of books, sure, take on something research-heavy. And one warning: don’t write nonfiction in term-paper style. That’s a unique style for the scientific and educational communities, and it doesn’t work for books, especially self-published books. Your audience wants it more casual; you’re talking to them in a book, not submitting a paper.

Fiction ideas: they’re everywhere

Richard Lowe: For fiction, which is probably where most of our listeners are: ideas are everywhere. Say you want to write and have no preconceived notion at all; that happens to me, since I like writing in every genre I can. First, pick a genre: mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, vampire romance. Then go where the genre lives.

Writing a mystery set in medieval times? Go to a Renaissance Faire: costumes, food, a joust. There’s an idea: maybe write about a joust. Watch the king doing his thing, add some dragons, and pretty soon you’ve got a story. A novel set in the Civil War? Find a Civil War reenactor group; they’re all over the place. Go to a reenactment weekend, watch the battles, and talk to the people. There are even World War II reenactor groups. Museums: writing about an American Indian era? Look at the artifacts. What is this thing? That could be a prop in a book, or the book itself. That big fish preserved in alcohol: that can go in a story. That dinosaur: that can make several stories.

Take a walk with a journal and watch people interact; maybe that spark becomes a romance. Write down your dreams the minute you wake up, because they fade, bang, gone. Write down daydreams. Talk to people: writing groups, library groups, anyone.

And here’s one of the best: go visit an old folks’ home. First of all, they love having visitors. Start talking, and they have stories: a World War II vet, a Vietnam vet, somebody who did something remarkable with their life. Keep them on track, and you’ll come away with a ton of ideas.

And if all else fails, there are prompt books; I sell five at fictionmasterclass.com, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, romance, and historical, 500 prompts each, each just a couple of sentences: the germ of an idea. Because that’s all you’re looking for right now: a germ. A vampire falls for a werewolf; the vampires object, the werewolves are cool with it, and it starts a war. There’s your idea. Fishermen trap sea urchins, and one day the sea urchins are extinct: now what? Crazy, but it’s an idea. Prohibition-era speakeasy gangsters, a gangster romance, and one of the gangsters is a vampire. You can come up with them that fast: bang, bang, bang.

Seeds, not trees

Sage the Poet: It sounds like a formula: start with the known, then let the imagination run wild. Baby steps first. Start small, then go big.

Richard Lowe: Think of it as looking for seeds. You’re not looking for the whole tree; you’re looking for a seed that will grow into a tree. A lot of authors start too big: I need the whole world, the dragons, all of it, and they’re designing the world before they even know what they’re writing about. Remember that an entire tree grows from a seed the size of a pea. A castle, a princess and a prince who love each other, and then we find out the prince is secretly evil: a very simple seed. Then build the story like rings on a tree, layer on layer like an onion, until you have the whole thing.

But first, give yourself a bucket full of seeds. Write down ideas as fast as you can, hundreds of them, at museums, on walks, at the library, talking to a radio show host, at church. How did they build that church? How did they stain the glass? There might be a book in stained glass; I don’t know if it would sell, but there’s a book in it. Then, after a few days, scan the journal: don’t like that one, don’t like that, wait, this one. What do you think, honey? Expand the keeper a little; if it dies on expansion, move to the next. The point is you’re not invested yet: no time, no money, no resources, just ideas. And when a magazine announces a short story contest wanting a dark romance, you open the journal: do I have any dark romance seeds? Yes, I do. And you start writing. Coming up with ideas is a different kind of creativity than writing the book, at least I’ve found, and keeping the two separate keeps both flowing.

Then research before you write

Richard Lowe: One key step before you actually write: you’ve got the idea, you like it, you’ve expanded it, you’ve outlined. Now research whether it will sell. Get on Amazon. Vampire romance: have any been written? Duh, yes. Selling well? Yes. Selling too well, 20,000 copies per book, so you’d never crack the hundredth page of listings? Then don’t write it, because it won’t be seen. And the other extreme, no vampire romances at all? Maybe that’s because nobody’s reading them. Find the middle: they exist, they sell okay, and you can compete. You’re not going to write a 100,000-copy novel on your first book; maybe your fifth or sixth, once you’ve built the name and done the marketing we’ve talked about before. The biggest reason a book doesn’t sell is that nobody ever sees it, buried in the rankings, and then the author gets discouraged and swears off writing. It may be the best book in the world. If nobody sees it, it isn’t going to sell.

Amazon’s warehouse, “only 3 left,” and IngramSpark

Sage the Poet: I’ve heard about Amazon having a warehouse of books, and that sometimes a listing says there are only two or three books left. What does that mean for a self-published author?

Richard Lowe: On Amazon, your self-published book is print-on-demand: an infinite number of copies, printed as ordered. If a listing says there are only three left, that’s a resale: some vendor or person holding physical copies. It could be someone like me who bought ten copies of your book and is reselling them, or it could be that Amazon printed too many and has a box in the basement to clear out, which, by the way, is frequently why Amazon marks prices down. If you published through KDP, the “only X left” doesn’t apply to you; your supply is infinite.

Getting into bookstores is different, and that’s a whole show of its own: your own ISBN, the special codes libraries want, a correct copyright page, and distribution. If it’s only on Amazon, it’s probably not getting into bookstores. IngramSpark is one of the biggest book distributors in the world; Amazon’s own expanded distribution to bookstores actually routes through IngramSpark. You can also publish on IngramSpark directly, with its own advantages and restrictions, another 30-minute chat. My books are published on Amazon for Amazon, and through IngramSpark for bookstore distribution: both places. There’s also Apple’s bookstore, and no, that’s not iUniverse, that’s Apple, which you can only reach through Draft2Digital or directly from a Mac; Kobo; Google Books, which I haven’t explored; or selling downloads from your own website, where you do everything yourself and keep all the money, which works well for electronic versions.

And on rights: if you own the book, you can do whatever you want with it, unless you enroll in KDP Select, Amazon’s exclusivity program, in which case you agree not to for the term. Otherwise it’s your book and your copyright. Copyrights deserve a whole show too.

A quick caller and a pricing question

Mr. Boston (caller): I had to come grace my sister’s show. I’ve got my home care business running now, a lot of federal and state paperwork, and it’s hard to keep people in this field, because some care about the money and not the people. And as a sometime writer: I’ve been through a lot of ups and downs, and I’ve found that’s what fuels my ability to write. I let the words meet the page without building the ideas first, and structure the content later.

Richard Lowe: Before I run, one contact note: reach me through the form at thewritingking.com/, or through fictionmasterclass.com for the training courses.

Sage the Poet: One fast question: how do you, as the publisher, decide how to price a book?

Richard Lowe: Well, I’m not a publisher; I’m a writer. I self-publish, and I price my own books based on the competition: what is a similar book going for? But I don’t publish other people’s books.

Closing

Sage the Poet: Richard will be back on the panel every third Tuesday; the next date is April the 16th, always in the spotlight from 8 to 9 p.m. My apologies again for tonight’s late start and technical issues. Sign up for Richard’s classes at fictionmasterclass.com; he earned the title The Writing King, and writing is a passion and a life to him. His services are at thewritingking.com/. And the special is still running at the number-one heckofawebsite.com: the full bundle of training books for $67.97, a literary treasure and an investment you’ll benefit from for years.

Find Richard Lowe at thewritingking.com/.

Quotable moments

Frequently Asked Questions

Part of Richard Lowe on Air, his complete run of podcast, radio, and video guest appearances.