It all started with Tom Cruise.
I don’t know the man; I was watching one of his movies. This one happened to be the 2012 film entitled Jack Reacher, which was itself based on the Lee Child thriller novels. It’s not my favorite Cruise film, that would be A Few Good Men, mostly because I love Aaron Sorkin’s writing. But there I was in my living room with my wife, Robin, watching this action thriller when I got an idea.
That’s how it works.
One of the most common questions any novelist gets is: “Where do your ideas come from?” How to answer has become something of a creative challenge because the question is entirely absurd, and along the lines of other unanswerable questions such as: How high is up? Which child is your favorite? Or why did you eat that whole tub of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia? When asked such questions you don’t want to be rude. The person asking is oblivious to having done anything more than ask a civil question, but “I don’t know,” seems somehow disappointing. You’re an author after all, a master of creative license.
My response has always been: “A guy named Eddie. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio. You send him an envelope with money. He sends the idea. You don’t ask questions, and you don’t stiff Eddie. The man has connections.”
You can’t imagine the looks I get—or maybe you can. I often wonder if some believe me. I’m sure that one day someone will come up and say, “That tip about Eddie was a lifesaver. Met him in a bar in Akron. Effing genius.” Then I’ll be the one with the priceless look on my face.
Fact is, ideas come from everywhere and nowhere. Why did you choose that shirt or those pants this morning? Maybe it was because they were clean, or on top of the pile, or...and that’s the thing, sometimes stuff just happens. Ideas bubble up all the time from our primordial mental stew, that subconscious cauldron of random ones and zeroes. Most of the time we ignore the pops and blips, but when planets align a bubble hits at just the right moment and pulls the chain attached to the light bulb over our heads.
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That’s what happened with Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher. The light came on and I looked up and saw it. I actually get a lot of ideas from movies, television, and music. We’ll get to the music later, but for now let’s return to me on the couch watching Tom as Jack.
As the movie began, I was captivated by how easy it was to get interested. I like that in a story. People often picture the cover of a book to be a doorway into another world; I’m no different. I also find the first few pages of a novel to be a thicket of branches and leaves hiding what’s inside. Some books start slow, which means I have to struggle through this bramble before I get my first clear glimpse at the landscape, before I can determine if I even want to stay. If the effort is too hard, I might give up and try another door. I’ve always preferred books that are so inviting as to run downhill from the moment you enter, and have but a tiny bit of foliage to get through. So when I write I don’t want my readers to climb, I want them to step forward and fall in, and get sucked down, unable to escape. Thrillers are that way. I’ve always set my stories to the thriller pace, but until I was watching Tom as Jack, I didn’t think to intentionally do that. This was the light bulb that went on. Write a thriller novel set in my fantasy world of Elan and have it star Royce and Hadrian.
Like the Big Bang, a million explosive thoughts blew out too fast for me to even remember. I considered how the story could start with action, build through a compelling question, have shadowy government/noble entities working behind the scenes. Answering one question would spawn three more. The action would ramp up and a ticking clock would countdown to an exciting finale.
This was the idea. But you should know something about ideas: they are like the best laid plans of rodents and writers; they rarely survive the first day of actual typing. But you have to start somewhere. I started with Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher.