How did you come up with your premise for your books?

Jul 3, 2014 | Q & A

How to come up with the premise for books

How to come up with the premise for books

There are a lot of different ways I come up with the premise for my book and stories for anthologies.

These include:

  • Rewriting history – some of the chapter books I use memories from when I was a child and put the endings I wish had happened.
  • Something bugging me – with the story of the Princess and the Pea that was included in Teapot Tales: a collection of unique fairy tales, it had always bugged me that the princess hadn’t done anything to work out what was causing her to have a miserable night sleep – so I changed it in my retelling.
  • Something I’m interested in – there are a few stories I’m working on that started because I wanted people to learn about some cool things in history.
  • Random ideas – occasionally, a random story idea will pop into my head and, as I write it, it will turn into a book.

For me, I never know what is going to prompt a story idea. It could even be a comment on a blog!

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