I’m writing from a world filled with questions.

	Eli Cranor

Here's one: “Where do you get the ideas for your books?”

I get asked this a lot, but the answer is simple. The ideas for my novels come from questions. Big questions. The kind of quandaries that keep me up at night.

Before you dive into a novel-length manuscript, a project that will consume thousands of hours of your life, it’s wise to pause and ask yourself a few questions.

First, have you tried your hand at short stories? Not to beat a dead horse, but short stories allow you to find your voice and to start and finish a project. Most importantly, short stories allow you to experiment.

By the time you get to the novel writing stage of your writing journey, however, experimentation can come at a cost. It can cause you to start something and then fizzle out. It takes a lot of passion, a ton of heart, to survive the entire process required to complete a novel.

Which is why it’s so important to pick the right idea before you start writing a book. But how does one differentiate between a short-story-sized idea and a concept that is dense enough to elicit a 300-page novel?

It all starts with the right question.

For me, every novel tries to solve a problem. And no, I’m not talking about plot. I’m talking about those big questions I mentioned at the start of this column, the ones that keep me up at night.

I’m guessing you wrestle with similar mysteries. These are complications you’ve combated for years, questions that refuse a simple answer.

This, my friends, is where novels come from.

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In a world where everything is black and white, novels are found in the gray zones. Novels occupy the middle ground. This is where your characters come in. Good characters create authentic arguments for both sides.

As the author, it’s your job to bring these opposing belief systems together. Make your characters collide. Force them to fight it out, page after page.

This is how an organic plot blossoms. It sprouts from the characters, their unique points of view, their beliefs, their strengths and weaknesses.

The characters are your greatest tool, your only hope to answer that one question that’s haunted you forever. With each new sentence, you will be scraping away at an issue that is near and dear to your heart. The dilemma itself, that’s what will drive you. The question will compel you back to your desk where you’ll employ your characters, your setting, your voice to find a proper solution.

Or maybe you won’t find an answer at all, which is totally fine too.

My favorite books don’t offer easy answers. They deepen the question. They make me look harder at an idea, an issue, a philosophical Catch-22 without providing some easily digestible solution.

The farther I go into life, both my physical reality and the worlds I create on the page, the more I realize that there are no solutions to the big questions. But that shouldn’t stop us from searching.

As the “Poet From Pumpkin Bend” Greg Brownderville once wrote, “Everything that shatters / Everything that scatters / Everything that matters is a mystery.”

Which makes you — and me and anyone else who decides to put the black on the white — a detective. A writer is an investigator tasked with solving the unsolvable mystery of life. A tall order, I know, but it’s the pursuit, the hunt, the search for truth, that makes this life worth living.

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