Where do writers get their ideas? We'd all love to sit down with our favourite authors over a cup of cappuccino or glass of wine and learn this age old "secret", but it's actually simpler than you think. All you need to do is be alert, be curious - and say to yourself "what if?"

Some of the places ideas can spring from:-

*Newspaper articles

Ideas for short stories, articles or books can be found by scanning newspaper articles. For example, prison officials are in deep trouble when they mistakenly set an inmate free long before his scheduled release date. What does this conjure up? Was he a murderer who goes on to kill again or was he wrongly accused with an opportunity now to prove his innocence?

*Television headline news

A news report about a real estate agent with keys to a client's home finding the owners dead in bed. Idea - does the realtor become implicated? Is she arrested? How does she prove her innocence?

*Classified advertisements

Classified ads offer a wealth of ideas. In my youth, when I trained as a newspaper reporter, one of my daily duties was to read through the classifieds. Some successful stories came out of the ads. To this day, I still have a "nose for news"; when I read about something unusual or informative in the classified columns, I cut it out and toss it into my Ideas file.

*Movies

Sometimes a movie will set your mind on a new tangent. You can't of course use the actual plot, theme, setting or characters from the movie, but a multitude of ideas and new angles can result if you focus on how the writer has succeeded with the story.

*Reading a book

Immerse yourself in a book. You might find yourself saying: "I can write something like that!"

*A fleeting comment from a passer-by

A few simple words from a passer-by can send a writer's mind racing at full speed. Once I overheard a man talking on a payphone in a U.S. airport about "shipping the body". It might have been quite innocent, but the "idea" is in my "Ideas" folder for future use. Was someone killed and the body shipped from one part of the country to the other to be buried, so the murder is not discovered?