Refilling the Ideas Bucket by Claire Fayers

 It turns out I have a bit more editing on my new book before my agent is happy so I'm not quite in the post-draft haze yet. But having just come back from holiday I've already started thinking about new ideas and Steve Way's blog post on signs Can You See the Signs? reminded me of a game I sometimes play when driving. Or, rather, when someone else is driving and I have time to stare out of the window.

You'll need a few place names. On the drive through Normandy I spotted:

Tréport

Verdun

Wanchy Capval

Smermesnil

Next, create characters.

Monsieur Tréport is a fussy little man in his sixties. He probably works in a bank. At weekends, he swaps his suit for a pair of gardening trousers and a checked shirt, and he grows geraniums. He has sixteen grandchildren who are a nosey, noisy crowd, and when they all visit, he retreats to his shed in the garden. Where he is hiding a stash of old bank notes he has carefully pocketed at work over the last thirty years. 

Detective Verdun is new in town. She's in her thirties and has been passed over for promotion no end of times so she's anxious to land a big case and prove herself. She thinks there's not much chance of that in the sleepy countryside town where she's ended up. She's a single mother with a twelve-year-old daughter, Mathilde, who is in the same class as two of M. Tréport's grandchildren.

Which brings us to the teacher, the impressively named, Henri Wanchy-Capval. He does his best but he's as dull as a piece of old toast and his classes could send an elephant to sleep. He has a secret desire to throw off his mild-mannered exterior and become an actor, but he would never dare.

Smermesnil isn't a person. Nobody would have a name like that. But when Mathilde Verdun persuades her new friends, Jacques and Emilie Tréport to explore their grandfather's shed, they find a case of old banknotes, a key, and the word Smermesnil written on the inside of a biscuit packet.

Or maybe Smermesnil is an alien explorer and Wanchy Capval is their trusty robot companion (in their language, Wanchy Capval means loyal friend.) Violet Verdun is a bored teenager desperate for adventure and Lucius Tréport is a moustache-twirling villain.

You can have a lot of fun with this. Most of the characters and storylines will end up back in the oblivion of my unconscious, but sometimes, something will stick. A name, an idea, the seed of a new book. It's also a good one to play with kids during school workshops.

Let me know if you try it.