5 Tips for Story Ideas
I’ve had a few people ask me how I come up with ideas for my stories and how I can keep going on a daily basis. There are a lot of different ways out there to do this, but I fall back on these when I don’t have one in mind already. Hopefully these five tips can help you out!
1. Write everything down
My number one piece of advice is that any idea that you have has the potential to turn into an awesome story. Sometimes you’ll write something and think that it is rather mundane because it just was so obvious in your head, but then you show it to someone else, and they find it original and interesting. Write down every idea and review them occasionally. It feels a lot better to look through a pile of source material than trying to remember a forgotten thought.
2. Look at prompts.
There are a ton of places to find them and a lot of them are extremely good. Sometimes they manage to tell a story in the prompt itself. Othertimes it’s just a few words long. Both are useful in their own rights. The more complete ones, in a story sense, are really good for creating a derivative idea. Basically, you can stick to the same rough idea, but change up the subjects or activity to get an original idea. The ones that are just a short blast of words are a little trickier to work with. Sometimes you’ll get a flash of insight and know what to write. Most of the time, at least for me, they’ll fall flat, and you’ll end up scrolling through pages of them until one snaps a story into your head. Perhaps lost Russian subs and North Dakota Highway 21 (both taken from the magical ‘Random Article’ button on Wikipedia) could inspire you in ways you never thought possible.
3. Trying to associate two unrelated things.
Take two extremely dissimilar ideas and bash them together until something common between the two sticks. Easy ones already have a few things in common, like strawberries and sunburn. These normally sound pretty elegant and sensible when you first write them out. The downside is that they may have been written enough to become kind of cliche. It’ll make a nice story, but more effort will be put into making the story interesting than trying out new ideas. Harder ones sit so far apart at the ends of the spectrum, you will feel absolutely stretched trying to find a similarity between the two of them.
4. Stare at nothing for a little bit.
For this, you basically need to engage daydream mode. It’s really easy to be constantly stimulated in today’s world, and if I were to guess, overall daydreaming has probably decreased since the introduction of the iPhone. Being able to have some quiet, non-organized, thinking time leads to some fantastically strange and amazing ideas. Getting into this mode is a little hard to force, so don’t expect this to be your main wellspring of ideas. Again, make sure you record the ideas that visit your mind. What might seem like a silly thought now, could be just what you need to start your next story, novel, or invention.
5. Checking out the news or history
Everyday conflict happens around the world that plays out in unpredictable ways. You can change the players in this conflict and the stakes to come up with your own creative work. It may seem like cheating, but I guarantee you that once you start writing it out, new ideas will fill your head, and the scene or story will become your own.
If any of this sparks a story idea for you, and you happen to write it out, please share below!
(via nimblesnotebook-blog)