12 Places to Look For Story Ideas
1. Favorite Movies
A defining characteristic of movies is their budget. There are big-budget extravaganzas and small independent films. Even though a written narrative has no budget per se, many beginner writers often constrain themselves to “low budget” concepts. As an exercise, try “increasing the budget of your story”. Instead of setting it in a small town in Kansas, have it set in Paris or Moscow. If you’re protagonist is being chased by an angry mob, make it a mob of tens of thousands rather than ten.
2. Favorite Books
By now, you should have already thoroughly dissected your favorite books. It may be useful to consider what elements in those books could be changed in ways that would either lead you to still consider them among your favorite books, and which changes would lead to you hating the altered book. Generally, changes in setting and even plot often have little impact, while changes in character and theme are often very important.
3. Walking Through Your Neighbourhood
The two great dangers which await the fictional writer is that of being to fantastical and that of being to mundane. Of the two, being to mundane is probably the easier to remedy. Being to fantastical however, can be more difficult to resolve. As Ernest Hemingway once said “the problem of the writer does not change, his problem is to write the truth.” Thus is behooves the writer to be a keen student and observer of his surroundings. Simply walking through your neighbourhood and taking care to observe your surroundings helps the writer get used to observe their surroundings without being to fantastical about it.
4. Favorite coffee shop
You can either use your favorite coffee shop as a setting for your story, or perhaps there’s a regular there who you would love to base a character on. The writer need not know this person, in fact, it’s usually better if they don’t. To base a character on traits you both observe, and traits you imagine the character to have, sometimes makes the most mundane character come to life.
5. Horoscopes
Since horoscopes primarily deal with character and situation, they can be used as a mechanism for generating interesting character traits, which can be useful if your characters usually end up being thinly veiled versions of yourself. As far as situation goes, such as “you will met a tall dark stranger today”, can be useful for reminding the writer that character is revealed through situation and how they respond to an event. For instance, you can give the same event to a Pisces and to an Aries, and they will react to it in different ways which reveal their character.
6. Obituary
Contrary to what you might first expect, obituaries aren’t any good for character traits because they are all “goodness and light”. Nobody is ever described as “a cruel man, but principled”. What they are good for is demonstrating how complex and sometimes seemingly arbitrary a person’s life is. A writer might describe a character as being “a good cop”, while a real person’s life is described in an obituary as “a promising student, a bomber in the war, a devoted husband, a loving father, a loving grandfather, actively involved in the Irish Community and Roman Catholic Church, etc.”. Use these ideas to make your characters more rounded and build a more complete timeline of their lives.
7. Work
The mundane workplace has many uses to the writer, both for setting and for character development. Situations arise throughout each day the writer can expand on and use in their story, or characters can be based on co-workers. The writer needs to ensure if they are basing a character on a co-worker, they alter the character enough that others cannot pick up on who they are talking about, especially if the character is seen in an unflattering light. It may end up causing issues at your mundane workplace.
8. Song Lyrics
Song Lyrics remind the writer of the importance of the economical use of words and the inherent rhythm of language itself.
9. Fortune Cookies
Fortune Cookies demonstrate the value of ambiguity. As a writer, it is often tempting to give the reader clear and unambiguous answers as to what is happening in the story and what the story means. This usually stems from a mistrust in the intelligence of the reader. You may find it useful to trust the reader more and make your narrative of the events more ambiguous and trust your reader to arrive at their own conclusions.
10. Items in the news
Journalism and non-fiction writing still have an essentially narrative element. The reason some news stories are so pervasive at any given time is that they have an engaging story inherent in them. Therefore it is useful as a writer to dissect a news story from a literary viewpoint and identify such common items as the protagonist, the antagonist, the plot, the setting, etc. If you find any of those elements especially compelling, you can appropriate them for your own purposes.
11. Your Own Life
We have ALL dreamed we were ourselves, but fabulously better. Writers usually have a tendency to base main characters on themselves, but make them far more interesting then they feel they actually are. Most people are not as boring in their life as they think they are. Think about people in your life and the amazing things they do on a daily basis. Expand on that. The writer does not always have to have characters that are like Indiana Jones or Laura Croft to catch the reader’s interest.
12. Dreams
Dreams and the interpretation of dreams is a function of symbolism. Symbolism and metaphor often arise in a given work subconsciously and through no act of effort of the writer. However, it remains one of the most potent tools of the writer when used with intention. The classic symbols remain powerful without becoming cliché. Symbols such as fire, water, the changing of the seasons, shadows, and mirrors, etc. can help reinforce the theme of your work.