Do you want to write a novel, but don’t have an idea yet? Do you need some inspiration? If so, in this post we explain how to come up with interesting story ideas through the following 7 ways.
1. Read news’ headlines
Reading the news is not always easy, because most often, the news isn’t anything good. Especially breaking news, which often tend to present information of catastrophic nature (wars, earthquakes, hurricanes, and so forth). However, stories are, in essence, tales of characters dealing with problems, and depending on the genre, those problems can be of catastrophic proportions.
In any event, the idea is not to read a piece of news and write a story or get a story idea around it. It’s about reading solely the headlines, and not just the headlines of breaking news, but of all and any news that might come across your way.
Reading the headlines combined with imagining what the story might be about is a great fountain of story ideas. For example, you might come across the headline “A woman is released from prison after serving eight years for the murder of her husband.” Without reading the story, try to come up with ideas as to who the woman is, what happened, and why she got released after serving eight years.
Was she innocent all along and wrongfully convicted? Did she kill her husband in self-defense? What is her life going to be like moving forward? Answering these questions can give you a great idea for a moving story.
If you read the news piece itself, however, any ideas you will come up with will be influenced by the real story. Of course, you can choose to write the real story, but first you’d have to find the woman, get her story as well as the right to write it, which is different from coming up with your own story idea.
2. Talk to people
This one might be difficult if you are introverted by nature, however, talking with other people can also be the source of great story ideas. And you can talk to anyone, from your own family members and friends, to strangers on the streets, at cafes, or while waiting in line at the bank.
Your family members might share what life was like when they were younger, when they were kids at school, or before we had smartphones. Your friends might share stories about what happened to them at work or even share gossip (and no one is fully immune to gossiping, no matter how unethical they think it is). And oftentimes, strangers might share stories of people and places that you’ve never been to.
Of course, we do not mean here that you should take what they say and write about it verbatim as it happened. But you can use it to come up with an idea, and if not an idea for a full story, then an idea for a part of the story.
For example, a friend might share with you a story about how they locked themselves out of their own house, but the window was open, albeit it was screened. So they ripped the screen and entered through the window. They will tell you many details of how they did it – what other options they considered (maybe calling a locksmith, etc.,) and other details about which part of the screen they tugged on and why.
You do not need to write that story, but you can use those details in your story, if you have a character who needs to enter a locked house. The details don’t have to be the same. Your character might have to climb to a first story balcony first, and rip the screen from the balcony door instead of the window. But the general idea can come from the story originally told to you by someone you know (or a stranger on the street).
3. Listen to conversations
In life, when we go about our days – riding busses or trains, waiting in lines at the cashier in a store or the bank, we become privy to other people’s conversations, most often without meaning to or wanting to. Sometimes, you ride on the train and the person next to you is having a loud conversation on the phone, and you don’t have any headphones with you, so you have no choice but to hear the conversation.
In such situations, our usual instinct is to tune it all out. Our advice is to pay attention. Again, we do not mean here to copy the conversation you hear, just pay attention. Wonderful story ideas can come to you just by listening to what the person is saying. If two people are conversing next to you in the cashier line, you have both sides of the conversation. If a person is talking on the phone nearby, you only have half of the conversation.
Listening to such conversations will help you to create better dialogue in your story, because it will give you an insight into how real people talk to each other. It will also help you to come up with ideas not from the whole conversation, but from a little tidbit they mentioned that caught your interest.
4. Spend time people watching
Take some time to sit at a café or a bus or a train station, and just watch the people as they come and go along. Here, you will have to activate your own imagination and train your skills of observation. You can watch the people – what they look like, how they dress, whether they carry briefcases, expensive bags, or cheap messenger bags. Some people will have short hair, long hair, braided hair, dyed hair, and so forth.
What do these details show about the people? Are they expensively dressed, elegant, stylish, or do they wear comfortable clothes? What is a man in a well-tailored suit doing on the subway (assuming the tailor-made suit indicates that he is rich and doesn’t need to take public transport)? Why is another man carrying flowers? Is he going on a date, or maybe to the hospital to visit somebody there?
Your assumptions about these people – and they would be nothing more than assumptions – can help you create more vivid characters, and the details you imagine about their lives can be a source of great story ideas. While you might not have the time to embark on people-watching in the course of your days, whenever you have the chance, you should watch people and try to engage your imagination.
5. Take long walks
Taking long walks is not only good for your health, it can also be good for you to exercise your creativity and come up with story ideas. The only rule here is to avoid technology. Walking around with your headphones in your ears (where you can listen to a podcast, music, or an audiobook), is not going to help you much to come up with story ideas.
But, walking around by yourself without listening to music or an audiobook can help because you wouldn’t have any distractions. If you walk in an urban environment, you can look at the buildings (office buildings, apartment buildings, museums, etc.,) and try to come up with answers to different questions.
What is the life like for the persons living in one of the buildings? Watch the balconies and what the people have put there. Maybe one of them has a dirty mattress or an old baby stroller. Why were they put there?
If you walk in nature, you can try to imagine what it would be like to be lost so far from civilization. What are the plants and the trees like? Would you be able to eat any of the plants, and are any of the trees bearing fruit? What if someone was chasing you through the trees? Would you be able to run well or would you be tripping on tree roots and rocks?
6. Keep a dream diary
We all have dreams when we sleep. Those who claim to not dream just don’t remember their dreams most of the time. Keeping a notebook next to your bed with the intention of writing down what you dreamed about will help you to start remembering your dreams more often.
And dreams can also be a great source of story ideas. It doesn’t matter whether you have a pleasant dream or a nightmare. Write down as much as you can remember from your dreams when you wake up. After a while, sit down and read them. See if you can turn any of your dreams into story ideas.
Sometimes, you might even dream a full story and wake up right before its ending. Other times, you might just dream of an interesting location. Write everything down. While you might not come up with full story ideas that way, you might get ideas that will be useful as parts of your story – an interesting location, an interesting event, and so forth.
7. Carry a notebook with you
Most writers carry notebooks with themselves wherever they go, even if they do not intend on writing anything. In modern times, this notebook is often replaced by a notepad app on a smartphone, but the intention is still there.
If you get an interesting idea – for a story, a part of a story, or a character – write it down. If you do not, it will probably slip through your fingers, even if you think that you will be able to remember it.
Of course, there are story ideas that stay in our minds for days and months. Usually, these kind of ideas are what give birth to novels, short stories, and novellas. But these normally take up a lot of your mental attention (most of it, actually), which means all the other interesting story ideas will get lost.
So, write the idea down whenever you think of one that is interesting to you. You can come back to that notebook (or phone app) whenever you’re in a story slump or experiencing writer’s block. Additionally, the more story ideas you start to write down, the more you exercise your creativity in this way, the easier it will be for you to continue coming up with interesting ideas. Creativity is like a muscle; it should be constantly trained to prevent atrophy.