How to Generate Ideas for Fiction
Six Steps to Brainstorming Story Concepts
For beginning writers looking for solid story ideas, this exercise can free up the mind and get the creative juices flowing.
Fiction writers are often asked: "Where do you get your ideas? This is at once a hard question to answer. . . and an easy one.
Where Do Ideas Come From?
The truth is, ideas are everywhere. They shout at writers from the newspapers, the daily experiences of everyone they meet. They lurk in our spam filters, our archived college essays, in urban legends and old family tales. The more a person applies themselves to simply writing -- whether they are working on stories, creative non-fiction, or a novel -- the more the ideas bubble up.
It is generally thought that seasoned writers are less likely to suffer from a dearth of ideas than from a lack of time to write up all the good ones.
How to Choose a Topic
For newer writers, though, those still struggling to find something they want to commit to paper, choosing a topic can be daunting. Some pressure themselves to come up with thoughts so unique and original that nobody has ever considered them before, for example... which creates a terrifying, nigh-impossible, challenge. Others may begin with a fragment of their own personal history, only to find themselves blocked when it becomes obvious that the real-world facts of the story may have to be changed to make it more satisfying as narrative.
Ignore Your Inner Critic
For writers struggling to jump this particular hurdle, an excellent opening exercise can be to come up with a long list of ideas. The key to this process is that the ideas do not have to be good -- they simply have to be numerous. A retelling of "The Three Bears," set in ancient Rome? Great! A speculation on what might have happened if Aunt Giselle really had slept in on the morning of her wedding? Perfect! An account of the death a character who is loosely based on the accident (or crime) victim on today's front page? Fantastic!
Brainstorming Story Ideas
Here's how to go about it:
- Set a high goal, perhaps twenty story concepts, perhaps even forty
- Start scribbling whatever comes to mind, however ludicrous.
- Take as many days or writing sessions as you need
- Alternately, allocate ten minutes from every writing session to this exercise until you reach your targeted number of ideas
Coming up with a large number of ideas is a process that can stretch over a period of many days or weeks. Simply generating multiple story concepts will open a writer's mind to possibilities they might otherwise have discarded, while taking off any internal pressures that might into a writer's block.
Mining Your List for Gold-Medal Concepts
Finally, once the list is made--and not before!--it is time to apply some critical judgment to your ideas. Completing the exercise requires two more steps:
- First, browse through your list, figuring out which items actually have potential.
- Next, choose three or four ideas and develop them a little further, maybe with one or two pages of freewriting, or some basic musing about setting, plot, or the characters who might inhabit them.
Writers who work through this exercise will find that from their original list, only a few compelling concepts will be worth developing further. Amid the goofy punchlines, the outrageous retellings of news stories, and the fanciful riffs on Shakespeare's basic plots, though, there are sure to be a few tantalizing ideas that rise above the rest, ideas that rouse the passions and make you eager to get to work.
After that's done, all that is left is to figure out which to write first.
