Here you are. You know that you want to write a story. You just don’t know what story. Maybe you already have a couple of characters, but so far, you don’t really know what to do with them. My first advice, when it comes to finding ideas, is to start long before you ever sit down to write. In fact, most of my own process of how to come up with story ideas involves hardly any writing at all, at least in the beginning it doesn’t.
Awareness.
The first step to getting ideas for writing is to turn on your own awareness towards having ideas. In a normal day, you probably have around at least ten ideas that could make for an interesting story. Probably more. Only most of us don’t pay attention to them. Every day, when you take the train to work, you might pass over a really steep bridge and somewhere in the back of your mind you think “Hopefully the train won’t tip over and send us falling into the river below”. Or you sit on the toilet at night when you suddenly hear a noise in the hallway of your apartment and you fear being caught with your pants down by someone breaking in. If you’re serious about getting ideas for your writing, the first thing to do is to start paying attention to when you actually have them.
Note-Taking.
The second is to write them down. Now, just a short disclaimer here: There is actually a difference between a fully formed idea and what I call sparks. Sparks are random lines of dialogue that pop into your head and of which you think they could be fun in a story. Or sparks can be an interesting character or setting. They are part of an idea, but there is usually something missing to get started with them. What I do, is write down all my sparks. Later on, I then sort together what seems to go together and see if I can create a story out of it. Write down the random sparks of inspiration you have during the day.
By the way, if you are like me, I would recommend noting down your ideas directly in digital form. For years I’ve been noting down sparks, ideas and whole scenes on paper and it takes forever to type them up. Also, if you have the kind of handwriting I do, most of it will end up illegible anyway.
Good Stories Stick Around.
Personally, I first had to train myself to have a lot of ideas. When I first seriously started writing fiction, about nine years ago, I had no ideas at all. All I could come up with were cheap fan fiction versions of my favorite stories. It took a lot of training to get myself to both pay attention to having ideas as well as bring up the discipline to write them down. Now, however, I am at a point where I only write down sparks like dialogue or character descriptions. I don’t write down big plot points or even whole story ideas because the good ideas stick around anyway. If you have an idea that really catches your interest you will find yourself thinking about it over and over again. It’s like a part of your brain is constantly working on your story, whether you’re conscious of it or not. I remember hearing writers describe this process and wondering whether I could ever do that too. Now I do the same thing and it’s not because of natural talent but practice. You keep looking for something to write, take notes of what might be an idea, replay scenes in your head over and over again and eventually, it’s just second nature. That’s why, although I say you should note down your ideas, story notes on their own aren’t actually that useful. Agatha Christie used to have several notebooks at a time, noting down ideas here and there on random pages. Some she turned into books, others were left forgotten on a page somewhere. Your notes are for you to have something to consult when you’re looking for ideas. But how and if at all you use them, that is largely down to your own process.
Time to Develop.
Another thing, a bit frustrating I admit, is that ideas take some time to develop. Unless you suddenly have a flash of inspiration and a story presents itself to you in one finished piece, you will probably have to uncover it bit by bit. One of my ideas started in 2009 and until the end of 2015, I had not gotten much further with it at all. I had been diligently gathering notes and in the meantime worked on new ideas, but until 2015 I had nothing but vague shadows of characters and plot. And then, while I was studying for my exams, all of a sudden, the whole story popped into my head. Fully formed characters, clear main conflict, everything. I hardly had time to write down all the ideas, that’s how fast they emerged. Not that I really had to write down most of it, because once you get a sense of what the story is actually about, it’s easy to remember. Needless to say, I didn’t do too well with my exams that year. Maybe you have part of an idea now, but it just isn’t going anywhere. If that’s the case, consider shelving it for a while and coming back to it later. Just because an idea doesn’t work out now doesn’t mean that it won’t in the future. Sometimes ideas just need time to grow. And sometimes you first have to learn something new, maybe a special topic, that lets you understand what your story is actually about. For me, I’m pretty sure that my idea wouldn’t have formed if I hadn’t been watching a ton of history documentaries that same year.
The Need to be Original.
It can be discouraging, trying to come up with an original idea. But honestly, originality is vastly overrated. Why? Because originality rarely just jumps into existence, it’s a process. As human beings, it’s in our nature to copy others. That’s how we learn and that’s how we grow. So don’t expect that telling a story is any different. Sure, you might have “that idea”, a flash of insight no one else has ever thought of before, but that is rare. It’s possible that one day, while you do nothing noteworthy at all, a great idea suddenly hits you out of nowhere. But not writing until you have that original idea is like not working because you’re waiting to win the lottery. So if you’re just starting out, don’t focus on being original, instead focus on being authentic. What does that mean? Focus on what you like. Maybe the stories you like aren’t about originality, maybe you are perfectly happy reading different versions of the same story over and over again. There is a reason why stories about superheroes are so popular. What do Batman, the Green Arrow, and Daredevil all have in common? Almost everything, really. But that’s fine because if you like stories about people putting on a mask and fighting crime in their city with nothing but their fists (and maybe an arrow and a Batmobile) it’s less about the originality than about the execution of the idea. That’s why you shouldn’t stress yourself out with trying to be original. Focus on the kind of story you like and want to tell, no matter whether it has never been told before or done a million times. If you do that, you’ll find that your story starts to become more and more original all on it’s on anyway. Simply because your focus on your own personal taste influences the direction the story takes.
If you need something a little more tangible, try using some of these techniques to come up with a story idea.