Writing for ideas

Well today I would like to talk about generating ideas for stories.

Discovering new story ideas is always a challenge for me. I often sit about the house and imagine all sorts of stories, most of which are useless. Most times I over think the entire process, clouding my mind with useless details. This is not a good way to discover new ideas for stories. So where can a person get ideas for new stories? Well I find that life provides a great many story ideas every day. The trick is to notice them as they happen and not ignore them.

Often I get a great amount of material just taking things that I witness and adding to them or changing the location for the story. If you see two people arguing about government, then take that idea and move it to an asteroid mining complex. Tada, instant story, however not a very good one. Relax we will fix it later. What is most important is that you have a new story idea.

So we take this argument and think about it logically, for this argument to have happened there were things that led up to the event, and there will be things afterwards. We only have to establish a point in time and work backwards towards the front then forwards to the end of our tale.

Maybe we add more details on the location, we will place our mining asteroid in an orbit about an unstable star. From here there are millions of variations. Maybe the changing star will make the asteroid shake from time to time. Maybe the people working there will discover that it is about to go super nova. Lots of ideas flowing now, don't let them get away write them down.

Now lets say we start writing on this idea and later on we realize that we have 12,000 words that are not working as a story. Well all is not lost, just go back through all that you have written to date and see if there are any segments that will make a good story. When you find at least one, write it down and start the whole process again.

There you have it, writing for ideas. I won't tell you that this little trick will work every time, but it works often for me. Let me know if this helps you with your stories and be sure to share your experiences as well.