Ideas

I personally don't tend to have a lack of ideas - things or phrases just randomly pop in my head based on everything you said like stuff I read or see, things that happen to me, things that I dwell on etc. - but most of these ideas are ultmately limited in scope. By that I mean that they might be enough to write a poem or perhaps even a short story on, but not a novel. What you are looking for is probably a very personal decision and depends on what kind of fiction you're writing.

The qualities I look for are:

- scope (Can a full-length novel plot be developed from it ?)
- grandness (maybe not the right word, what I mean is: Does it tie in to big, universal themes ?)
- novelty, at least novelty in its execution (Has this been dealt with before ? If yes, has this been dealt with in this way before ?)
- emotion (Is this idea emotionally captivating ?)

These are the ingredients of a good story, at least to my taste, imho. But like I said, that's a very personal decision.

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Robots' answer is excellent!

I meditate anyway, but I find it useful for keeping the creative juices alive.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

As a person with a surfeit of ideas, and no ambition to write a book (funny how the world works, eh?) I suggest that you start broadly, with the kind of story you want to write:
Crime, romance, sci-fi, fantasy?
Try to explain to yourself what you like about that kind of story. And, what you don't.
Maybe something would have been better with a different character, or such-and-such an aspect of the plot has been done to death? Here's your chance to fix it?
If you don't want to use another book or movie for inspiration, go with reality: carefully changed stories you've heard from other people, or seen/read on the news. (The less you know about the actual story, the better).
Look for ideas that catch your imagination, and toss them around a little.
Off the top of my head:

Example: there have been a lot of stories in the news lately about multi-car accidents.
So, your MC is a paramedic who treats a victim who survives, but is kept sedated until X improves. The paramedic falls in love with their image of the victim, laying there, so peaceful and still, in that hospital bed.

Then, the victim wakes up and is no longer peaceful and sweet: they're a criminal, on the lam, and furious that their loot/retirement fund is missing, and insists that the paramedic immediately search it out, or else.

Or, the victim is a terrorist, who deliberately caused the crash, and is indignant that the mission wasn't as 'successful' as they anticipated, and their life was saved! Insists, perhaps, that the paramedic carry out their mission! Again, or else.
(Note that the descriptions are gender-neutral.)

Ideas are everywhere, and cheap. Let me know what you want, I'll send you some spares.

It's going to sound bizarre, but make a list of 10 ideas.

They don't have to be good ideas, just any 10 ideas. Do this every day, don't let yourself skip a day or come in less than 10. You'll find the idea muscle gets stronger the more you do it an eventually you'll have a list of so many good ideas you'll realize that you can't possibly get to all of them.

My ideas for the story that I'm currently writing came from a tv show that I used to love. And it's influenced by other books/movies on the same topic.

I mostly write short fanfictions and those have all been influenced by other fanfictions.

Where does one get ideas?

From dreams.

From conversations - ones I'm in or ones overheard.

From TV shows, movies, or books: those "what-if" moments where you wonder how things could've played out differently.

From random spitballing exercises that take on lives of their own.

From pictures.

From the news.

From those lazy-brain moments where ideas string themselves together in unexpected ways.

Ideas come cheap; it's execution that makes 'em or breaks 'em.

Take out a piece of paper. Draw a circle in the middle. In it, write setting. Brainstorm a bunch of locations. Once one or more inspires you, you can start thinking of genre for story. You can move on to characters, plot, and so forth.

My ideas come from everywhere. For instance: I got really cheesed off about that new Netflix show, "Insatiable" and its portrayal of fat girls, and I'm like, "I wanna write about a girl gang posse that's fat and fabulous!" But since I'm busy, I just wrote the idea down to let it sit. Or, I just watched "Song of the Sea" on netflix and my brain literally bashed me over the head going, "BOOK TWO IDEA RIGHT HERE" even though I'm still on book one, haha.

So like everyone else said, ideas come from everywhere and they're deeply personal (like the fabulous fat girl gang idea for me) but taking those ideas and turning them into a story is the tricky part.

Good luck!

Almost all my ideas don't start out as ideas at all. I really struggle to express myself without using metaphors and references, and novels are an extension of that.

So, for example, Anchor was my attempt to conduct a nonfiction discussion on some aspects of millennial culture. But it came out as a book because I can't expound on those ideas in a straightforward manner. Origin (the ms before) was basically my waffly thoughts on Jane Eyre, but it came out as a fiction novel in a secondary fantasy world with dimension-jumping aliens. Idk.

A setting element (from spec fic) and a personal element that clash, are usually sufficient to generate conflict. Quick examples based on the above;

- a setting with seers, but one of those seers is schizophrenic and can't distinguish cryptic visions from hallucinations.
- two women who share a life, but one of them wants to die (jeapordising the other woman)

Antagonism and conflict fuels the story and it spools out from there.

I get most of my ideas form dreams or from make-believe games I used to play with my sister. Sometimes if I'm really lacking ideas I'll think about what type of character I like and put them in a setting I think is creative.

The characters themselves convince me if I want to write the story or not.

They come from everywhere. Last week, Husband and I were watching a game show. A commercial came on for one of those "here's your secret word of the day" things the channel does. The word was "Stuck" and it just lodged into my brain. No context, nothing except the word. A few days later, my subconscious presented me with a new novel about a woman who literally gets stuck in a location, but who is also struggling with being stuck in other areas of her life. So now it's in my Novels To Write queue.

I have no idea why little, random things take hold, and no idea how to nurture that particular quirk.

For me, stories always begin with a character. This could be from a fragment of overheard conversation, a memory, someone sleeping on the train. I let them sit in my head until the voice starts getting clearer, begin playing what-if, and then when the opening scene and voice are sharp in my mind, I start writing.

Maze Runner said:

Just curious, when you do this, how complete are the ideas? Just a germ, entire plot, or somewhere in the middle? 'Cause last night I was thinking that my problem is that I've let my imagination muscle atropy due to inactivity. Ha, there must be a better way to say that, but when I was actively writing, I did get a lot of ideas. Unfortunately, I wrote none of them down, and now that I need one I'm just a blank.

Click to expand...

I don't want to just answer 'yes', but essentially if you're struggling for ideas it doesn't matter, you don't even have to keep them, just write down 10 ideas a day. When that creativity muscle gets fitter you'll be able to home in on specific themed lists:

10 ways to kill this character, 10 things that haven't been invented yet that will be cool for this story, 10 things that magic would render obsolete, 10 ways to make money without the modern economy, 10 ways my vampires can be different from stokers, 10 titles of books not yet written, 10 ways to improve the world, 10 reasons vegans are the best (or worst), 10 things that can go horribly wrong on the first date, 10 lists for lists of 10 things (completed this one for you)

Mine can be anywhere from a complete prompt:
A therapist for sentient AI tries to help a robot that is having the existential crises "Do I really love my programmer or has the programmer programmed me to fall for them?"

To a single line:
The mayo has gone bad, and that was the best part of my day.

Or just a name
Jutin Hammerbeard
Billy Meechum

A Potential Title
Night Rhoads


Hope this helps get your idea muscles in shape.

My published novel sprang from a throw-away comment made by my brother that bugged the hell out of me for years, but I find ideas generally are pretty easy to find (good ideas are harder!).

My favourite method is to question a news article and twist what happened. I might think, for example, what if Trump, instead of praising Putin at the summit, had pulled a knife and stabbed him? Or what if the fire chief being interviewed about major bush fires was actually the arsonist? I do this with fiction, too, and ask myself what if the character had made a different decision at a crucial moment?

A lot of ideas go nowhere, but it's a fun process. My latest novel, a thriller, sprang from a very simple question while watching a news report in which a hospital administrator was interviewed about funding cuts.

You must write some interesting stories!

Justobuddies said:

A therapist for sentient AI tries to help a robot that is having the existential crises "Do I really love my programmer or has the programmer programmed me to fall for them?"

To a single line:
The mayo has gone bad, and that was the best part of my day.

Click to expand...

OMG I'd love to read novels based on these two !

I blend several obsessions together. So, Pearl Jam fans, dogs, Detroit (especially Corktown and Brush Park), and album art all got blended into my last novel. My current WIP blends my obsessions with the early '70s, Nellcott, musicians, hippie communes, and Vietnam. It's loads of fun to weave obsessions into a satisfying story.

I sometimes use writing idea or writing prompt generators to jump start my creativity. There are a lot at a site called Seventh Sanctum, but you can find others through Google. From something like "We survived the nuclear war by hiding in an apartment, and you know what that means." or "Call me Callie, you will hate me in the end, like she did." (examples from a generator) my brain starts creating characters and goals. Random stock photos or pieces of digital art, lists of words, or random snippets of overheard conversation might spark something, too.