Ideas for stories

I don't write when I know what happens.

I write to find out what happens.

Peaches is right. Write about the boy finding his frog and see what happens. Start with a character, a scene, whatever, and go from there.

What the others said. Take any snippet and start asking questions. "How?" "Why?" and "Then what?" are good ones for starters.

“Boy finds three-legged frog in creek,”

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Where'd a three legged frog come from? Is this creek downstream from a nuclear plant? Did somebody rescue a frog from the high school lab?

Is it a demon frog and that fourth leg is going to grow another mutant frog, and then chop off it's own leg to grow the next one, bigger?

What's this kid doing hiding down by the creek? And what is he hiding from?

in other words: "Then What?"

Try free writing. Make a bullet list.

In about a minute, you should get something like this:

• Boy finds 3-legged frog in a creek.
• Something must have happened to the frog, but what?
• Pollution? Radiation? Genetic manipulation?
• That means scientists or big business, so I'll go with the first one.
• A scientist is manipulating DNA, trying to clone specific body parts for transplant. - like growing an ear on a rat's back. He managed to make a frog grow an extra leg.
• Now, how'd the frog get loose?
• Is he smart? Did someone set him loose?
• If someone, then who?
• A student on a campaign to stop animal experimentation, perhaps.
• So... what happened to the student? Surely he noticed something weird was up with the frog.
• Maybe the scientist wasn't supposed to be doing experiments like that, and since the student knows about it, he's toast. So... he keeps the student prisoner. Maybe decides to use him as a human test subject.
• Now, where's the kid come in? His older sister is the student's girlfriend, who's frantic because she can't find him. They were supposed to meet at the lab to set the animals free in protest, but she was late. When she got there, he was gone, so she assumed he chickened out and left.

I think the frog must be related to Blinky in some way.

Just start writing and see what happens:

The frog had three legs. That's two more than me. But he could hop faster than any hopper I'd ever seen. We were gonna be rich.

Toss in a couple of rivals, some meddling parents, a pigtailed love interest, and a cash prize that the protag needs really badly, and the story practically writes itself.

Can I suggest you spend a little time browsing http://tvtropes.org ? It's a good place to explore all the bits and pieces that make up the stories we tell.

Kitty Pryde said:

Can I suggest you spend a little time browsing http://tvtropes.org ? It's a good place to explore all the bits and pieces that make up the stories we tell.

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Shame on you for not including the mandatory disclaimer for TVTropes :

There is no such thing as "a little time" when it comes to TVTropes, it's merely the unit of time you tell yourself you'll spend browsing it. Hours upon hours will be spent browsing this site, and is not recommended for those with addiction-prone personalities. That said, those hours will be some of the most fun and interesting hours of your life.

My best stories have all come from a single idea or premise, and then I just ask "why" "how" "when" "what" "where"... until I come to the end of the story.

One thing that helps is doing writing exercises.

The writer's group I once belonged to would have exercises where you'd write a story in ten minutes. We'd work from prompts or sometimes we'd have visual aids.

One time the moderator of our group brought in vegetables from her garden.

I took a Tomato and Squash and wrote a quick funny story about a war between the vegetables.

The writing exercises proved vital to stimulating creativity because every meeting, we'd have exactly ten minutes to write something that was a complete surprise. Afterwards, we'd read our stories and it was amazing how creative everyone was. With time, it got easier and easier to just let yourself go and write write write...

Try it

Mel...

Open your mind and let your charactors take over the story and see where it goes. It works for me

With a meathook.

The Bawlin Sox said:

Yes, but that was my question - how?

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Or in a slightly less bloody manner, just speculate on the possibilities. Ask 'what if' until something goes PING! Hopefully it won't be a blood vessel.

The Bawlin Sox said:

Yes, but that was my question - how?

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Okay, let's try this again.

Put yourself in the boy's position. What would you do if you found a 3-legged frog in a pond? What would you think? Would you wonder how it got 3 legs? If the answer is no (or "I'd whack it with a stick") then maybe you need another prompt.

What if? Take that question and run with it-

All an idea has to do is generate a problem or a question. The story is how you solve teh problem or answer the question. Begin teh story with a problem and/or a question, and teh story generated is there simply to solve the problem, and/or answer the question.

I find ideas in snippets of conversation all the time. Often conversations I'm having. It helps that my friends aren't quite normal.

Ask yourself questions around it. Play the what if game.

The Bawlin Sox said:

I mean, I also hear and read these ‘mundane things’, but they rarely, if ever, transform themselves, in my head, into stories. To me, they're mostly just static.

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Okay, I might as well start with a basic question: do you consider yourself a curious or nosy person? If not, that's the problem right there (IMO).

Anything can spark a story idea as long as you let your imagination ask the questions of "How, Why and What If".

For example:

I'm sitting here at my dining room table with the double doors to the deck open. The sun is shining and it's a beautiful day. There's a rumbling vehicle sound somewhere nearby. It started out of nowhere. Is it my neighbor? Is it someone who visited my neighbor and perhaps killed her and is now stripping the gears trying to get away before her husband comes home for lunch? Why did they choose her? Was she living a double life: on the one hand a typical housewife with a garden and yappy dog; on the other, a former drug mule now living in the witness protection program and her cover's been blown? Speaking of the yappy dog, why isn't Patches barking? He barks at EVERYONE and EVERYTHING. These intruders must be known to him. Even if they 'silenced' him, he'd have made noise before they could do it. Or is Patches a HellHound who ripped the throats out of the intruders before they could make a sound? Is my neighbor a Demoness and Patches her Familiar?

I could go on and on and on, but, hopefully, you get the idea ...

Jodi lives in a scary neighborhood.

I get the spark of an idea and before I know it there's a disjointed story trying to get out. Often I write a few lines so as not to forget the idea because I working on something else. But the thing I usually find is the story is there in my head, all the key points, all I have to do is weave the tale in words. Then go over it to flesh out some parts. As I write though there are times when the tale I'm putting to paper changes slightly to create a subplot. I have yet to find that my tales don't end as I see them at first but there is usually a lot more to them than I first envisioned.

In journalism, we ask: who, what, where, when, why and how. Okay...and, GO!