In Today’s Journal
* What Is a Story Idea?
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
What Is a Story Idea?
Note: This is a much deeper take on a topic I originally posted on March 6, 2020.
Some would-be writers believe story ideas are rare and wonderful things, that they arrive on the wings of a muse as the result of some kind of quasi-magical “inspiration” that only visits the gifted.
And even some who consider themselves gifted believe that so-called inspiration strikes rarely, with roughly the frequency of thunderstorm driven lightning bolts in the Sahara Desert in the midst of summer.
Yeah, that’s all PBS. And I’m not talking about the broadcast station. Hint: the P stands for Pure.
Back in early 2020, a commenter on one of my blog posts wrote “The only part of this that is essential is the story idea. I have to love it and I have to love the MC or I won’t want to write it.”
The commenter was confused about what a story idea is. And that’s fine. Many writers are. Many story ideas won’t even offer up the “MC” (POV character). No telling how many story ideas that writer let slip past because she had nothing to “love.” Sigh.
Many writers believe a story idea is born whole, with a beginning, middle, and end. They believe it’s a complete concept. It isn’t.
I suppose some folks can write that way. I can’t. If a story idea came to me whole it would be like somebody handing me a fully fleshed-out outline: I wouldn’t bother writing it.
If I knew the whole story in advance, I’d be bored the whole time. Writing would suddenly become “work.” I would only be allowed to fill in the blanks. Why write a story when I already know the ending?
The commentor mentioned this exact thing: “I took off on another person’s prompt, added a personal experience, and hated it almost all the way, wanting to quit.”
I’m not surprised. As evidenced by the fact that she “added [conscious mind] a personal experience,” she was constructing the story with her conscious, critical mind.
So Of Course it was painful. Had she simply run with only the prompt and let the characters tell their own story, she would have been fine.
Likewise if a writer writes only from his or her own memories. If you want to do that, it’s fine, but that’s memoir, not fiction.
To write good fiction,
- you have to trust yourself and give yourself over to your characters and their story. Then,
- you only have to write whatever happens and how the characters react in their dialogue and actions as you race through the story with them, breathless and trying to keep up.
A story idea is only a catalyst. It’s only something that gets you to the keyboard to start writing. That’s it. Kind of simplifies things, doesn’t it?
That’s why I say so often, if you want to write a fiction but you don’t have a story idea, set your mind free:
- Come up with a character with a problem (doesn’t have to be “the” problem of the story),
- Drop the character into a setting, and
- Start writing.
That really is all it takes.
Of course, you can never “know” that until you try it. But if you do try it, my guess is you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
If you’d rather wait for a story idea to occur, all you really have to do is think like a writer. If you do that, you won’t have to wait very long.
Practice observing the world with your eyes, ears, nose, and mind wide open. Story ideas (or story starters) can occur at any time in any place.
A story idea might begin as only a direct or peripheral sight or a taste or a smell, any of which brings up a memory or makes you think of something in particular.
When you see something, what does it look like to your imagination? Run with it.
- One writer, upon seeing rolled bales of hay scattered across a field in West Texas, wondered aloud that they looked like tombstones.
- Another writer, viewing a broken-down old Victorian-style three-story house through a car window, wondered what was going on inside. A horror novel resulted.
- A peripheral glimpse of sunlight playing on wildflower petals in a wood resulted in a fantasy novel about fairies.
When you smell a particular scent on the air, what memory does it evoke? Run with it.
- One writer, upon smelling fresh-baked bread on a street in Roswell NM, was propelled back to a memory of his grandmother’s kitchen.
- The smell of old fast-food grease in an alley became a futuristic SF steam-punk novel.
Particular sounds, natural or man-made, can evoke memories or serve as a catalyst for the imagination too. Run with any idea that hits.
Dean Wesley Smith has written at least a few novels and dozens of short stories based on the premise that hearing a song from a jukebox transports the listener back to a memory (and time) evoked by the song.
A story idea might also be a snippet of dialogue you overhear or that pops into your head. A bit of dialogue will almost always enable you to “see” and “hear” a character, thereby giving you the tone and setting of the opening of the story.
Often, a line of dialogue or an errant thought will also include the actual POV character and even the initial problem of the opening. Or even the major problem of the story.
A story idea might begin as
- a deer grazing in an apple orchard, or
- three horses galloping with abandon across a pasture, or
- a Yellow Taxi that looks not quite right, or
- a line of similarly dressed businessmen or lawyers queuing up to enter a government building, or
- a city worker pulverizing a section of sidewalk with a jackhammer, or
- an unusual cloud formation, or, or, or….
If you aren’t used to story ideas coming at you from all directions at all hours of the day and night, as I wrote above, train yourself to think like a writer.
Then trust yourself and just write the story.
Of Interest
What’s Working for Indie Authors on BookBub
Kindlepreneur Author Tools Free-to-use marketing and publishing tools and sales calculators
Learn Publishing from the Master — Kevin J. Anderson (Video, not quite an hour)
The Numbers
The Journal………………….. 1070
Mentorship Words…………….. 0
Total Nonfiction…………………. 1070
Writing of
Day 1…… XXXX words. To date………… XXXXX
Fiction for February………………………. XXXX
Fiction for 2026…………………………… XXXX
Nonfiction for February.…………………. 17880
Nonfiction for 2026………………..……… 37470
2026 consumable words………………… 37470
2026 Novels to Date……………………… 0
2026 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2026 Short Stories to Date……………… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 123
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 310
Short story collections……………………. 29