Just the sight of a nice thick black and white marble composition book gets my pulse racing. Back in my school days when no one questioned why you just had to have one I used such a book as an idea safe and I wrote so many terrific ideas for stories into it. Most of those stories never went anywhere, but they were my wealth and fall back for hard times.
It seems almost easy when you work by assignment and an editor tells you they need a story about such and such, but then there are the times when you need to come up with an idea on your own – Yikes! Obviously if you are responsible for a themed column or are looking to appeal to a specific demography, your scope of subject may be narrowed – you still might have to come up with that interesting idea all by yourself. In non-fiction work you never know when that article about a new advance in science is going to come in handy, or a news clipping may have background information that will go well in your finished product.
Fiction writers can use the same stash of ideas to come up with tantalizing stories and enough twists to keep a reader’s interest. I recently co-hosted a writing workshop where a gentleman bemoaned he wanted to write but didn’t have the time to do so now; he did plan to make it a priority once he retired in a few years. He was frustrated now, though, because he was always seeing great ideas. One of my co-hosts asked him quite simply if he was storing any of those ideas.
It can be a composition book where you scribble your ideas and paste news articles, a shoebox, a folder in a file cabinet – but start building your cache of free ideas now. Even if you are involved in a writing project now, you never know what ideas you might come across as you do research, store them away. One day when you experience one of those proverbial blanks, flipping through the pages of your composition book may motivate you with one or more ideas or suggestions. A newspaper article and an imaginative game of what-if can be the basis of a novel. Even an outdated scientific research study may suggest a follow up when you are looking to sell an article to a magazine editor. If you can’t use the story you find now, save it for a rainy day.
Other terrific story ideas can be found in random magazine or newspaper pictures – DON’T read the captions, just write a story about the picture. Listen to a song, really listen to the words, write what was going on in the songwriter’s life when he/she wrote those words (it doesn’t have to be factual), people-watch as you ride down a street (as the passenger please) and imagine the conversations that are going on, even popular fairy tales might be interesting stories if you set them in your neighborhood in the present day. Start carrying a pad of paper, index cards, or a small digital recorder and store those story ideas for the day you need one.
Writing exercise: Imagine that you could redo your entire day – what would you say or do differently? How would this change your mood, situation, or plans for tomorrow? Write a “diary entry” using this alternate day.
Writing prompt: What color clothing are you wearing at this moment? (If you are wearing more than one color, choose the one closest to your face.) Answer the following using only that color: (1) You are a superhero and your costume is made of this color – what is your superpower? (2) List 3-to-5 foods in this color. (3) What emotion does this color make you think of? (4) What animal do you associate with this color? (5) Create a character who is named “this color”.
