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Get Started – IDEAS  

Finding & Evaluating Topics to Write About
     

 



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Prompt Lines for Stories  (top)
Intricate fronds curled at her feet hiding the horror that came with her next step. I've always wondered where I would be had I followed my dreams, what I would have, who would have been my husband. Jim walked across the street carrying a rifle, knowing that those people in the donut shop had no idea he was coming.
Sheila watched the child play in a puddle, watched its mother scolding, and vowed she'd never do that to him. Jamie and I were always friends, from first grade, which makes his betrayal so difficult to understand, never mind forgive. If I have $5.00 for every time I wanted a copy machine, I'd have enough money to buy one, but wishes are not dollars, are they?
What would you give for a trip around the world? Would you sell your soul? I did.
Generating Ideas (top)

More Ideas for Fiction

  • Experience: yours or that of someone else, small or grand, it may not take much to prompt a story!
  • Write about what you know, your work or your play.
  • Draw from your childhood, negative and positive memories.
  • Write from a glimpse through a window or a door.
  • Can’t get last night’s nonsensical dream out of your mind? Use it to write a story.
  • Write from a chunk of your life, a distinctive section.
  • Write about what you don’t know. Some say this sets your imagination free.
  • Focus on one conflict from your life or someone else’s life. Think of the situation in terms of a metaphor. (Example, two neighborhood children fight over a found toy – becomes a metaphor for two nations both claiming they own a crash-landed military weapon, or a newly surfaced island... you get the idea.)
  • Check out the lives of your ancestors, or make up what you cannot know.
  • Take a twist on a plot line from the Bible or another book.
  • Use conversations overheard in a mall or on a subway.
  • Try oral tradition, stories that your grandfathers told you.
Evaluating Your Ideas (top)
  • As Holly Lisle writes in her article called “Ideas - A Hundred for a Dollar” no matter what ideas come to mind, someone has already had the same idea and no doubt written about it. It is not the idea that counts, but the slant or spin you put on it.
  • Good ideas are often used over and over, much like seasonal material. Check back issues. Find something you can write on that maybe has been done before, but not for a long time. Give it a fresh look and submit.
  • Broad topics are less interesting than a focused piece, but if it is very narrow (the variations in the ruby color of ruby-throated hummingbirds) then expect a smaller market and fewer readers.
  • Evaluating Ideas - an article for evaluating the writing of others, but could apply to your own!
  • For fun, try this Idea Evaluator
  • Ask a few friends: “Would you read a story about . . . ?”
  • Does the idea persist? Keep pestering you? Turn up in your dreams? Then write it!
Books about Ideas for Writing (top)
  • Heffron, Jack. The Writer's Idea Book: How to Develop Great Ideas for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry and Screenplays. Writer's Digest Books, 2000. ISBN 1-58297-179-X
  • Shoup, Barbara & Denman, Margaret Love. Novel Ideas: Contemporary Writers Share the Creative Process. Alpha Books
  • Warner, John. Fondling Your Muse. Writer's Digest Books.
  • Wood, Monica. The Pocket Muse: Ideas & Inspirations for Writing. Writers Digest Books ISBN: 1582973229.
  • Wyrick, Jean. Discovering Ideas: An Anthology for Writers.
Software to help with Ideas (top)
Links to Help You (top)

Please e-mail suggested links with “IDEAS” in the Subject line!
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