Tips for Finding Story Ideas

Introduction:

Sitting down and writing a story can be difficult, but it isn't too hard to get ideas. A story can be formed from anything, even the most bizarre of stories and ideas. Every writer will be able to relate to not knowing what to put down on a page but they should never be short of ideas. It is what we are known for and our ability to take any news item or idea and turn it into a novel, novella or short story is our bread and butter to having a steady income. It is no good calling yourself a writer if you can't sit down and procure some inkling of what you want to write, as you will be earning nothing and you won't be writing either.

So, how can you get ideas?

It's simple. Read on.

Read a story and make it your own:

This doesn't mean plagiarise. It means take the basics of a story you've read, the bare bones, and make it your own by putting your own unique spin on the tale and attempting to make it original. You can also read a story and attempt to do better while keeping to the principle I mentioned above.

An example would be that you read a crime novel, dealing with some ritualistic killer who attempts to invoke the supernatural by offering his victims as sacrifices. Now you wouldn't copy the story but you could definitely take the basis of a plot and make deviations from the story you read to make it your own. The whole basis behind this is that there's very rarely any original stories left to write. In some form or another, every story has been written. In summary, it's not the plot of a story or the idea that makes a book (though sometimes it is), but rather, it's how you tell the story: the characters that inhabit your story and how you represent them, how you present a tale, and how you bring the story to a close.

In and of itself, each writer will tell a story differently through what I described above. It is afterall what makes each writer unique, how they tell stories and the styles in which they do so.

Getting ideas from a news stories:

The newspaper is a great place for helping writers gather ideas. Ever read a newspaper and came across a bizarre article? Use it as the basic idea behind a story.