by Gordon Hamilton

Created on: February 16, 2009

The first stage of any story writing process is when the seed of an idea begins to germinate in a writer's mind. It may strike at any time and come from any one of a thousand sources. There are no rules and no guidelines as to where a writer gets his or her story ideas from but there are a few practises they can adopt to firstly encourage the possibility of story ideas forming and to secondly ensure said ideas develop and do not wither and die before they have flowered.

The writer is most likely to get story ideas from either knowledge which he has or experiences which pepper his life. Knowledge is a wonderful thing, especially for a writer. It is often said that the best writers write about what they know. This means that they have plenty of quality potential content to choose from when looking at precisely what to include in their story and it also lends a wonderful sense of authenticity to their stories that the reader will be certain to pick up on. The writer should therefore forever be looking to acquire more knowledge to assist them in their craft.

The best way, therefore, for the writer to acquire more knowledge and hopefully story ideas from same is to also be an avid reader. They should read books and stories from other authors who write in their genre but they should also be reading educational and factual works. They may choose to broaden their geographical knowledge by reading travel articles online or travel books from their local library. This can be a fantastic way of finding a location which appeals to the writer and generating an idea to write a story about something which happened there. They can also read books about subjects which interest them, say history for example, and may come up with a story idea for a historical novel or even come across an event or series of events which gives them an idea for a story in modern times adapted from said events.

Experience is even more likely to give a writer a good story idea but this is much more difficult to generate. We never truly know which each day is going to hold in store for us so there are two pieces of advice I would give regarding obtaining story ideas from experience. The first is for the writer always to be acutely aware of what is going on around them. Watch the scenery pass by on travel journeys and see what is happening out the window. Observe people around you at work and at social events. How do they react in given situations? What are they talking about or relating which could make a good story? This simple act of what is essentially observation can be a great way of generating story ideas as the people whom we meet in such situations will change every day.

Finally on experience, I would urge the writer to get in to the habit if they are not already of carrying a small notepad and pen or Dictaphone around with them. It is no use having a great idea for a story and then being unable to recall it later.

I hope that these tips on generating story ideas have been useful and that you find you are able to put them in to practise.

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