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"Where do you get your ideas" is the most common question asked of any published writer and one of the most difficult to answer. The most famous answer to this question was given by Harlan Ellison who said "Poughkeepsie". Sadly this answer lacks the concreteness that most people are looking for when asking this question. Other answers which have been given throughout history are "Muses", "the aether", and "parallel words," but all of these answers only really tell us is that most writers don't know exactly how ideas come into place.

This does not mean though that you cannot improve your ability to find ideas through work. "Chance favors the prepared mind," Is as true of finding story ideas as of any other endeavor that requires some element of random luck. And as you begin to focus your attention less on discovering ideas and more on preparing your mind to receive ideas you will find yourself inundated with possible ideas and begin to come to the second of the problems writers have. Too many ideas.

Preparing your mind is actually not all that hard. The first step is to immerse yourself in the type of thing you like to write. Writers should read a wide variety of things but you should be especially aware of your own genre. There is nothing wrong with reading a piece of work and seeing something in it that sparks an idea for you and it's quite often. Perhaps the writer used something in the background you think would make a good central idea, or perhaps a character trait would be interesting. There are a thousand ways to tell a story and so long as you use theirs as the beginning of an idea there is nothing wrong with it. This also has the added effect of helping you become aware of the cliches in your genre so you can avoid them or at least do something new.

Second you should use your past. Dredge up every horrible thing that has ever happened to you and use it as the basis for character. It doesn't have to be bad of course. A first love can be an interesting setting for a story, or a trip you made to Yellowstone park. Anything that was extremely memorable to you can be the basis of a story, it's just that pain is the easiest.

Unless you want to write memoirs though you'll probably need more than that. There are as many ways to find ideas as there are people but one I find useful is people watching. Going into a grocery store or the mall and simply judging people by their appearance. This sounds horrible but if you simply imagine stories for the people that you see in your everyday life you will find that there are hundreds. The checkout lady that always scowls at you could be a great character just come up with a reason. This can also help with things like dialog.

The final place that is useful is the news. Magazines and newspapers are full of ideas that seem important today but in a few days everyone will forget about except the people involved. These don't even always have to be the bad things. A medical discovery could spark an interesting idea, as could a fire, or a life saved.

There are an infinite amount of story ideas in the world. What is important is to find the ideas and themes that excite your imagination and move on from there.

Learn more about this author, Elton Gahr.
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