As a writer, you will at some point be given an offer that goes something like this. "I have this great idea for a story and I'm willing to let you use it, all I want is half of the profit from the story you write." The oddest thing about this offer is that the person making it is typically serious. They truly believe that coming up with the idea for your story is equal in difficulty to writing the story. This is untrue, as anyone who has ever written a novel knows, but there is a grain of truth in it. If you don't teach yourself to see ideas in the world you're going to struggle to find them.

On the other hand, if you truly learn to see the ideas that are all around you then you will find that you have more ideas for stories than you know what to do with. You may not always know exactly where they come from, or if they are brilliant but you won't lack for ideas.

So how do you see the stories in the world? Where do you look? The answer to this can depend upon the type of writing that you do but, there are some general answers that can help you to begin to see the possibilities.

One of the easiest places to practice the skill of finding stories in everyday life is in the grocery store, or waiting in line at the DMV. Simply look at the people around you a bit more carefully than you usually do. That man in the suit that is buying fruit loops has a story, and though you may never know what it is you can certainly begin to create one in your mind. Then there is the woman at the DMV with the six kids buzzing around her. Rather than getting irritated begin to think about her life. Why does she have six kids, why can't she get a babysitter? Has she really given up or is this just a bad day? There are a dozen stories to be told here.

Once you have began to pay more attention to the ideas that circle you in your life it is time to immerse yourself in the genre you want to write. Good writing will not only spark new ideas but, eliminate the ones that have been done too much. Both of these are useful and you can only get them by reading.

Also worth reading though are newspapers and magazines. Consider more deeply the headlines than you typically do. Each of these is a story idea, the only question is if it interests you. Consider what happened to these people leading up to being in the paper, or what happened after the spotlight is gone.

The key to finding interesting seeds for stories is to look more carefully at the world around you and to learn to understand what excites you. There are ideas to write everywhere, the real question is what you want to write about so consider what excites you and write about it.

Learn more about this author, Elton Gahr.
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