Young Writers Society

So. This is a question that's partially for me and partially to just hear what everyone else has to say about this topic. I have my own methods or ways for coming up with story ideas when I'm actually writing prose, but I want to know how other people do it. I want to hear how people get their inspiration since recently I've run a little bit dry and I want to figure out how people find solid plots or how everyone finds their inspiration.

Some insight from Resources members would definitely be helpful since I'm questioning what people believe makes for a solid idea, though it'd be lovely to hear anyone weigh in with their personal experience. From music? From prompts? From showering or sleeping? Is it more than one of these? How should I go about approaching these ideas?

I say or ask this because I'm currently holding onto an idea that involves a desert and a runaway prince, but I'm unsure if it's worth expanding on.

Thanks so much in advance!

I always come up with my stories as I'm sitting there at night trying to go to sleep. Sometimes I'll see or hear something - often a random word - and it'll spark an idea for a story or story development. Many scenes and such come to me through the music I listen to.

What makes a solid idea? For me, it's a plot or story/character arc of some sort. Often for me it starts with a single character and I go 'this is my character, and by the end he/she/they is no longer like they were, they've changed in these several ways' because I love character development. Once I have that, I start looking at what made them change and a story often comes from there.

I've come up with my two current novels in two very different ways.

The first one came about because I knew I wanted to write a middle grade fantasy, and I knew I wanted to do something a little different. I realized I really wanted to write it from a magical creature's POV, and it sort of turned into your standard middle grade fantasy, but from the side character's POV. So basically I started with a genre idea and worked from there.

This is actually the way I usually do it. I realize I've never tried writing x genre, and I want to have a go at it, so I start thinking about possible plots. Knowing the genre I'm aiming for helps me keep the focus of the plot where I want it and gives me a direction to go in, something really important for me when I'm writing - I always want to know where I'm planning on ending up.

With the novel I'm currently working on, it was kind of a stroke of inspiration out of nowhere. I was walking home one day and I saw a bus pulling up, but because of the angle I couldn't see anyone in it, which gave me the idea for a story about ghost bus, a bus that has no one in it and no one driving. Then my main character's voice sort of just popped into my head, and things have snowballed from there. It's interesting because this one's rough draft has been discovery-written a lot more than my first book's, and I think that's partially because I didn't start with a well-defined genre, but a random stroke of inspiration.

Sorry to both of you for taking awhile to respond--I totally forgot that I made this thread.

To @FalconryGirl9086: That's sometimes how I end up coming up with ideas. When I'm just laying in bed waiting to go asleep. It's a sort of passtime though I usually have an intent to actually go to bed, not generate ideas. I've also been inspired by the music I listen to, whether I'm conscious of it or not, and I always find that interesting. Thanks for commenting on characters and their arcs and developments because I don't always take that too deeply into account when coming up or expanding on ideas.

@Mea Thank you as well for your input! Random strokes of inspiration can often come out of nowhere though personally I'm going to have to go searching and pursuing for ideas since I haven't been hit with any. I find it interesting how you've came up with your own.

Thanks to both of you again!

No problem; if you ever want some more help, just PM me :)

I write contemporary love stories and the ideas have come from different places.

Captive came from a what if question. I was watching Locked Up Abroad (a TV show about people that get locked up in foreign countries, usually for drug trafficking but sometimes because of kidnapping) right before my first real international traveling experience. It was an episode about a couple that was kidnapped while on vacation by a terrorist organization in the Philippines. My mind spiraled into a what if that happened to me. My trip was fine and wonderful, but Molly and Noah were born.

Liz + Zac and the next novel I'm going to write both stem from things I think the genre is missing or things I want to see in the genre. For L+Z a lot of little fragmented ideas (a male survivor of sexual assault/abuse, a male figure skater, slut shaming, a female more sexually experience than a male, etc.) came together while I was on a volunteer trip helping homeless and food insecure people and I realized Liz and Zac were homeless teenagers with some not great experiences in their past. My next novel is going to be about marching band and catfishing (like Catfish the TV show where people pretend to be other people online and other people fall in love with them) because I love marching band so much and it's the #1 thing I miss about high school, and catfishing just fascinates me.

Since I write contemporary, my ideas usually come from living life and observing things in regular life - things that fascinate me, things that make me mad, things that intrigue me or scare me tend to be the things I write about. I always try to write a novel that I want to read first and foremost, and I think it's a solid idea if you alone think it's intriguing and interesting. If the idea doesn't intrigue or excite you, then you're not going to be able to write the novel, and it certainly won't intrigue or excite anyone else.

What makes a solid idea is going to vary from person to person, but if there are some interesting characters doing some interesting things in an interesting place and there's some conflict brewing and you're excited about writing it, then I'd say it's a solid idea. I've had lots of novel ideas pop into my head that I never ended up pursuing because the idea never turned into anything more than an idea. I didn't get caught up in the characters and who they are and what they want and what they're doing. I don't start writing a new novel unless I'm excited about the characters and the story and I simply have to write it.

Music sometimes helps, especially if I'm stuck on a scene I'll listen to music to put me in the right mood. And I have had an idea fragment come to me while listening to a song before. (not sure if I'll end up doing anything with it, but it's there :p) I don't go looking for ideas. I live my life and let ideas naturally pop into my head

@Carlito I loved hearing about how you came up with your different ideas. That definitely helped in giving me methods or ways to come up with them, so thanks on that. I appreciate the lengthy response and now I'm probably going to try and see if I can check out Liz and Zac once I have the time since I know that it's been gaining some acclaim and from how you talk about it, I'm interested in reading that idea now.

Very happy that you responded, like everyone else. I'm glad that there's been more than one perspective in this thread, because it definitely helps!

For me, I tend to get bits of information like little wrapped presents here and there. Most of the time this happens when I'm out and about, living life, and doing things that I normally wouldn't do. So perhaps if you're not getting that kind of inspiration, it might help to switch up your scene a bit! Go for a walk, try something knew like crocheting if you don't crochet, or something like Mea said; try writing in a totally different genre!

For instance, one of my stories (a Cinderella retelling sort of-ish) popped into my head when I saw a singular, lost shoe in town. I got to thinking how exactly one might lose something that's fastened onto ones foot!

Others have come from similar instances- things people say, mishearing things, listening to music, etc. The novel I'm working on right now came from a bit of flash fiction I wrote a few years ago and loved (yeah, I actually loved some of my own writing! WOO!). The bit of flash fiction I had there got me to thinking about what exactly brought those characters to that moment and made me wonder what would happen next. So I thought I better write it! This was also combined with one of those random inspirations though, because I had seen an old prison and got to thinking about abandoned prisons and who would occupy such a place- fortunately, I had just the character!

I'm actually somewhat of a fanfiction writer. It's great when someone else establishes the setting and rules for me- indeed, I'm at work on some Elder Scrolls fiction now, among other things.

"Fenton's Lady" comes from the story of Bathsheba and David. Except in this case, the child is female, her father survives the war, and she spends much of her life unaware of her heritage- until our story begins, naturally.

The Bible doesn't say whether Bathsheba went to David willingly or not, though she did marry him and become the mother of King Solomon.

I am late to the party, but better late than never.

As far as stories are concerned, I'm firmly of the belief that there's no such thing as a bad idea. (The approach and execution, on the other hands...) Not all ideas are as interesting as others, though, and if I have too many ideas than I have time or willingness to write (which is pretty much all the time lol), I'll jot the ideas down on whatever I have on hand and move on.

Usually the whatever I have on hand is a random envelope, so what usually happens is I'll be shredding my mail and see the idea, be like, "oh yeah, that was a story idea I had..." and it will be given new life as an idea to seriously reconsider.

As for where I get my ideas, there are multiple sources. I tend to get a lot of ideas right before I go to bed, or when I'm in the middle of some intensive task, or basically whenever I'm supposed to be doing something else. It's really bad while driving, and I actually bought some dictation software for my phone to help with the notes-jotting thing so I don't forget the ideas by the end of my drive.

Otherwise, I come up with ideas as a result of seeing something missing or that hasn't been done yet that I think would be very interesting to tackle. One of my favorite projects started out this way, as an exploration into magical transformations as curses/blessings and how that might affect a person who was transformed before even being born.

Regardless, having a collection of ideas is a really good idea because if you run out of ideas, you have a whole repository of things that you can look through which can help jump-start your creativity.

I have extremely realistic and creative dreams, and thats where I get a lot of inspiration from. Not the dream itself, but sometimes small moments from dreams. Other than that, I usually get ideas from the people I see in life, and the stories they carry with them. I usually just use this idea of them as characters, and try to develop stories for them. And that usually happens at night, too.

I've been thinking about an idea for a while. I can't remember where the idea of "soul cables" came from, but essentially it's a network of wires connecting people together - quite literally.

There's a hotel in this "afterlife" that is infinite. This is taken from the idea of infinity, that even if an infinite hotel is full, if all the people moved one room down, the first room would be free for a new customer, and there would still be enough rooms for everyone in the hotel. A hotel for the dead would need to be incredibly large - infinite, even.

With the idea of an afterlife, and these cables that hold an individual's identity, comes great philosophical thinking. That's my next step - I have a setting, and I have character silhouettes forming, so what do I want to accomplish with this story? I'll let that thought simmer a while. I find that pressuring myself into thinking up something new never works, and I need to have a question in the back of my mind.

My ideas usually come from my desire to see a certain type of literature. I'm usually immersed in another person's story - whether it's by watching something on television or reading something - when I see a plot play out that I really like. I hope that it goes in the direction I would make it go in, and anxiously await that ending.

But, more often than not, it doesn't.

So, instead, I decide to change things up and make things turn out the way that I want them to in my own writing. My short story The Cursed Maiden takes the fairy tale of how women desire feminine beauty and flips it on its head. My Schadel's Necromancy Agency series is the result of me wishing to see more female detectives, more imperfect detectives, and more ones that feel horrible about the victims of the crimes they investigate. The Giving Curse started off as a retelling of Beauty of the Beast, but with dragons instead because I've always loved those.

Writing for me is an opportunity to make changes, so my ideas are usually a result of that desire.