How do you come up with ideas for stories?

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CrescentMoon
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Re: How do you come up with ideas for stories?

Post by CrescentMoon »

Sometimes I have these whole scenes or dialogue planned out in my head and I jot them down and try to find a story to fit it. Other times, if there's something that happened to me in real life, I write about it through characters and make certain characters say what I said or wished I said.
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Post by Maybeitsso »

Recently I've decided to allow things I liked through childhood to come into my story planning. So old tales would come to me and I'd find a way to transform them so that teens or adults would read them and enjoy them. Plot twists would be completely different, the characters would all be new, but the original legend would still be there in the very depths of the new story I wanted to create.

I've also decided to take some of the things I've lived through and write them into short experiences, placing them into a collection for others to read. Living through depression, anxiety, PTSD, abuse, etc. Using specific triggers I have and writing them all out with tooth and nail. For one: because it's like therapy for me. For two: what if it helps someone going through a similar time in their life? It could be an emotion I'm working through, a pin pointed vivid memory I no longer want in my head, or something I saw happening from a far that needs to be down on paper. Granted no names, places, or sensitive information would ever be written down. It's all about flowing through those things and "getting over" them.
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Post by moderntimes »

I get all sorts of ideas from current events, then I tweak them. Since I'm writing modern private eye novels, I see the epidemic of crack and heroin which is now increasing, and so I use some research about this to fuel my story lines.

There are things which I enjoy, and I put them into my novels as background themes. Since I'm an opera fan, I'll have my private eye and his detective pal double-dating to see Houston Grand Opera perform Mozart's Marriage of Figaro (I'll be going to the performance in January and as a singer, I've actually performed in the opera.)

Likewise, I'm an avid pool player and have won a good number of tourneys. My private eye is also a top pool player.

And so on. Of course, these are used as background material to make my character be more well rounded and realistic. For the primary story, I think up a central theme, then work that theme into the major plots.

For example, in my 2nd novel, Blood Storm, my central theme was "family values" -- dysfunctional families. So I used three totally different families in the story. I had one totally berserk serial killer and his brother. I had a crime lord who had once loved a woman and they had a lovely daughter together, who is now forlorn and troubled. And a wealthy finance investor whose wife, a younger "trophy wife" is fearful. So I intermixed these 3 "families" and the opening epigram of the book is "A little more than kin and less than kind." which I call "Hamlet's take on family values"

So I take threads of ideas and develop novel-length themes from them. My new novel in progress is based on "betrayal" and so we will have several acts of betrayal in the novel. Some of the betrayals will be criminal and drug-related. Some will be deeply personal. And therefore I have a driving and motive theme which engenders all the ideas which make up the whole novel.
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Post by sablefalls »

I listen to music and let my mind wander. Sometimes certain notes in a song will inspire me to create a scene and I write a story based around that. Other times I use the "what if" scenario in which I change up tried and true ideas. I often like to bring out the darker side of the hero and toy with the notion of making the good guy into the villain. Writing prompts are another good way to jostle creative energies loose. Many sites generate plots and ideas to help inspire you
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Post by Cee-Jay Aurinko »

@sablefalls

I can relate sable. One other thing I found that works is to write a single line of dialog. Anything really. And then I write another. And another. And if I have a whole page filled with nothing but dialog, chances are pretty good that I will see a story in there somewhere.
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Post by moderntimes »

Leon, much of my writing is similar. I however don't "think up" a story line -- that is already in my mind. But I do place my characters into a situation or locale and let them speak, and take dictation.

For me, the ideas for a story aren't hard to think of. I just turn my mind to any sort of criminal activity and there are plenty of things to write about -- theft, drugs, jealousy, rivalry, money grubbing, all the failings of humanity. In fact, I've got maybe a dozen or more ideas in my "future" file for the next private eye novel.

But my task isn't the original idea for a story. The hard work for me is developing the clues and plot tweaks which drive the story line. Also, the various characters and their human traits, behavior, and personalities. That's the tough job for me.
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Post by Emmanuel »

I believe generating ideas for stories is not a one thing
Some people get ideas from what is happening to them or people around them.
Some get the ideas from stories they have read or heard about.And many other ways.
For me, the first is the most applied.
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moderntimes
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Post by moderntimes »

Well, for me, rarely does a story or plot idea come from events around me. Of course I'm not writing "human interest" stories either, about Aunt Mary's coffee cake or whatever. My stories are about crime and mystery. So the vast majority of my story ideas, I just make up.

There are however a few incidents which I stretch into a story concept. A couple years back when I was in the hospital, this female physician, British, came to see me and she had this habit of twirling her stethoscope around her finger, back and forth. So I took this one little thing and the British doctor became a New Zealand trauma surgeon, and she's a central character in my 3rd novel
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Post by Loverockers »

Half of the story ideas come through the dreams I have at night, some from inspiration from real events, and others from prompts.
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Post by moderntimes »

I used one dream as the foundation for a horror story I wrote. The rest of my dreams are too mundane or too goofy to transmute into story ideas.

For one of my crime novels, I decided the central core theme would be "obsession" (the romantic kind). So I interwove two separate stories in which that sort of fixation can result in tragedy.
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Post by njzeba »

Coming up with a good story idea can generate from literally anywhere. Your daily life can play as inspiration. Your friends can be inspiration. Literally anything. It helps to focus on the details in your mundane daily life as well. I hope this makes sense. if you need any other help generating ideas, I gotchu. I can always help with inspiration.
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Post by willow23 »

i dont really have a trick to it i guess it may start from something that i have seen or read and then goes from there.
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Renee Bella
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Post by Renee Bella »

I don't have a particular way I come with ideas. I tend to take ideas from my life but I can take inspiration from almost anywhere: songs, photos, paintings, other stories...it really depends on what I'm trying to write to be honest.
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Post by cursillo86 »

I like to write novels and use them to work on the emotions of readers so that they might feel my message. I think of the theme more in terms of something important that I want to awaken the world to consider. I first dedicate myself to the message I will promote in the book.

Then I need characters who will promote the message, characters who will oppose them, and characters who will be transformed by the events that happen to them. For weeks as I think about the novel before I begin writing it, I let these characters live inside me. I listen to them. Yes, I hear voices. :)

Plotting is fun for me. I am older (67), and my life has been rich with experiences that have deepened the feelings of my heart. So I can draw on those experiences. But I update them in terms of current events and changes in technology. I research. Little by little, snippets of action and story begin to come to me. I wait until I have the main hook. After all these things, I am ready to write. All of this is a process that takes me usually a few months.

Once I begin to write, I dedicate at least three hours every day to it. I seldom write more than four or five hours. I need to live a life also. I start by writing down what I think the plot will be and who the characters will be. Then I write questions to myself about the plot and characters, and then I answer those questions. This doesn't take me long. It primes me to begin the first chapter. With each chapter, I usually write out some questions and answers before I begin. I write: This happens, but what if this happens instead?

Always I know what the ending will be. Then from the beginning, I like to put in a torturous path of twists and turns to arrive at the ending. This I do to keep the reader guessing and to make the reading fun. Often things happen that I never originally envisioned.

Story ideas come from true events of my life or from the headlines of stories in other countries. I visit most of the places I write about if I haven't been there. I am a fanatic that details be authentic. Once, I returned to the streets of a city where I had lived in Mexico in order to enact a kidnapping scene that had to take place within a few minutes. A principal character escaped from a police car and had to run from point A to B in the downtown section of this city to make it in time for a rendezvous with another character coming from a different location. I ran the mile and a half through the city streets and a park to see if it were feasible during a busy time of day! Once I had to research whether it would be dark at 7 pm in a place in northern Mexico during late October. It had to be dark. How long did twilight last?

So, as for story ideas, I guess I sum it up like this: I know what I want to say; I consider who I want to say it; then I figure out how to put those together in a plot derived from life experience or headlines. All my life I have been a story teller. I am not a literary writer in the sense that most people think of that. But if I can have fun and the readers also, and if the message goes out clearly, then I think I have had some great success!
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Post by KatherineEWall »

I have never had any problem coming up with ideas for stories. On the contrary, I often have too many and can't focus on the task at hand. Usually when this happens, I jot the new idea on a piece of paper (or now in a file on my computer) and bank it for when I need a new concept. Once you begin getting ideas, I think it is like priming a pump, the water comes gushing out once you have it prepared.
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