Find Your Next Plot Idea: 12 Tricks to Try
Waiting for inspiration to strike can take too long. It's also not the best way to improve your writing, since you may not write very often in-between ideas.
I've been there before. When you're getting impatient, find your next idea for a short story or potential novel by trying these simple tricks.
Generators will throw ideas at you that you might not think about otherwise. They don't always make sense, but it's fun sifting through their options!
Check out more than one to find a site you like. You could try:
Big Huge Thesaurus' Story Generator
Cool Generator's Random Plot Points
ServiceScape's Plot Generator
There are other sites that pull up random facts that could inspire a creative streak. They may also help you with singular plot points your story might be missing or more details while fleshing out characters.
Mental Floss' Fact Generator
Fact Republic's Generator
This Random Fact Generator
This Other Random Fact Generator
This Other Fact Generator
3. Check the Current News Headlines
Look up the current news in another city, state, or country. Without reading the stories, see if you can imagine a plot for each headline. It can be a fun creative exercise if you stay away from heavy topics.
You could find the latest news at places like:
NPR (I like their Strange News section too!)
4. Think About Your Recent Dreams
Dreams don't always make sense, but they can make you think outside of the box. Maybe you recently dreamed about escaping a haunted house or running into your old crush while on a vacation across the world. It could inspire your next story or even just a small part of one.
Your writing may have come to a halt because you get too caught up in the process. Free writing is an excellent exercise to break out of routines and old habits.
It first started in 1973 and hasn't changed much since. All you need to do is set a timer and open a new Google doc or grab a piece of paper. When the timer begins, start writing your stream of consciousness down and don't stop writing until the timer ends.
Whatever comes to mind should end up on your paper. Don't worry about sentence structure, grammar, or spelling. The exercise will loosen your creative flow and help you think through the writer's block keeping you from your next story.
6. Do Some Digital Eavesdropping
You can always sit yourself down in a public area (like a coffee shop) and eavesdrop on other people's conversations to hear about experiences you've never thought about before. But something about that always creeped me out, so sometimes I go digital.
Scroll through social media sites like Instagram or Twitter. Look for posts with pictures or a quick caption that doesn't explain the full picture. See what's trending, what the latest celebrity gossip is. Make up stories behind it, like with the newspaper headline trick. You'll get much different ideas than you'd find on news sites without carving time into your schedule for stopping by a place in town.
If you've never tried mind mapping, it could be a great place to start your next brainstorming session. All you need is a central idea or theme.
Imagine picking a theme like self-love. You'd traditionally write it in the middle of a piece of paper and draw a circle or box around it. Arrows then branch off of that theme to whatever idea pops into your head when you think about it.
There's no order to the branching thought bubbles and you can branch off of those as long as you want. Eventually your words could add up into a story idea, scene, or character.
The University of Adelaide has a great example diagram if you're having a hard time picturing your mind map.
There are re-tellings of classic stories all the time. Think of Hamlet turning into The Lion King. Or the folklore that morphed into Disney princesses, who morphed into the gripping series The Lunar Chronicles.
When re-tellings are done well, they give a new perspective on a well-known theme, legend, superstition, or moral.
Many writers feel like they have to avoid re-tellings in their short stories or as future novels, but they can be powerful ways to convey meaningful storylines and themes if done well. They're also a great way to jumpstart your writing after a dry period.
Trying to write something in a quiet room might not help your creative flow. The silence can make your critical thoughts louder than anything else or make it more tempting to set your writing aside.
It's always a good idea to try listening to music while you write. Specifically, you should select a few songs or a playlist that makes you happy. Research shows that creativity greatly improves when people listen to music that generates happiness.
There's also evidence that it's easier to focus while listening to lyric-less music.
Not sure where to start? I've got some recommended background noise apps, websites, and free playlists over on my resource list. It's got everything from rain sounds to my favorite lyric-less low-fi YouTube playlist.
The blank page is even more intimidating when you're not very familiar with your characters or setting. Fan fiction can be a balm for that. Try writing a short story about people in your latest favorite TV show, movie, or book series. You're already very familiar with those worlds, so practicing your writing skills by freestyling new arcs or scenes can be a lot of fun.
11. Analyze a Book's Plot
We all have a favorite book. Think of the one that last dazzled you or made you fall in love with reading. How did it do that?
Sometimes it helps to study an existing book you've already read. You can map it out on paper by writing down character names, inciting events, the plot points that built to the story's finale, and everything in between. Note how each point made you feel and why it mattered. You can reflect those strategies in your own work, which may solve your writer's block.
There are some wild documentaries out there that will blow your mind. Pick one and enjoy it, then ask yourself what if things had gone differently? Tweaking part of an event could make it branch off into an entirely new story. It's basically writing fan fiction, but it may interest people who are more into instructional media.
When you find something that works, enjoy it! Then try something else the next time you want to create a plot. Writing is a craft that changes with time. It's better to have a well-tried bag of inspirational tricks than sit around and wait for a story to pop up in your mind.
snowghoul
vaporwave
discoholicmusic
gummygunk
prguitarman
izzy806
dededos
janainaart
