5 Easy Ways to Get Story Ideas

If you're dealing with a bad bought of writer's block and can't seem to come up with a single idea, here are five simple ways to brainstorm story concepts and break out of your writer's block!

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Write about your strangest memories
1:09 - Interview your friends and family
1:41 - Combine your favorite tropes
2:29 - People watch
3:37 - Retell a story

FIND REEDSY HERE:

RESOURCES:

[PuffPets]

Yay. My topics list is packed with themes, but I'm always scrambling for specifics

[TransConservativewaifu]

im at a point where i get ideas of my own ideas.
i have so many of them so i get inspiration from my own and give the story a brand new spin.

[josephedmondson]

In regards to combining your favorite tropes; I'm working on a screenplay that is set in a fantasy world. The biggest thing I'm trying to do is to avoid the "hero's journey" trope. It's been done to death!

[adamjscholte]

I am lucky that being a person with a big imagination, stories come to me from random things and people in life.

[johnhaggerty]

Retelling a story is a beguiling thought - Ronald Frame did it in *Havisham* the backstory of Great Expectations.
*Longbourn* by Jo Baker is Pride and Prejudice reimagined from the point of view of the servants, mysterious in its own way.
*Charlotte* by Helen Moffat also derives from Pride and Prejudice, the story of Charlotte Lucas who marries for financial security.
You could look for characters in minor classics, change the names, setting and historic period, invent fresh conflicts.
And I think places, even places you have never visited, are a great story source. Visit any European town or city thanks to YouTube.

[ThatBoomerDude]

*RETELLING:* One of the top trending stories on Amazon right now in Paranormal Romance is literally the *Peter Pan* story ... except *dark & sensual.* The Faeries are sinister. And Captain Hook is *not* the villain.

[mashainmotion]

I'm always writing down notes in my phone when I'm working as a student at some job where costumers have different opinions and comments.. It would be so interesting if every vocation would have different people writing about working at this job (like what happened, how was working environment etc. ) but it sucks cause of course you don't want to expose some stuff that happened at your work place..😅

[mirzaejazmajeed]

I like your voice and style very beautiful

[shannonmariehauck]

I have TONS of story ideas. It’s drafting the stories that I struggle with. 🤦‍♀️

[u_t_d_s_h-_a]

Inspiration capable of enabling one forge outstanding literary work are abound in so many places ----they're too numerous to count. What usually matters in the end, ---is whether one found any sort of satisfaction creating fiction and what desirable prospects one attained from the effort; money, fame, celebrity, notoriety, maybe even disdain: indeed, ---some have written 'tell all books' ---i think it is called, ---that revealed embarrassing details about themselves that are deserving only of disrememberance, ---all for the sake of gathering non existent cash, only to earn themselves disrepute, a distancing of others from them, and, no money.

[johnhaggerty]

* I think all writers have to do reporting. It is not something that takes great technique.
*It takes a relentless willingness to act like a vagrant and (hang) out. And be there when things actually occur.
*You simply cannot imagine life the way it happens without getting out.*
Tom Wolfe quoted in The Writer 135 Anniversary Edition April 2022