Where do you all find inspiration for your books or stories? I’ve been wanting to write some short stories lately, but I’ve been having a hard time coming up with new ideas so I’d enjoy learning about how you think of ideas for new stories 🙂
I find that my strongest inspiration tends to come from the smallest places. My last three novel ideas have all started from a single, strong image with a feeling attached. Where these strong images come from has varied. One came from reading two very different books back to back and having them clash in my mind. Another came from a physical place I was in, imagining it 100 years in the future. The last one, I don’t even know where the image came from, it just kind of appeared.
I find that as long as there’s a strong emotion attached, that’s fuel that I can usually spin out into plot and character details.
Side note – for short stories, I have this same problem. It seems like everything I come up with wants to be a novel – which is such a shame because I really want to write short stories too!
I agree with Brad. Prompts are also helpful! And writing sprints. Sometimes, I’ll set a timer for 5-10 minutes and just type as much as I can (like a dialogue scene) even if I don’t know context yet or anything. Then I can glance back at what I wrote and flesh out an idea from there.
I’d love to hear from lots of people on this, but I find most of my inspiration from other things that I’m reading and listening to. Usually when I find myself without ideas, I’m not really consuming good stuff. I have to be filled to overflow!
For me, reading and listening are significantly more inspirational than watching. While I enjoy movies and TV, I find that they they don’t stimulate my mind in the same way.
I look to family relationships. My wife is studying to me a marriage and family therapist. She introduced me to family systems theory. If you don’t know what it is, then just watch a few youtube videos about. I think every author should be familiar with it. Once I realized the interconnectedness of people and their influence on how I behave, my eyes were really opened. I also concluded that if stories need plot, conflict, and characters, then everything I need for a story can be found by plucking at the threads of my family, whether that be my own or someone else’s.
Also, court cases can be great too. I’m a lawyer, so that comes easier to me than most, I would think. But it’s totally available to you too, and it may be easier in the sense that lay people can focus on the story, not the technicalities. Every person in a court case (e.g. trial) wants something. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be there. The protagonist/antagonist is super easy to understand, and the conflict is obvious, John Doe v. Jane Doe.