5 Ways To Generate Story Ideas

Suffering from Writer’s Block? I’ve got you covered.

Photo by Jan Kahánek on Unsplash

I took a class once that focused solely on fostering creativity. Every week we’d engage in a different exercise aimed at provoking story ideas. One of the things I noticed about that class- and indeed many books on the subject- is that one of the most tried and tested techniques for creating ideas out of nothing seemed to involve combining various unrelated jumping-off points. For instance, combining the setting of “Jamaica” with the theme of “Loss of Innocence”, or the historical backdrop of “a British 1970s government housing project” with the narrative of “estranged brothers making amends”, or a “Game of Thrones-style court intrigue” with an “alternate history steampunk Quebec”, et cetera. You get the idea. It’s best understood that you need prompts and parameters to get your creative juices flowing. Necessity is the mother of invention. So following on from the theme of creative mixtures, here are 5 ways to generate story ideas if you’re suffering from Writer’s Block.

1. Photographs and Paintings

Poppies — Claude Monet // Creative Commons