“Where do you get your ideas for stories?” or “Where did you get THAT idea for THAT story?”
Writers get asked this many times, over and over and over and…
My response is, “OMG, there’s a story idea in EVERYTHING. My problem is picking out the best ones, and then finding the time to write them.”
Stories need characters dealing with conflict. So here are a few that I’ve got in my “ideas” journal:
- A boss bullies his employees and blames it on his Tourette’s syndrome (look it up!), until he’s confronted by the lowly mail-room clerk
- Two friends who are afraid of snakes must remove a black snake from their henhouse
- A pair of college students take summer jobs at a seaside resort and become romantically involved; one loves the ocean, the other hates it
- A part-time rideshare driver overhears a customer planning what sounds like a crime, but might not be
See? You can go anywhere with these. I probably won’t have time to work them up into stories, so feel free to borrow them!
Sarah P Blanchard 