What’s the secret behind that flash of creativity, the moment when an idea suddenly takes hold in a writer’s mind? When I first started writing I didn’t think about where my ideas came from. I know that sounds weird, but I always just thought they kind of popped into my head. I’ve come to realize that sparks of creativity come from all kinds of places. Join me as I peel back the curtain to reveal the quirky, unexpected moments and rituals that fuel my writing process—and maybe spark your own creativity along the way.
Daydreaming
Some people do not like to acknowledge day dreaming because it is sometimes viewed as childish or being lost in your imagination. Sometimes that is true but daydreaming is healthy and can lead to some of your best creative thoughts. A lot of my ideas come from daydreaming, a character idea or plot will come into my head and I will start imagining the story in my head.
Usually this daydreaming comes from some idea of reality. Like magic in a real life situation.
I have noticed that my daydreaming does come less now that I am older but different stimuli in reality can help fuel it. Strong emotions or feelings can help. That being said, it is hard to have daydreams specifically when you want them, making it one of the harder story idea generations methods to force.
Dreams
Dreams can be a great idea for stories but I find that most of my dreams are not completely logical. I will have dreams that lack the storyline or have significant gaps in the story. That means that most dreams that I use for story ideas are not the dream itself but are rather based in the dreams that I have had.
Obviously, I don’t control my dreams, no one can. So that means that dreams are completely random ideas. Unlike some people, I have a terrible memory, especially when it comes to my dreams. If I want to create a story from a dream, I have to write it down as soon as I wake up. My dream will often disappear from my memory within an hour of waking up, if not sooner. To prevent this from happening when I want to turn a dream into a story, I will write it on a note on my phone first thing when I wake up.
Music and Movies
Music will often times play a big role in coming up with ideas for stories. Music inspires a lot of thoughts and emotions and that is why people have used it to be creative for years. I listen to a wide variety of music and have found inspiration in various genres. Often times this inspiration comes from the theme of the music but will sometimes come from a daydream that is sparked by the music.
One example of a song generating an idea is, Kip Moore’s “Somethin’ ’bout a Truck”. It was the inspiration for a short story I wrote about a soldier who meets a girl and their first date was sitting on a bed of a truck in a field. She waits for him in the same bed of the truck after a deployment.
Along the same line of thinking, sometimes movies will help give me ideas. I will see something happen in a movie and be like, I wonder what would happen if I took that idea and ran with it as a story instead of a very small part of a movie. Sometimes it is something even extremely minor in the movie.
Prompts
Writing prompts are probably one of the easiest ways to force the generation of story ideas. When I absolutely cannot find an idea for writing I have turned to prompts from a variety of sources to come up with ideas. The obvious of that being that prompts can give you a story in and of its own based on the prompt. There are two other ways that prompt writing helps me come up with ideas though.
The first alternative is that prompt writing simply gets me writing, which forces me to exercise my imagination skills. While those skills are working, my brain tends to want to keep thinking and generates other ideas. Sometimes to the point where I have to give up on writing the prompt because it has found an idea that it wants to focus on. I can’t tell you how many prompt-based stories I have given up on because I have gotten flashes of inspiration midway through.
The other way that prompts can be useful is if you have only the most basic of ideas for a story, you can use prompts to help refine that idea by using it to write about the story. A good example of this, is a story that I keep coming back to writing, Purple Fire, has had a number of short stories written for it that focus on the characters at different points of time, revolve around other characters but in the same world, or explore the different systems in the story such as the magic system.
Want an example of a prompt response that had no idea behind it until I read the prompt? Here is one I wrote Sunday.
Where to find prompts?
- Reedsy Weekly Writing Prompts
- Writer’s Digest Prompts
- Reddit has a number of places you can go to find prompts
- Prompt books can be bought from your local bookstore (or Amazon)
Writing allows us to bring entire worlds to life—ones that exist only in our imaginations. But while the act of creation is thrilling, generating ideas can be a challenge. These are just a few methods I use to spark my inspiration, but creativity works differently for everyone. Embrace your unique process, and you’ll discover ideas waiting to be explored.