Finding an Idea
- Inspirations around you
- Daily routines, everyday situations
- Childhood or adult memories
- Books you have read, TV shows or movies you have seen
- News headlines or interesting articles
- Snippets of conversations you have overheard
- Watching people
- Song lyrics
- Looking at pictures or photos of people or places
- Dreams or your wildest fantasies
- Things you are knowledgeable about
- Work experiences
- Community experiences
- Topics you have researched
Building the Idea
- Decide on the topic to write about.
- Brainstorm the topic
- Think about everything that might be helpful to write about the topic.
- Ask yourself questions about the character(s) involved, the scene, the setting, and the premise.
- Talk with someone else about your ideas.
- Clustering strategy
- Make a visual map of ideas related to the chosen topic.
- Start with a word that is central to the story idea, put it in the middle of a piece of paper, circle it.
- Write words around it that occur to you as you think about the main word; circle them.
- Connect the circles with lines.
- Looping strategy
- Free write on one of the key words from clustering for 5-10 minutes.
- Read that piece for interesting ideas, phrases, or sentences; circle them.
- Free write on one of the circled words.
- This gives you more ideas for the project.
- Mapping
- Sketch the main settings: a town, a house, a room.
- Use enough details to make the place feel real to the reader.