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Fictional Story Ideas – Are They Everywhere? – Part 1
By Deb Gallardo
Has your story idea well run dry? Worried that inspiration has gone for good? Your fears are unfounded. Fictional story ideas really are everywhere, BUT, the trick is learning to recognize them. Chances are they are hiding in plain sight all around you.
This article is the first in a series that focuses on finding story ideas for fiction by looking at your environment and seeing the fiction potential there.
Never underestimate the inspiration you might get from local news headlines for a short story or novel. For example, I live in a fairly quiet, rural part of Ohio where in some small towns people still don’t lock their doors or their cars.
Recently in a neighboring town (one of a size that urban dwellers might call “a spot in the road,” a woman was murdered and since then a rash of burglaries has plagued the community. Law enforcement can’t comment publicly since they are conducting an ongoing investigation, but at last week’s open forum, people were up in arms. They’re frightened for their safety, frustrated by the seeming lack of progress in solving the crimes and bothered by the prospect of nothing ever being quite the same again in their hometown.
This scenario, even though it has stepped off the pages of my local newspaper, has all the emotional drama of a movie or something on episodic TV. So what do you do with this information?
- Think of some characters to plop into the scenario, like a mayor, the people who were robbed – from a cross-section of economic backgrounds and/or ethnic groups, law enforcement people (and please don’t automatically make them the “bad guys.” That’s become quite cliché).
- Give each person his/her own unique motivations and agendas, despite having a common concern for a long-standing way of life.
- Tweak the storyline to fit your people and give it your own twist. Maybe someone is “only” brutalized but not murdered. Perhaps there has been a series of arson incidents instead of burglaries.
- Round out your characters as 3-dimensional, living, breathing people. Take your aunt Gertrude’s crabbiness and give it to a male character who’s 10 years older or younger. The point is not to use actual people who will recognize themselves. Trust me, they’ll look to find themselves. Make certain you disappointment them.
- Choose emotional story points where it seems all is lost, temporarily solve them, then put your main characters in even deeper trouble. Do this 3 times (3 acts in a story: beginning, middle, end) and then…
- Create a satisfying conclusion.
So go grab a local newspaper or find an online newspaper /magazine and read the headlines until you find a story of interest. Then make it your own.
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