The best way I know to generate story ideas is through writing and the best way to start writing is to begin doing some creative writing exercises.
Like all exercises, creative writing exercises are best done regularly.
Another great way to stimulate creativity is to focus on taking part in some creative writing activities.
By applying yourself to regular creative writing exercises and activities you will soon find it easy to generate story ideas.
The amount of ideas you can generate is limited only by your time.
Your own imagination is without limits!
USING CREATIVE WRITING EXERCISES TO GENERATE IDEAS
Watch how the simple process of answering your own questions in the following exercises allow fresh story ideas to spring naturally from your imagination.
Before you start I will take you through an example of what you can do. First, take the following sentence:
‘The woman driving the red car looked familiar. He realized where he had seen her before.’
The sentence provided a visual trigger.
In other words the description made you ‘see’ the woman in the red car.
Next, ask yourself these questions:
Who is the woman?
Who is watching?
Where does he remember her from?
Think of as many answers to these questions as you can. Write them down and choose one.
Repeat the process of asking questions.
Is the story about the past or present?
Is it about the woman in the car, or the man?
Keep asking more questions and see how this process builds idea upon idea.
TWISTING THE ORIGINAL IDEA
You might twist the original idea.
Maybe you will see a different car, even a police car.
Maybe it is a man driving.
Maybe it explodes!
Keep twisting the idea and remember that there are no correct answers in these exercises – just ideas.
Before you get going remember that the most successful approach is to keep your mind open and try each and every exercise – with no expectation of outcome.
It doesn’t matter if a particular exercise didn’t produce a story.
What matters is that you did some writing, gained some experience and explored some story ideas.
Now, go ahead and try out the exercises and let your imagination get to work.
Best of luck with all your ideas.
Grace
P.S. If you would like to try some creative writing exercises which will really shake your imagination and fire your creativity click here.
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