With the last stream we started a new series called Rubbish to Published. As requested by the chat, we’ll go along step by step with the process of coming up with a story idea, fleshing it out, and actually writing it to the point of being “publishable.”
And what better way to start than by discussing how to come up with a story idea?
Today we went over four ways to come up with a story idea: (1) a “what if…?” (2) an image, (3) a character, and (4) something/someone from your life.
After taking about each method in detail, we opened it up to the chat for suggestions in each category. Here’s the great stuff everyone came up with:
Click here to see the text writeup of the story ideas.
I was overwhelmed by all the awesome suggestions from chat. The only hard part was picking one! It took a lot of hard voting to narrow it down, but we finally picked one: A pair of adventurers have to protect a magical artifact in a snowstorm.
I’m excited to take that story idea and bring it all the way to “publishable.” Tune in for the next stream to see what the next step to getting there is!
After that, we moved on to the prompt for the day. Instead of the usual writing prompt from Reddit, I enlisted chat’s help to write a pitch for the #TwitchWriters Short Story Anthology. I just found out about it yesterday, and the deadline was today, so we had to be quick!
The theme of the anthology is “identity crisis,” so we used the four ways of coming up with a story that we learned earlier, and came up with a bunch of awesome story ideas on the theme. Again, the only hard part was narrowing it down, but I really love the pitch we came up with. Here it is:
Danny’s mother is Japanese, his father is American, and he goes to school in Japan where is he called a “half” by his classmates and teachers. That’s the actual term: “hafu” is used in Japanese news, books, and casual conversations to refer to anyone of mixed ancestry. Danny feels like he’s divided in “half,” and no matter how hard he struggles to embrace his Japanese side, he’s still rejected for not looking the part. If Japanese society won’t accept him, then should he accept it as his own? Danny only comes to terms with his identity after a helpful assistant English teacher comes up with a new word for him to define himself with.
If we do get selected, then we will definitely be enlisting more of chat’s help, and use more of what we’ve learned from Rubbish to Published. Fingers crossed!
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you. We stream on Twitch every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 7:30pm-9:30pm (U.S. Eastern Standard Time).
And you missed the stream, you can still watch it on YouTube or watch it here on rerun until Twitch deletes it.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso