How to Get a Story Idea and Expand it into a Book

Do you want to write a story but you don’t have any ideas?

Or do you have an idea but you don’t think it’s enough to fill a book?

Let’s go over some steps you can take to both come up with an awesome idea, and flesh it out into a whole novel!

During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we go over how to get a story idea and expand it into a book.

Watch what we did here, or scroll down for highlights.

How to Come Up With a Story Idea and Flesh it Out

Sometimes you might want to write a story but you don’t have any ideas, or you might have an idea but you don’t think it’s enough to fill a book
That’s why today we’re going over some steps you can take to not only come up with an idea in the first place, but flesh it out into a whole novel!
(If you already have an idea you can of course skip ahead, and the steps can be done in pretty much any order)

Step 1: Coming Up With an Idea

Honestly, don’t worry too much about the idea: it’s the least important part of the story
What’s important is what you DO with the idea, and how you expand it later
But if you’re having trouble, here’s 3 easy ways to get an idea

(1) Ask a “what if?” question

11/22/63: What if you could go back in time to stop the JFK assassination?
One of Us is Lying: What if a student died in detention?
The Hike: What if someone went on a hike and entered another world?

(2) Think of a unique character

The Dresden Files: A wizard who solves magical crimes
The Fifth Season: A woman who can control earthquakes
Scythe: A man who is in charge of ending life when humans are immortal

(3) Draw on your own life experience

Fangirl: The author loved fanfiction and wrote a main character who loves it too
Misery: Based on Stephen King’s relationship with fans
Ready Player One: Based on the author’s love of the 80s

You might think your own life experiences are boring, but they’re not! All you have to do is twist them a bit: if you’re a plumber, write about a plumber on a space station. Or if you’re a teacher, write about teaching faeries.

EXAMPLE: What if a pillow could record your dreams?

Step 2: Creating Conflict

In order to fill a book, your story will need at least three layers of conflict
Each conflict should naturally flow from the previous one and grow in intensity
You can figure them out in any order, starting from the beginning, middle or end!

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Layer 1: Harry lives with the Dursleys and it sucks
Layer 2: Harry tries to find out what the Sorcerer’s Stone is
Layer 3: Harry has to stop an evil wizard from getting the Sorcerer’s Stone (< started here)

The Hunger Games

Layer 1: Katniss’s little sister is chosen for a deadly tournament
Layer 2: Katniss has to survive the tournament (< started here)
Layer 3: Katniss has to protect her friend Peeta from dying too

You don’t need to know how everything connects together at this point, that will come later. All you need to worry about is having three exciting conflicts.

EXAMPLE: What if a pillow could record your dreams?

Layer 1: One girl’s embarrassing dream is shared publicly (<started here)
Layer 2: She gets revenge by hacking nightmares into the bully’s dreams
Layer 3: She has to stay awake for a week in order to defeat the virus that she created

Step 3: Expand the World

Now that you have a taste of what your story is starting to look like, it’s time to juice it up
Think about the ripple effects of your conflicts, and come up with at least 3 ideas for how each of them plays into the larger story: bonus points if they’re connected together
Remember! Everything is malleable at this point, feel free to change things as necessary. Whenever you get a cool idea, be sure to add it in/cut old stuff

The Hunger Games

Layer 1: Katniss’s little sister is chosen for a deadly tournament

Takes place in the future where poor districts fight to entertain the wealthy one
Katniss hunts with her friend Gale to feed their families
Her sister had one name in the lottery but Katniss had many

Layer 2: Katniss has to survive the tournament herself

She has a chance to win because she has hunting experience (!)
She meets Rue who reminds her of her sister (!)
There are experienced fighters but Katniss/Rue use strategy

Layer 3: Katniss has to protect her friend Peeta from dying too

Usually there is 1 winner, but the rules are changed to allow 2
Peeta was the boy who saved Katniss’s life as a child (!)
Katniss has to pretend to love him to get sponsors (!)

EXAMPLE: What if a pillow could record your dreams?

Layer 1: One girl’s embarrassing dream is shared publicly

Takes place in the near future, main character is an awkward nerdy girl (!)
She has an embarrassing dream about her crush who does not reciprocate her feelings
Someone pretending to be her friend downloads the dream from her pillow at home

Layer 2: She gets revenge hacking nightmares into dreams

It works too well and the victims can’t ever sleep without having nightmares
Her crush confronts her because he knows she did it and demands she fix it (!)
The nightmare virus spreads to other pillows across the world

Layer 3: She has to stay awake for a week in order to defeat the virus that she created

She programmed in a failsafe for the virus to delete itself if it detected that someone who hadn’t slept in a week used it, seeing it as sufficient torture for her victims
Now she needs to do it herself, staying up for a week is tough
Other people find out she was behind it and come after her, making it even harder (!)

Feel free to add more than 3 for each, and don’t worry if some contradict each other. You can clean it up later once you’ve found the ones you like and your story starts to take shape.

Step 4: Choose Your Ending

Knowing the ending to your story is extremely powerful
Not only does it help you write more confidently, since you already know that your story will end in a satisfying way, but knowing the ending can help you figure out missing parts of your story’s middle
Ask yourself “what do I want to say with this story?” and chances are that will affect your ending, and fill in blanks in the middle too

The Hunger Games

Ending: Katniss and Peeta are the last two, they’re told that there can only be one winner after all, but rather than kill the other they both decide to kill themselves, and just before they do they are both declared the first ever double winners
What Are We Saying? There is hope even in the darkest places.

Dream Pillow Story

Ending: She manages to stay up for a week and the virus shuts down across the world, but the toll it takes on her is brutal. She says no to her crush when he asks her out, unable to remove the bad memories of the situation from him, and has recurring nightmares night after night after night that she hopes will go away someday.
What Are We Saying? Even if something can’t physically hurt you, it can still be dangerous.

Be sure to put in the ripple effects of your ending! For example, with the Hunger Games, you’d ask how they tried to kill themselves? With poison berries. How did they know the berries were poisonous? Another tribute died eating them. How are tributes supposed to know what’s okay to eat then? With training classes before the tournament. And so on.

Step 5: Write a Spicy Summary

Now that you have a decent idea of the entire story, it’s time to make it exciting!
Write a back-of-the-book summary for your story, something that will entice readers to pick it up
2-3 paragraphs is plenty, don’t give everything away, and feel free to add new stuff in if it sounds cool

The Hunger Games

In the Ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister’s place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before — and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

Panem, the districts, post-apocalyptic future, and more all came from this summary
We didn’t see those in any of the other sections, but here they help flesh out the world/story
And now we can take them back into the outline and expand it even further

Dream Pillow Story

In the not-so-distant future, dreams can be recorded on pillows. Sharing your awesome dream of flying is as easy as swiping right. You just have to be careful not to accidentally share your embarrassing dream about making out with your crush Trent Backdern.

That’s what happened to seventeen-year-old Nicole Jellis when someone stole her spicy dream and shared it for everyone at school to see. But rather than hide under a rock and die, Nicole decides to take action. To get revenge.

Together with her genius friend Wanda, Nicole and her create a virus to infect the bullies’ pillows, making them only ever have nightmares. At first victory tastes sweet, but it sours when the virus works too well, and it starts spreading to places never thought possible.

From writing this, we found out the main character’s name, age, and about her friends too
We also got a cool ending line with the idea that the virus spreads into people’s brains, altering their chemistry, which is something we could put into the story
Overall it sounds like a fun story to read and we have a nice, fleshed-out start to a book!

Be sure to show your summary to other people and get their feedback. If they’re not excited about it, revise until they are. Add cooler things and remove boring things. Only when someone demands to read your story after reading your summary is it ready. Then, you can keep fleshing out the outline or start writing the book. Just take it one word at a time!

After that, chat voted on an idea that we practiced expanding into a full story. We went through each step, one by one.

Here’s what we came up with:

Step 1: Coming Up With an Idea

What if daytime didn’t exist only night time? ALSO Depression is normal and those who aren’t depressed need to see therapists.

Step 2: Creating Conflict

Layer 1: Main character is not depressed (a manic), making life difficult with her family, but finally meets someone else like her (at a poetry reading).

Layer 2: The MC and friend buy an illegal sunlamp together (from the light market/web), but her family finds out and forces her to manic therapy.

Layer 3: The MC and friend team up to bring daytime back to the planet.

Step 3: Expand the World

Layer 1: Main character is not depressed (a manic), making life difficult with her family, but finally meets someone else like her (at a poetry reading).

Dentistry, artists, writers, and poets, are the most prestigious jobs (since they have high rates of depression)

At the poetry reading, others read their depressing poetry but she reads her happy ones, that’s where she meets her friend… but also gets glares from one suspicious classmate

“Dreamers” except said like a slur

Layer 2: The MC and friend buy an illegal sunlamp together (from the light market/web), but her family finds out and forces her to manic therapy.

The passion could be a lead, passion can be dangerous

The MC and friend have to live at the manic hospital, locked away and forced to be brainwashed by doctors

MC learns that depression is valued by society because passion leads to individuality, individuality is hard to regulate

Wanting light is seen as seeking the world of the past. people only think of the past as being terrible, because of the war (being stuck on negative events of the past, so much that you can’t remember the good things that happened)

What if there’s a witch doctor shunned by society. he practices a shady alternative medicine called “psychiatry”

Layer 3: The MC and friend team up to bring daytime back to the world.

MC starts to be convinced by the therapists, but then finds a journal of a previous patient at the hospital who says that manics are actually right, and discovers a hidden chamber that they dug and now live in

They meet up with the other patient and some others who have escaped

They find out that they actually are living underground and didn’t know it

“If ignorance is bliss, then knowledge is misery”

Minerals falling from the ceiling is “rain,” they sparkle in the “sky”

Digging back up to the surface could destroy their “depressed” civilization, so they have to decide if it’s worth the chance or not

Step 4: Choose Your Ending

Ending: Dig their way to the surface, and bring back evidence of it to show everyone that they live underground and tell them that they can leave, but most of them don’t, they’re too afraid, they dig even DEEPER away from the light. The manics have the option to just open up the ground to the sun anyway and force them to be in the light, but they don’t, since forcing them won’t accomplish anything. A few depressed people do follow them back to the surface.

What are we saying? Overcoming depression is scary: it requires taking a risk, and support from others/outside help. ALSO just because something is normal doesn’t mean it is good.

Step 5: Write a Spicy Summary

In a world of eternal darkness, where depression is the only rational state of mind, a student named Kala writes the wrong flavor of poetry — hopeful.

Suddenly on the watch list, Kala’s best protection comes in the form of her new friend Morgaine, who she discovers is a “manic” just like her.

While trying to avoid being condemned as insane, Kala and Morgaine meet even more “manics.” Together, they try to overcome the depressing truth that they discover, and aim to shed light on their people.

Be sure to check out the video for more details and info!

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 join us on Twitch.

And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.

Hope to see you next time, friend!

Featured image: Pakutaso