Have you ever stopped writing a story because you just… didn’t care about it anymore?
Let’s go over four ways to come up with a story idea you’re passionate about, then practice together!
During the last stream, the subscribers voted that we go over how to come up with a story idea that you care about.
- Sometimes it can be hard to write a story if you’re not passionate about the idea in the first place
- Maybe you like the world, or characters, or plot twists/turns, but something about it still isn’t tugging your heartstrings
- So today let’s go over four ways to avoid that by making sure you write a story that you care about from the get go!
(Of course there are TONS of different ways to come up with ideas for stories, not just these, but these ones can help if you’re having trouble finishing stories that you start because you run out of passion.)
#1. Take something else you’re interested in and make that the seed of the story
- Examples: Tolkien loved languages, and Lord of the Rings was basically just an excuse to explore fantasy languages.
- Rainbow Rowell loves fanfiction, and Fangirl was basically just an excuse to explore a girl writing fanfiction in college
And you can do the same! Pick a thing you love to do in free time, that doesn’t feel like work at all, and write a story with it
Two things to keep in mind though:
- You cannot pick writing/reading. Please just don’t. Stories about people who love writing/reading are just painful
- Your story can’t just be about that thing, it can only be the seed of the story, you have to pull it like taffy and stretch it out
- For example, let’s say you love gardening
- Awesome! But the story shouldn’t just be about gardening
- Instead, your main character is a gardener who plants a weird seed she inherits from her father who passed away. She’s bitter because he was always busy with work, but the seed he left her grows into a plant that can talk! Nobody believes her, just like nobody believed her that her dad sucked, but maybe together with the plant she can overcome her sadness and move on.
- Something like that lets you have fun with gardening, but has a plot that’s engaging for people who aren’t garden-nerds too
#2. Take a change that you’re passionate about and make that into the seed of the story
- Examples: Margaret Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale based on political changes she saw happening in the 1980s
- Susan Collins wrote Hunger Games after seeing reality TV and actual war footage played on the same channel
And you can do the same! Pick a change, whether in society or in your personal life, and write a story with it
There are lots of different changes:
Social: a change people are fighting for now that you believe in, or a change that has happened that you disagree with
Friends/family: a change in a relationship that has had a great effect on you, whether a death, moving away, growing apart, etc.
- For example, let’s say you’re passionate about the growth and influence of social media
- Awesome! But the story shouldn’t just be about that, or else readers won’t care because it will feel too on the nose
- Instead, write a murder mystery about a hardboiled old detective who is called in to look into the case of a murdered teenage girl. He has to struggle through all the “newfangled technology,” and he uncovers scary things along the way.
- Something like this lets you explore the change that your passionate about, without whacking readers over the head
#3. Take a story you already like (or hate!) and twist it A TON
- Examples: One Piece by Eichiro Oda is heavily inspired by Dragon Ball, but with pirates instead of aliens
- Cinder by Marissa Meyer is Cinderella but with cyborgs
And you can do the same! Pick a story that you love, or hate and would like to be see done better, and twist it A TON
“Twist it” means change enough of the story (characters, setting, plot, etc.) so that your story becomes its own, original thing, rather than a copy of what’s inspiring it
- For example, let’s say you love Harry Potter and want to write a story about a magical school
- Awesome! But you’re going to have to twist your story A LOT
- The main character could be the school janitor, the guy who failed to defeat the evil wizard and whose fault it is that he took over. Maybe he finds a way to make up for his loss, but no one believes him, and he has to go to adult magic classes at night
- Or, for example, let’s say you read Ready Player One, hated it, and write to write your own version out of spite
- Spite is powerful! But you still have to twist the story A LOT
- Maybe in your version the main character is struggling to figure out which life of theirs is real: the VR one or waking one
- Something like these are fun while still doing their own thing
#4. Write the story you’ve always wanted to read but never have
- Examples: George RR Martin wrote Game of Thrones after a lifetime of fantasy tropes that he wanted to subvert
- Even Toby Fox made Undertale as a way to have an RPG story where the goal is to befriend monsters rather than kill them
A quote by Toni Morrison: “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
- For example, let’s say you’ve always wanted to read a story without any relationship drama, just a happy couple instead
- Awesome! Take that idea and stretch it out
- Maybe you could have the happy couple go see a movie together, and when they’re alone, the movie sucks them into the screen and they have to find a way out together.
- Or, for example, say you’ve always wanted to read a story where the bad guys win in the end
- Awesome! Take that idea and stretch it out
- In order for that ending to be satisfying, it needs to be built up toward, so perhaps you could write the story from the POV of both the protagonist and the antagonist. Maybe they both want the same thing (a magical sword?), and use different methods to get it, but in the end the evil one is victorious… and feels awful.
- Stories like these will fill you with joy/spite to finish them!
After that, together with chat we practice coming up with some ideas and stretching them out into possible stories.
We started off with #1: Taking something else you’re interested in and making that the seed of the story. Chat voted on astronomy/black holes as the thing we’re interested in.
Here’s some story ideas we came up with:
#1. Contemporary/realistic: A small black hole passes through our solar system and affects the gravity of the planets. Some planets switch orbits, and the moon leaves Earth. (Research repercussions of what would happen!)
Follow the story of a brother and sister whose parents get killed in the “gravity riots” as society breaks down.
#2. Superhero: A human who contains a black hole and can harness its power. They’re depressed and the black holes appear on their palms; no matter what they try to cover them with it gets sucked away.
When the person gets angry/sad, the black hole starts absorbing their heart and replacing it bit by bit, so they get stronger but lose emotion, turning into a vicious cycle despite their efforts to curb the progress. It ends up being a supervillain origin story, and in the end the black hole grows big enough to suck them into it and defeat them.
#3. Existential horror: A scientist is researching black holes, talk about how none of the theories work to explain exactly what they are, and they always found that unsatisfying. In their own research, they examine a black hole that is headed toward Earth, and they see something emerging from it: a black alien tongue. (Insert research here about how fast it’s moving/how much time they actually have before it arrives.)
They find out that black holes are mouths of extradimensional creatures, and once they consume enough matter, they will come into our universe. The scientist tries to find a way to access that other dimension… and don’t like what they find.
Next we did #2: Taking a change that you’re passionate about and making that into the seed of the story. Chat voted on government being influenced by religion.
Here’s what we came up with:
#1. Serious: A teenage girl who needs to get an abortion in a country where it’s been illegalized for religious reasons. Start right with her finding out she’s pregnant, dad tells her that her mother died giving birth to her due to some condition she had (he’d lied to her and said something else up to that point), and that she might have the same condition, so she needs to somehow get it aborted.
They find an underground place 800 miles away that will do it, and travel there, and she’s conflicted the entire time: at the end of the day, she was born because her mother didn’t make this decision. She even rebels against dad for making this decision for her, because to him she’s all he has left of mom.
At the end we don’t know if she gets the abortion or not, because it’s HER decision to make, one that she’s able to make it in the first place.
#2. Fantasy: Fantasy world where the government is LITERAL spirits and people know for sure that the religion is true, no faith necessary, and they’re all so nice anyway, why not have it this way?
Main character grows up in this world, thinking everything is great, everyone goes onto the afterlife when they’re dead, but then learns about the “tortured souls” that do not. Wonders why people wouldn’t believe… then starts learning about the spirits who run the government, how they don’t need to necessarily say the truth, starts questioning things.
Eventually finds out that’s how you go on to the good afterlife, by questioning, not blind devotion. The ones who never resist/question become the new spirits themselves.
#3. Comedy: A missionary has to convert 10 people per month so that he can get a nice tax break from the government, but everybody’s already been converted, so he/she teams up with a witch to convert people back so he/she can keep finding people to reconvert.
Finds out that other people have been doing the same thing for years, and he/she gets de-convereted too. So many government officials get de-converted that they forget which religion is the official one, so they decide on a new official religion, and the cycle begins anew.
And in the end who profits the most? The witches!
Any of these stretched-out ideas could make for good stories, ones that we would have plenty of fuel to write all the way until the end, because they were created by something we were passionate about to begin with.
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!
Top image: Pakutaso