How to Find Your Next Killer Story Idea

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Welcome to the Inside Creative Writing Podcast, the weekly discussion of craft and technique for writers of fiction and creative nonfiction. And now, here's your host, writer and educator, Brad Reed. Episode 19, it may be the most common question writers get. Where do you get your ideas from? Today, we answer that question and learn how to turn those rough ideas into effective stories. Welcome back to the podcast.

My name is Brad Reed, and I am so excited that you're here. Thank you so much for being a listener. And a very special thanks to the members of the Patreon team that keep us fired up and dedicated to producing great content for you guys every week.

So if you've been enjoying the show, it would really help us out if you'd leave us a review on iTunes and especially recommend this show to your writer friends, writers groups, anyone else that you think might enjoy it. That would mean so much to us here. Before we begin, somebody emailed me this week to ask a question. He asked, what makes this podcast different from all the other writing podcasts out there? And it gave me a chance to really think through the answer to that question, which I found really valuable, actually.

So now I'm a big fan of a lot of the writing podcasts that are out there. Writing Excuses, Script Notes are a couple of my favorites. You should check those out if you haven't.

So I'm definitely not doing what I do because I think there aren't already great resources out there, because there definitely are. But I think what makes us different here at Inside Creative Writing is probably my background as a teacher, both at the high school and the college level. And because of that, I feel like I approach these podcasts more like short little college or even master's level writing classes.

So in other words, we're not as concerned with things like getting published or building a writer's platform as some of the other shows are. We're more focused on making the words on the page as compelling and powerful as possible. So in other words, we're focused on helping you make your writing stand out from the crowd. And I feel like the marketing and publishing aspect of your writing is a result of that effort. Anything else seems kind of like getting the cart before the horse to me.

So I hope that answers your question. I love to field questions from listeners. So if you do have questions or comments, I hope you go to the website at bradreedwrites. com. Click on that Talk to Us link and you can get in touch with us there with your questions or suggestions.

Understanding Story Ideas

So let's go ahead and get into the show. Where do ideas come from for novels, screenplays, or short stories? And once we have those ideas, how can we turn them into effective plots? If you asked 10 different writers where their story ideas come from, I'm guessing that you would get 10 different answers. Some might say they're inspired by events from their own lives. Some might think of a great character based on a friend or a family member and then build a story around them.

Or some might pull story ideas from the news. That's always kind of fun. Others might even talk about a muse that visits them with story ideas while they're, I don't know, in the shower or driving to work. Still others, albeit a select few, might even claim their stories come from a divine source. They've given to them by God.

The Power of What-If Questions

But I like to simplify the answer to this question a bit. I think all stories, or at least all good stories, come from a simple what-if question. Now let's take a look at what I mean. We're going to reverse engineer this idea to begin with to see how great stories can be boiled down to simple what-if questions. And then we're going to turn things around and see if we can then create great story ideas from our own what-if questions.

So what I did is I looked up a list of the 100 best-selling books of all time. I figured that would be a good place to start when we're talking about great story ideas. Proven books that have sold hundreds of millions of copies in some cases. And I'll admit I was surprised by some of the books on the list, but keep in mind that the list I used are the best-selling of all time.

So it tended to favor some older books that have been on the list for a long time because they've just had more time to sell more copies. I've linked to this list on the show notes over at bradreedwrites. com if you want to check it out. There's the link there for you.

Now I was pleased to see that my favorite literary character was actually on top of the list and on top of the list by a long, long ways. A huge margin, something like 300 million copies. And my favorite literary character is Don Quixote.

Now it's actually not my favorite book, oddly enough. I'm not as crazy about the book as I am about this character that Miguel de Cervantes created. There is something about that character that resonates with me enough that I actually, this last year, got a great big tattoo of him on my forearm. I'll try to share that with the Patreon team one of these days in one of my behind-the-scenes reward videos. Maybe you can take a peek at my Don Quixote on my forearm.

Anyway, let's see if we can turn Don Quixote into a simple what-if question that might have compelled Miguel de Cervantes to write this story some, boy, 400 years ago. So here's the what-if question that is behind the story of Don Quixote. What if a senile old man believed he was a knight in a world where knights no longer existed?

Now, even if you've never read the book before or maybe seen the play, I want you to notice how a character begins to grow out of this what-if question. Even a story begins to shape itself around that what-if question. Story ideas begin to kind of leap from that what-if question. You can begin to imagine the tension and the conflict in the story. Would a guy like this cause violence, right? If he's senile, he's in a community without knights, but he believes he's a knight, is that going to result in violence?

Are there people around that are actively trying to stop him from behaving this way? And how would this affect the people who love him, right? Who care for him, who want the best for him? Does he end up getting himself killed, right? All of these questions that kind of naturally grow from that big what-if question serve as major plot points in the novel and in the play. And all of them were suggested there in that simple what-if question that lies at the base or at the heart of that book.

What if a senile old man believed he was a knight in a world where knights no longer existed? Now, that's just a handful of words that has given birth to a novel that is hundreds and hundreds of pages long and sold something like 500 million copies. So let's try another one. There is one name when you look at this list of our hundred best-selling books that stands out, not because it's at the very top, but because you see the name repeated so, so often on the list, and that is J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books.

Examples from Best-Selling Books

Now, the phenomenon of Harry Potter definitely serves as a window into how to write compelling stories. And again, I think the seed of their success was there in that initial what-if question. Now, that question would have gone something like this. What if a neglected orphan boy suddenly found out that he was, in fact, a famous wizard? Again, even with just that what-if question, a story begins to create itself in your mind. Even with just that simple question, the main plot points are already there waiting to be answered.

Questions like, what happened to his parents? Why is he a neglected orphan boy? Who helps him along this journey to become this famous wizard? How does he go from orphan boy to famous wizard, right? How does he learn these things? And who might be trying to stop him from achieving his purpose?

So the heart of Harry Potter, all seven books, is right there in that initial, powerful, compelling what-if question. So now that we're getting the idea, let's just do one more here, just so that we're sure we have this concept. J. R. R. Tolkien is another name that shows up multiple times on the bestsellers list.

So I think it's worth a quick exploration of the what-ifs driving his fiction. I want to work here with The Hobbit, since it's the one that I've read most recently. And here's the what-if question that might have driven Tolkien to pen this classic that has sold over 100 million copies since its publication in 1937. Here we go. What if an adventurous homebody suddenly finds himself pulled into a life and death journey?

Now notice that there's no mention of hobbits and orcs and magic rings and all of that in this what-if question. They're all talking about a type of character and a situation. What if an unadventurous homebody suddenly finds himself pulled into a life and death journey?

But all of the elements of The Hobbit and that world grow out of that question. What would an unadventurous homebody look like in a fantasy world? Well, it would look like a hobbit, right? For J. R. R.

Tolkien and for millions and millions of fans, of course, that's what an unadventurous homebody would look like. And that was how Tolkien answered the questions that come from this main what-if question. And then what might pull such a creature out of his comfortable home into a world of adventure and danger? Well, of course, it would be some kind of glorious important quest.

Brainstorming Techniques

So in other words, the story is not really even about a hobbit. Tolkien could have created any number of creatures that could have filled that main role of The Hobbit without essentially changing the You know, it's a funny thing about creativity. The more limits you put on yourself, somehow the more creative you actually become. This seems like the opposite would be true, right? If I sit down with my students and tell them just to write a story, then they stare back at me with these blank faces. They don't know where to start.

There's too many options to choose from. But if I were to tell them, now I want you to write a story about the day that the desk you're sitting in came to life, right? Suddenly, now maybe that would create a very weird story and isn't a great prompt, but suddenly they immediately can begin writing because they can imagine that. I put limits on the options and that creativity has come from that.

So I'm doing a similar thing here with my brainstorming process where I'm trying to find one aspect of a possible story idea to build my brainstorming around. So it helps me to brainstorm around maybe a certain type of world, a certain theme, a type of character, something like that. So I think for today's example, I'm going to choose the world of teaching since it's something I'm familiar with. It's actually on my mind. I just went to our graduation last night and had the opportunity to hand out diplomas to all of our graduating seniors, which was an awesome honor to be able to do that.

So teaching is on my mind. So I'm going to focus around the world of teaching for mine as an example. So here goes a brainstorm of what ifs about teaching.

OK, so what if a teacher got amnesia and couldn't remember anything about her subject, but she couldn't admit it to anyone for some reason? OK, there's idea one. What if your teacher was actually a mafia boss in the witness protection program? What if a teacher suddenly became blind? What if an art teacher suddenly became blind? What would that look like to teach art if you were blind?

What if a teacher won hundreds of millions of dollars in the lottery, but they didn't want to stop teaching? What would that look like for a teacher to have access to millions of dollars in their goal of teaching children? We'll do a few more here. Oh, what if a teacher in a small little conservative town came out as transgender? That might be an interesting story. Or how would a teacher's class change if she found out she only had a year left to live?

What would that look like? How would she teach differently? How would the experience be different? What if the president of the United States was required to teach one year of school before they took office?

Now, I don't know what that would look like. Again, this is brainstorming. What if computers legally replaced all teachers and other teachers had to start teaching underground? It had become illegal to teach, so they had to teach in these underground schools, kind of a post-apocalyptic kind of thing going on there, I think. Or what if a fascist government required the teaching of a kind of propagandist curriculum, but there was that one teacher, right? That one bold teacher that was bold enough to fight back.

So I'm going to go ahead and stop there. I think you get the idea. Now, like any great brainstorming session, the idea is to write down absolutely everything that comes to mind, even if you feel like it's terrible. Maybe even especially if you feel like it's terrible. Because nobody's going to see these, right? And those terrible ideas might be the stepping stones to lead you to that great idea.

Now, some of those ideas were terrible. The one about the president teaching high school, that seems ridiculous to me. But it actually kind of led me to think about how decisions made by a government or a president could directly affect teachers and possibly even turn them into criminals, right? There were a couple of ideas that came from that about teachers kind of bucking a fascist system and going out on their own in some kind of bold way, not teaching the approved curriculum. And then you can see how some of those ideas got a little bit interesting. Maybe not great still, but at least more interesting.

So when I'm actually brainstorming these what-if questions, I do it over and over again. Sometimes I'll do this for days and days, even weeks sometimes if I'm looking for that idea for the next novel-length story that I'm going to be dedicating possibly years to. This is a process that takes a while.

So I'll do that over and over again until I strike on that what-if question that is so powerful, so compelling that it becomes part of me. I just know that I have to write this story. So, but for time's sake, we're not going to do this over and over again. We're going to leave our brainstorming there. And then I want to explore how one of these what-if ideas could actually translate into a full-blown story idea.

So as I look back over my list that I jotted down kind of shorthand notes to as I was coming up with them, the one that seems to shimmer the most for me was the one about the mafia boss who has to kind of hide out as a school teacher, probably as part of a witness protection program. Now, part of why I like this story idea, part of what makes it shimmer for me is that characters and plot points are already starting to naturally kind of grow from this, right? In my mind, I can imagine a main character, almost like a Joe Pesci sort of tough guy character as the protagonist. I can picture him being in this high school, right? He's mad as hell to have been drawn out of this life that he's known, this life of crime and mayhem. And now he's stuck in a school.

He'd probably be teaching something like an art class or something, right? Something that he could kind of fake his way through would be harder to fake your way as maybe a history and English teacher. But I could see maybe somebody being placed into an art class. And in fact, I can already feel some great comedic scenes kind of popping into my head. I can picture him sitting down with this young student who's trying to draw pictures of flowers and or still life drawings of utensils and the things that we had to do in art class. And I can see him kind of helping her or encouraging her to turn these into crime scene photos, right?

And stuff that he's familiar with. I think there's some real comedy potential in there. And I can see him connecting with like that one special student, right? That one student who's the complete opposite of him, somebody who's good and hopeful and pure, who was kind of that student that our protagonist could have been if his life had been ordered very differently. And I can see that being the catalyst for the change in this character, right? The character change is already kind of baked into that what if question.

It's the story of transformation, right? This violent mob boss who learns through working with these kids a new way of being in the world that he's never had access to before. And there's tension in that idea too already. Is the violence of his life going to come into the school, right? Maybe we have some hinting of that, that his cover is about to be blown. And does that bring a lack of safety to the school?

Is he going to have the great transformation in time just for his enemies to catch up with him? And maybe that's the big risk, right? Does all of this transformation that he's gone through, is that all jeopardized by his cover being blown?

Now, in all honesty, this is a story I'd almost never write for me because it's really not in the genre that I love to tell stories in, you know, but I could picture this as kind of a potential screenplay idea. Now, I don't know if this is a great idea or not, but hopefully it helps you see this process of brainstorming what if questions and how when they're good, when they shimmer, that they begin to, I hate to say write themselves, but there is that feeling that characters begin to come forward. Plot points begin to come forward out of these ideas.

So after all, the goal here is not for me to actually find the next story I'm going to write because I'm well into the one I'm currently on. The goal is really just to show you that process of creating compelling story ideas out of what seems like thin air. So I hope you'll take some time to play around with this idea and see where it leads you in your writing. I know a lot of writers find this a really, really effective way to generate story ideas.

Developing a Compelling Story Idea

Now I want to share with you a little bit about my current work in progress and how a what if question helped me form it into a full fledged story idea. So I live on the Oregon coast where we are expecting a long overdue massive earthquake that they think will just absolutely decimate the infrastructure of the Pacific Northwest. They're saying we may not have power or access to running water for months or maybe even years after the big one hits over here. Bridges are going to be down. They figure landslides will send homes tumbling down hillsides. They predict a tsunami of up to a hundred feet could come crashing into low lying communities and business centers.

Honestly, the idea scares me to death. It's not enough to keep me from living here on this beautiful Oregon coast, but it's something that's always in the back of our minds. We hear a lot about preparation for this big event. Things like have a go bag ready at a moment's notice, both by your front door and in your vehicles. Always be aware of where you are and how to get to higher ground within 10 or 15 minutes, which is about how long they assume it would take for the tsunami to arrive. Have a plan in place to meet up with your family since cell phone towers will be down probably for months, so you need to have a place that you can meet up.

Now all of that stuff may seem like the stuff of a story, right? That's compelling. It's full of likely to happen in the middle of the night, just as likely to happen during a massive wind and rain storm in the middle of winter, or when we weren't anywhere close to home, where we were all split up in far-flung locations. And it was that realization where the what if of my story was truly born. And here that what if story or question is, as I have it right now, what if a stay-at-home mom with no outdoor skills suddenly found herself separated from her family by hundreds of miles after a massive earthquake destroyed the infrastructure of the Pacific Northwest?

Now, as soon as I had that question, the story began to shimmer for me. Characters began to come to life and kind of pop out of that idea. I could picture the people that she might meet along her journey. I could picture those people that might either help her or even maybe threaten her safety along the journey. The challenges that she would face appeared to me in the form of all the Oregon wilderness that she'd have to traverse with no skills or no background to do so. And even the main goal, the driving through line of the story was there.

Did her family survive the quake? Would she ever find them? So how was she going to get home to her family?

So this is how stories are born. Now, I'm not suggesting here that every great story started with a writer brainstorming a bunch of what if questions, but I am saying that every story has at its heart a compelling what if question that was driving the writer, even if that writer wasn't entirely aware of it as such. So before we leave today's topic, I want to talk about one more use of the what if question.

Maintaining Story Coherence

Now, not only can it be used as a way to inspire great story ideas, but it can also be used to check the coherence of a story that maybe you've already drafted or planned. Now, especially for you pantsers out there, it can be really easy to get off track with your story and have it kind of start wandering away from you. Ideas for new characters and new plot points pop into your mind and they just kind of find their way into your story as you're writing it almost unintentionally.

Now, in a previous podcast, we talked about this as the story writing you rather than you writing the story. It's when fun or interesting ideas just kind of show up and derail your story, even if they feel right and true and good in the moment. So having a clear what if question that you're exploring can help to keep your story on track and give you something to compare your new plot ideas and characters against before they end up in your story, before they end up taking a lot of your time.

Now, that's not to say that these new ideas necessarily have to go, that you can't use them. But I would suggest that if they end up changing the direction of your story in a profound way enough that your what if question would change, that you stop and rewrite your what if question to reflect that change. It serves as kind of a guidepost or a goalpost maybe is a better metaphor for it, for the story that you're trying to tell. In fact, I keep my what if question written on a sticky note right on my computer monitor.

So that what if question is always in my mind. And more than a few times, I've stopped myself in the middle of a scene or developing a new character once I realized that it's really just kind of muddying up that main what if exploration that my story is about. And my stories have always ended up better for having that focus in front of me.

So in a future episode, we're going to be exploring something called log lines. Now, that's a screenwriting term that I think is profoundly relevant in any form of writing. And it's going to build off of this conversation today that we had on what if questions.

Now, these two concepts really probably belong together in a single podcast. But for time's sake, that's just not going to happen today. We'd run very long.

But I hope you'll think of that episode and of this episode and the upcoming one about log lines as kind of a two-part episode about story idea creation. We'll have that episode coming up in the next few weeks. But I'm excited to announce that if all goes as planned, we'll have our first author interview since the relaunch of the podcast next week.

So it's an author I think you'll love hearing from. He's got a lot to offer when it comes to the craft and techniques of great creative writing. A little too soon to announce that because we're still in the planning stages.

But I think that's going to come together. Our wise word comes to us today from author Richard Rhodes. He says, if you want to write, you can. Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent. Who am I? What right have I to speak?

Who will listen to me? You are a human being with a unique story to tell. You have every right. Again, that was Richard Rhodes. I talked to my students a lot about the voices in their head that tell them terrible things about themselves. Things like, you aren't smart enough, or you're going to fail, or you're not as good or pretty or talented or worthy as other people.

And I tell them that we all have these liars in our heads feeding us these terrible little lies about who we are. And unless we recognize that voice for what it is, we tend to believe those lies. The greatest writers in the world, the people you idolize and who inspire you, they had them too. It's just part of the human condition. And I love this quote from Richard Rhodes because it reminds me how important it is to tell that voice to shut up and go away so that we can get to writing our unique stories.

Weekly Writing Challenge

So if you have a favorite quote about writing, I would love to share it with the show's listeners here on the podcast. Go to www. bradreadwrights. com and click on the Talk to Us link to find out how you can share that with us. You could even leave us a voice message and hear your voice on a future podcast. Our weekly challenge this week is to do a what if brainstorming session like we described in the podcast.

And I want you to really give it some time. The best ideas are almost never the ones that come spilling out onto the paper first. They only come after a run of usually terrible ideas that'll lead you somewhere new and exciting. One word of warning here, though. There is such a thing called the shiny object syndrome. I'm affected by this a lot.

This is when you come up with a new idea for a story that feels more exciting or somehow better than the story that you're currently working on. In other words, it's shinier, right? It's more exciting.

So you're tempted to abandon your current work in progress for it because you're convinced it's such a better idea. So that's the shiny object syndrome. So it's a subtle and pernicious form of procrastination and resistance.

So please don't use the what if brainstorm if you are actively working on another story because I don't want to be the cause of your shiny object syndrome. Instead, what I'd encourage you to do is write out a what if question for your current work in progress. And this will do a couple of things. First, it will confirm and solidify the core of your story and make it more apparent what you're trying to do with your story in a way that will help keep it focused and intentional. Secondly, and more painfully, you might discover that there's no there there in your story. It might be that moment where you stop and ask yourself, wait a minute, what is this story about?

Now, while that's a painful question that may result in a lot of rewriting, it's a vital realization to have before you put any more time into a story that might not be working as well as it should be. So that's going to do it for us this week. Like I mentioned earlier, I think we're going to have our first guest interview since the relaunch of the podcast next week. If you know of someone who would be great to hear from on the show, I hope you'll suggest them to us. You can go to the website at bradreedwrites. com and click on the suggest a guest link to let us know.

So until next time, I hope you'll share the show with your writer friends and consider joining the Patreon team that makes it possible. In this week's real time revision exclusive video for Patreon team members, I'm going to be revising a section of my current work in progress. It's a great way to see how I put the tools and techniques that we talk about every week on the show into use in my own writing. It's a great companion piece to the podcast. You can find out more about how to join that team and get access to those rewards at patreon. com slash Brad Reed writes.

Until then, remember the best way to improve your craft is by writing. That's what I'm off to go do. And I hope you're off to do the same.

Let's get some words on paper this week and we'll meet up again next week for another episode of the Inside Creative Writing Podcast. Thanks for listening to the Inside Creative Writing Podcast with your host, writer and educator Brad Reed. We'll be back next week.