Thread: coming up with a story idea

I figured I'd get the ball rolling in this one, many times I found myself staring at a blank page wondering what I was going to write about so I thought I'd share one of the things I do to come up with a story. And maybe you all and tell what you do.

Some of the best stories come from the main character. To do that I write a dialog, that doesn't necessarily have to be part of the story, where the main character is being interviewed. Start out with the basic ones like your characters name, age, where he/she came from, and let it evolve from there.

I'd really like to hear other ideas.

I don't have a main character before I have a story. I don't know how you can do that.

I have lots of story ideas. They go in a folder with a file name that may or may not (but probably doesn't) jog my memory. When I am bored, I open up a file and write the story. When I get passionate, I write for days on end. Then I have to finish it. The beginning isn't a problem. Ideas aren't a problem. I've written 29 stories. Finishing them can sometimes be a problem.

"Staring at a blank page wondering what to write" is like staring at the ceiling, wondering if you're going to go to sleep or not. Sometimes the results are good, but usually they are not good.

My best ideas come to me just as I'm falling asleep. I can feel myself drifting off, and then once I've let out that sigh of relief, something pops into my head. I write it down in my little notebook in the worst handwriting ever and sleep. Sounds so over the top, I know, but I usually have a dream about it and start working on my new idea come breakfast.

That isn't a very reliable way of writing stories, but it starts most of mine off. Sometimes I look at some artwork I love and a story just leaps out at me. Some things are begging to be written about. Sometimes I sit there with a cup of tea and a piece of banana bread, listening to rachmaninov and staring at a blank wall.

Try as many different ways as you can think of, but ultimately I think everyone has their own methods, if you can call them methods. Writing is an art after all, not a science.

Why would you even be staring at the paper if you don't already have some ideas to put on it? Just come up with something, then don't stare, start.

Billy Joe and May Belle got married that Spring and moved into a new double-wide in a trailer park in the north part of McRae County just before the tornado came through that tore up stuff from Hattiesburg to Slidell.

That's all you have to do. You know your own countryside. You know the people who live there. You know the kinds of things that happen to them. Think up an incident, think up a couple of people involved, and while you are thinking be typing the whole time.

Edit - 'from Hattiesburg to Slidell' is obviously wrong because Slidell is southwest of Hattiesburg and for political reasons all tornadoes in Mississippi are required to move from southwest to northeast so the tornado had to go from Slidell to Hattiesburg, not the other way.

Turn your imagination loose and let the words do whatever they want to do on the page. You can come back later and set them straight. But you cannot set it straight if it's not there to start with, so write something, already.