Finding Writing Ideas In 2 Easy Steps

Writing ideas are made up of four basic ingredients: character, plot, theme and setting. Don't fall into the trap of coming up with an idea for just one of these things - a clever plot twist, say - and believing you are ready to start writing your novel. You are not. The key to finding winning writing ideas is to be methodical about it...

• Start by brainstorming each of the four elements in turn. Take your time on this part - there is a lot of treasure deep inside you waiting to be discovered, but it takes time to bring it to the surface.
• In the second step you play around with the results, rearranging them like jigsaw pieces, until you arrive at the perfect novel idea for you (several of them, probably).

To get the most out of this process, try not to think ahead to Step 2 when you are still on the first step.

The whole point of brainstorming is to come up with a lot of potential ideas for writing (or raw material), and you won't do that if you try to turn the raw material into good-to-go novel ideas too early.

Also, if you already have a firm idea in your mind of the novel you want to write, try to disregard it during this process.

You might come up with a better idea, or find a new spin on your existing idea. Perhaps you will find a way to create a whole series of novels similar to the one you already have in mind.

Finally, take as long over this process as you need.

You might do it in a couple of days or a couple of weeks, but don't rush it. Writing a novel represents a huge time commitment (probably several years) so it makes sense not to settle on a writing idea until you know it is the right idea.

Finding Writing Ideas 1: Brainstorming

And so it is time to roll up your sleeves and get down to work...

• Take out a pencil and plenty of paper.
• Disconnect the phone and make yourself comfortable (I find brainstorming for writing ideas so much easier sitting in an armchair than sitting at a desk).
• Put on some music if it helps (something which will fade unobtrusively into the background).
• Then simply fill one sheet of paper (more if you like) with brainstormed ideas in each of the four categories...

Ideas for Characters

How many people do you know, or have you known, in your life? Hundreds, right? And that includes everyone from your closest family and friends, through work colleagues and neighbors, to the lady who sells you cigarettes and the stranger you once sat next to on the train.

Add to that the thousands more people you've seen on television or read about in newspapers and magazines and books, and you have a vast stockpile of character traits and behaviors and physical characteristics from which to construct your fictional characters.

Oh, and don't forget the biggest inspiration for characters in novels that there is: your good self!

Now all you have to do is take all these traits and characteristics and reassemble them to form brand new people.

Your finished novel will likely have dozens of characters (hundreds if you include the walk-ons), but all you are interested in here are candidates for the job of leading woman or man - or the protagonist of the novel.

You don't need to flesh them out in any detail at this stage, or construct elaborate biographies for them (you will find out how to do that later, in the section on Creating Characters). For now, little one-line character sketches will do fine.

Ideas for Plots

How exactly do you brainstorm something as complex as a novel plot?

Well, just as you weren't trying to come up with detailed character portraits when brainstorming writing ideas for characters, so you aren't trying to write detailed plot outlines now, each one complete with a beginning, a middle, an ending and twists and turns along the way. (You will learn how to do all of that in the section on Plotting a Novel).

All you want now is the spark of a plot, or a simple situation from which a complex story is sure to flow. And the best way to find this spark is to draw up a list of things that your leading character (whoever they turn out to be) might want...

• The love of the boy or girl next door.
• Promotion at work.
• To quit smoking.

If a character wants something (and I mean really wants it) and if that something won't be easy to get (if they are going to have to fight for it with everything they have), you have the makings of a gripping story on your hands.

Ideas for Themes

Don't get too hung up on the technicalities of theme right now. (Not that there is anything terribly difficult about it!)

If you are a jumping-ahead kind of person, you can follow this link to find out what a theme in a novel is. But all you need to know about theme for the purposes of finding writing ideas is that every novel should be "about" something...

• Unrequited love.
• The destructive nature of greed.
• The futility (or necessity) of war.

Plus about a million other topics. On the surface of your novel you find the plot and the characters. Running beneath the surface is this deeper layer of meaning in the form of the novel's theme.

So what you have to ask yourself here is whether you have anything to say about love or greed or war (or a million other things). And the answer is yes, of course you do!

Just think about the subject of "friendship" for a moment. I bet you could write pages and pages on what it means to you, based on your own life experiences...

• Maybe you believe friendship is an even stronger bond than love.
• Or maybe you believe that friends will only let you down in the end.

What you say doesn't have to be clever or philosophical, it just needs to be true. And if you shoot from the heart and talk honestly about what friendship has meant to you in your own life, it will be.

Don't worry, I'm not asking you to fill your next sheet of paper with mini-essays on love or friendship or anything. I simply want you to fill it with a list of topics that interest you and about which you feel you have something to say, even if you aren't exactly clear right now what that something might be.

Things you simply want to get off your chest make perfect writing ideas. So your list might look something like this:

• The toughness of being a single parent.
• Guilt can destroy you if you don't come clean.
• The problems of wanting to be in a relationship but also needing solitude.
• The best life is a simple life.

If a particular topic means nothing to you, leave it for another writer to explore. Brainstorming for writing ideas is pointless if you are less than 100% honest with yourself.

Ideas for Settings

An easy one to finish on. You must have visited countless places in your life - locally, nationally and internationally - and any of these places could inspire the setting for your novel.

And even if you haven't been anywhere - even if you have lived your whole life in the same small town, and never once ventured beyond its borders - you still have the perfect setting for a novel: your own hometown (or a fictionalized version of it).

Remember that setting (in its broadest sense) encompasses far more than just streets and buildings and the communities in which they sit. It includes occupations and hobbies, like landscape gardening and beekeeping.

So what you need to do is fill your final page with a list of potential locations or activities...

• A Manhattan advertising agency.
• Tenpin bowling.
• The planet Mars.
• A haunted house in the middle of nowhere.
• The world of professional ice hockey.
• 18th century Paris.
• Antique dealing.

Always bear in mind how well you know a setting or an activity. If you grew up on a dairy farm in New Hampshire and you set your novel on one, you won't have much research to do. If you set your novel in Spain during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, you will have plenty.

And that is the end of the first step of finding writing ideas.

I know I've already said this, but please take your time on this exercise. If the ideas for writing don't flow, try again tomorrow. As soon as you have thoroughly brainstormed each of the four ingredients from which novel ideas are made, you are ready to move onto the next step...

Finding Writing Ideas 2: Putting It All Together

Like I said at the top, this is simply a question of taking all the little writing ideas you have just brainstormed and playing around with them, shuffling them around like pieces of a jigsaw until you create a picture that makes sense.

Well, maybe it's not that straightforward. There is still plenty of scope here for assembling writing ideas that are all wrong - in the sense that the individual elements are not working in harmony. Do that and you will run into huge problems when you come to flesh out the idea in more detail.

An idea for a novel is like a seed: if the genetic code contained within the seed is faulty, you can't hope to grow a beautiful flower from it. And it is precisely at this stage - when you are mixing characters with plots, plots with settings, and so on - that you can mess up the code.

A good way to avoid this pitfall is to listen to your instincts. But for extra guidance, you will find two detailed worked examples of how to assemble writing ideas in my Ultimate Novel Writing Guide.

Next Step: Whether you put together your novel idea using your instincts or using the help and advice in my downloadable guide, you will want to be 100% sure of the idea before you commit to it. How do you do that? All will be revealed in Are Your Ideas for Writing Any Good?