Article Weblog

How to Come Up with Fresh Story Ideas When Your Well has Been Tapped Dry

When I face the desolate impossibility of writing 500 pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day’s works is all I can permit myself to contemplate.

John Steinbeck

I know that it seems easier to make that extra pot of coffee, read that good book, that you have had in storage for the last ten years, and suddenly decide to make the kids that Halloween costume by hand, than it can be to make yourself sit down and write. Believe me, I have been there.

Here are some brainstorming techniques to get your brain pumping again and churning out ideas.

1) If you are having trouble coming up with characters or even a story line, try developing an action scene. One good scene to kick off your book can get the rest flowing. Develop the characters and story line around that scene.

2) Come up with a problem to solve. Is your main character the class clown or the brainiest kid in school. What type of problem would your character face in his or her normal life? Write your story around the problem and a unique way of solving it.

3)For character development use common sense. Use what is in front of you.

Look at your family and friends and see if they remind you of anything. My first Shakespearean teacher reminded me of a caveman or a husky walrus because of his whiskers. Does your Uncle Arthur have whiskers, wear glasses, and walk with a little bit of a waddle? Turn him into a know it all beaver or a store clerk, at a bookstore that sells books that you can actually climb into and live out an adventure.

Does your sister have a talent for jumping rope and blowing bubbles, with purple bubble gum? Maybe the heroine for your next book could do the same.Is their a kid in your neighborhood that is always getting into trouble? Hmm, do you think that the creator of Dennis the Mennis might have known one?

You can use your family and friend’s talents and their physical characteristics to come up with tons of characters. One hint though- if you choose to make Uncle Charlie a slug or Aunt Emma a rhinoceros, keep it to yourself. They may not be thrilled with their induction into literary history.

Inspiration is all around you, waiting for you to reach out and grab for your next storyline or character. Use stories from the news, jokes that your neighbors tell you, the quirky things that your dog Buster does in the morning.

One final word - stop criticizing what you have written down. In these first stages, no one cares if you have misspelled words or if your grammar isn’t perfect. Just write. The rest will follow, after your story is done.

About The Author

Caterina Christakos is the author of How to Write a Children’s Book in 30 Days or Less. To get more writing tips please go to: http://www.howtowriteachildrensbook.com

stockoptions101@yahoo.com

Share This

Your query letter can be a deal maker or a deal breaker. So, if your query letter just lies there, you’ve killed the sale immediately or your story or novel immediately. If you want that story — your baby — to be read, reach out of that query letter, grab the publisher, editor or literary agent by the neck and say, “Hey, you absolutely have to have this story!”
Query letters that begin with “Hello, My name is. . .” have as much chance of selling as vacation trips to Baghdad. Remember, your query is like a r

Share This

Many authors of novels and literary works have words per day, per week, or per month goals. Especially writers of novels, as once they get a brand name and following they must pump out the books to keep up with demand. Think of authors like Tom Clancy, Steven King, Isaac Asimov and Ann Rice or how about the “Alphabet Writer” Sue Grafton? These writers can finish off a novel in thirty days and we are talking larger novels not the ‘Chick-Lit’ genre romance novels. These are some of my heroes and some of these authors have helpers too.

Recently my writing mentor; Dina Giolitto, a professional content creator, copywriter, and brand consultant ask me some questions about my writing. Which really made me stop and think about authors in general and output goals. She asked;

“You’ve always submitted articles in categorical groups (I like to call this “firing them off in rounds”)… but now you’ve added a thematic element. Your “Read this Article If” series made a fairly big splash and earned you the spotlight on the EzineArticles.com Blog. How has this proved to be a valid article-marketing tactic? Have your traffic numbers gone up accordingly?”

Indeed they had, as without realizing it I had approached my writing in the same way Isaac Asimov had, sheer volume and like Sue Gafton, across categories and following a sequence. Currently I am writing 285,000 words approximately per month, for instance in October I rolled out 570 articles of approximately 500 words or so. Of course over nine months I have written over 3000 articles and this accounts for the acceleration as well as the more refined, short, and tighter articles. Is this volume of writing unheard of? Well it certainly is to online writing, but not necessarily a novelist under deadlines for a 1-3 month period.

There is a National Novel Writers Month or “NaNoWriMo” contest each year, which is a sprint to the finish 50,000-word novel from scratch each November. Of course 285,000 words clearly blows the 50,000-word novelist out the door. But they say novel writing is much harder. Even the events organizers say that word counts matter in this race and those words can be crap. Chris Baty is the founder of the event and although he says that most of the novels are not very good, several of the authors have received book deals and that is common each year. Now there are 42,000 participants and about 6,000 actually complete their works with the 50,000 words. Many of the top writers of the contest write up to 2,000 words per day which is a lot at 60,000 words per month. Currently I am averaging some 285,000 words per month or 4.75 times that number.

My “Read This Article if” series seems to be quite successful and of course I knew it would work when I thought of it, but even so was shocked at how well it worked. (Up to 150 of those now and plan to do many more.) Additionally since my goal is to make people think, I decided to create a “What if” series which has also done quite well surprisingly enough, but not nearly as well as the success of the “Read This Article if” articles. I am now testing the waters for another series of articles which will be the; “I want” series. Titles such as “I want to be Rich,” “I want to be a Millionaire,” and “I want a Perfect Body” and I will of course be helping people by offering pointers, observations, and experience of how to get there. I started by testing the waters by writing an article; “I want Love” which is a natural human desire and it was well received but did not perform as well the other two series or as well as I had hoped. I do believe that people searching often type into the Search Engines; “I want a New Sports Car” or “I want A Better Job” and they also type in; “I need” which could be another series. Why to people type this into the computer search engines? Well it probably goes back to childhood as the kids in the shopping cart begin to learn to talk; “I want” and later start demanding things like “I want Tony the Tiger,” “I want Chocolate Pop Tarts,” or “I want Fruit Loops.” See my point. It is human nature for all of us to want.

My advice to authors is to set some goals of the number of words you wish to write each day and do it, no matter if you are an article writer or novelist. And if you are not up to the level of novelist yet, well there are always lots of articles you can write. Get creative with your writing and your strategy of how you will accomplish your word counts on your way to becoming a successful writer. Think on this.

Lance Winslow - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

Share This