Need a Great Idea for Your Next Story? Try the Story IDEA Formula

I'm drawing a blank. I want to write fiction, but where do I get the ideas? Try the Story IDEA Formula, where IDEA stands for:

INSPIRE x DELVE + ENGAGE x ADAPT

• INSPIRE - get sparks of inspiration from multiple sources 
• DELVE - get clear about what you want to write about 
• ENGAGE - fan the idea-spark into a fire 
• ADAPT - play with the idea, transforming it into a story concept 

As we dig deeper into the elements of the formula and take a look at 20 Tools & Tips to Come Up With Great Story Ideas, take some notes on which of these resonate the most with you, and create your own Story IDEA Formula. Then, put it into practice. I challenge you to apply the Story IDEA Formula to come up with THREE STORY IDEAS as you read this article.

Before we start ...
do you want to write fiction faster,
while practicing your craft
and your writing process
to consistently get better? 

Check out this link to
the FREE "Write Fiction Faster ... and better"
guide and workbook,
which comes with a FREE companion course
with 23 bite-sized video lessons and 4 worksheets.

The Story IDEA Formula

There are four steps to the formula: Inspire, Delve, Engage, and Adapt. The steps are interrelated, feeding each other.

The first two are very connected: INSPIRE x DELVE.

And the second two are equally connected: ENGAGE x ADAPT.

When we add those pairs of activities together, we get the Story IDEA Formula:

INSPIRE x DELVE + ENGAGE x ADAPT

INSPIRE

Find and capture sources of inspiration, whether that is a list of prompts, observations of real life, using reference sources, consuming fiction in any format, reading, watching, listening, and then having a place to capture all the inspirations as they come.

DELVE

Dig deep into what you want to write about, the things you like and are interested in and want to explore. It can be your favorite fiction genre. It can be specific topics, themes, interest. It can be the mood or tone or feeling you want to express. It can be a fictional world (location, time period, a fantasy or futuristic world) that you want to explore. It can be specific types of characters that you want to write about in general, or characters that come to mind based on the inspiration.

INSPIRE x DELVE

You can start the interplay between INSPIRE and DELVE from either end. Let's say you start with INSPIRE: maybe a prompt or an observation from real life. Now DELVE into what this inspiration triggers in the genre, topics, themes you want to explore. Or perhaps the inspiration makes you think of a certain type of character you want to write about. You can also start with DELVE, thinking about the topic or interest you want to dig into, then let that lead you to a reference source to explore that topic, which will then INSPIRE you as you find specific nuggets of information. Whichever direction you start, let the INSPIRE x DELVE go back and forth, weaving the idea.

ENGAGE

Now engage with the spark of an idea to fan the fire so you can forge it into a fully formed concept. The simplest way may be to just sit down and freewrite to get started, writing the first few sentences. But you may not feel quite ready to do that, so instead you can engage with the idea from a more oblique angle, such as finding (or drawing) pictures, listening to music that feels evocative, talk it through with a friend (or yourself, out loud or on paper), or just take a walk. You will most likely find that looping back to the INSPIRE x DELVE steps will happen naturally as you engage with the idea.

ADAPT

These are various ways of playing with and transforming the idea into a story concept, using tools like "What if?", "Flip", "Modify", "Combine", and "Map" that we will look at in the next section of this article.

ENGAGE x ADAPT

The interplay between ENGAGE and ADAPT can start from either end. You can begin to ENGAGE with an idea, let's say by freewriting, and as you get a little stuck, you can ask "What if?" and then ADAPT the idea. Or you can start from ADAPT by taking two ideas from the INSPIRE x DELVE step and "Combine" them. Then in order to work out what the combination of these two ideas will look like, you ENGAGE by drawing a sketch (or look for inspirational pictures online) until the idea starts taking shape into a story concept.

INSPIRE x DELVE + ENGAGE x ADAPT

As you can tell, this creative process may loop, whorl, weave, dance, flow, back and forth, around and around, where you start with an inspiration, delve into a topic, which leads back to more inspirations, then you begin to engage with it, think of some ways to adapt it, then loop back for more inspiration, which triggers you to delve some more, then engage with the idea again, adapting it some more.

At some point — and it's likely to be organic and seamless — you will transition from the idea(s) into a story concept and from there into crafting the idea into a story. In fact, one of the ADAPT tools ("Map") is this crafting of idea to story. To learn more about how to turn an idea into a story, check out this article, which is the first step in our 5-Step process to Write Fiction Faster ... and better.

20 Tools & Tips to Come Up With Great Story Ideas

Let's dig a little deeper into the Story IDEA Formula. Here are 20 tools and tips: five for each element in the Story IDEA Formula.

INSPIRE

Let's start with inspire, which is all about getting those sparks of ideas. The tools and tips in this category are: capture, spark, observe, reference sources, and consume fiction.

1. CAPTURE: Think of those sparks of ideas as fireflies that you want to capture in a net and put into a jar. It's essential that you have a place to capture inspirations, and that you have a process for capturing ideas so they don't just flicker into your mind one moment, and then they're gone in the next. You can carry a small notebook or journal or index cards with a small pen in your pocket (or purse). You can use an app on your phone. You can dictate (my favorite dictation/transcription app is Otter.ai), speaking your idea into the app which automatically transcribes it. If you read books on Kindle, highlight inspiring passages and use Readwise to share the highlights into your note app. In the end, whether you capture on scraps of paper, dictation, highlighting passages, all these inspiration-fireflies should end up in a single idea-jar, your all-purpose inspiration-container. My favorite all-purpose inspiration-container these days is Obsidian (but you may prefer Evernote, Day One, Notion, Roam Research, One Note, Apple Notes or any of the many note capture tools, including hand-written journals, whatever works for you). What matters is: make sure you have that "container" and the process to capture inspiration and ideas from multiple sources and get them all into that one place. Ideally your "container" should have the ability to "tag" your inspirations and ideas so that you can get a list of inspirations or ideas by topic in order to facilitate the DELVE step.
   
   
2. SPARK: These are sparks for your imagination. You can get sparks from many sources, including plot generators, books of writing prompts, searching Google either for something like "creative writing prompts" or narrowing it down to searching for ideas on a topic where you want to DELVE. Since you have your CAPTURE process set up (you do, don't you?), you can also refer back to your list of inspirations and ideas and use those as sparks.
   
   
3. OBSERVE: Go outside, watch people, listen to people talking, observe nature, study buildings, examine vehicles and machines, notice what is happening all around you. Now, stop and notice what is happening inside you, observe your own internal thoughts and feelings. Got it? Now capture that in your "net" (your notebook, index cards, phone app) and then transfer that to your all-purpose inspiration-container.
   
   
4. REFERENCE sources: What's your favorite reference source? The main page of Wikipedia has a featured article, a "did you know..." section and "in the news..." and "on this day..." sections every day, or you can use a random article generator like Wikiroulette and go down rabbit holes related to each article. Dictionary.com serves up your "Word Of The Day" and you can combine words, dig into their etymology, use the thesaurus. Go to your favorite quotes site, like BrainyQuote.com (which has a "Quote of the Day") and find inspirational quotes. Read longform journalism articles. Listen to podcasts on your topics of interest. Read news stories.
   
   
5. CONSUME fiction: That's reading fiction (or listening to audiobooks) but also watching good (or trashy) scripted TV and film. Consume fiction both wide and deep. Wide means that you should explore fiction in many genres and styles of writing. Deep means that you should go deep into your preferred genre and authors, steeping yourself in your preferred style and genre of writing. As you read, be on the lookout for inspiration. Highlight and bookmark passages. See if you can combine inspiration from multiple books or maybe adapt one idea or flip it on its head. Recognize what you like, but also recognize what you don't like, what you would want to improve, if you could rewrite the story ... and, you can! Read your own fiction in the same spirit: what do you like (write more of this), what makes you cringe (how could you write another story that improves on this)?

DELVE

Delving is all about getting clear on what you want to write about. What are the things you like, that you're interested in, and want to explore? It's no fun to write about things you don't find interesting. It's great fun to get inspired and then digging deep into genres, topics, moods, worlds, and characters that light you up.

1. GENRE: What's your favorite genre, the one you like to read (which is most likely the one you like to write as well)? But you can also take a challenge and write in a different genre just to test it out, especially if you're writing short fiction, where you can just play with it. Take the inspiration (a writing prompt, for example): does it trigger something in the genre you want to write? That will let you narrow down the inspiration and focus it, within the bounds of the genre expectations and convention. Or if you start from the DELVE step, that may lead you to a specific source of inspiration, such as plot generators that can be filtered for the mystery genre, for example.
   
   
2. TOPICS: What are the themes you want to explore, that you feel deeply about and that you want to write about? You may already know, but if you don't have clarity in this yet, ask yourself: what do I come back to again and again in my own writing, in fiction I read, in non-fiction? What do I tend to observe in the external world? What do I often reflect on in my own inner world? It is likely to be multiple topics, so it might be helpful to actually write them down, making a list (in your favorite all-purpose inspiration-container). Keep that topics-list up to date so you can refer back to it when you're looking for the next story idea. These topics, themes, and interests often overlap with genre and with mood.
   
   
3. MOOD: What's the tone or feeling or vibe you want to write (ex. quirky-funny, dark-gothic, hard-boiled, romantic-emotive). This could be the mood you (almost) always want to write in, or it could be triggered by the specific inspiration, or the mood you're in right now as you conceive of the story idea. It might also be related to the genre or to the topics you're interested in? What do you like to read and what is the mood of that fiction?
   
   
4. WORLD: This could mean a general time and location, such as a time in history, if you like historical fiction, or a futuristic or fantasy world. Consider whether you want to write as a fan of a specific world (for example Tolkien's Lord of the Rings world), and create parallels to that in this specific story or in general as you write many stories. You can also delve into your own writing, gravitating back to one or more worlds that you have created in prior stories. You can write shorter fiction to explore, get clarity, and flesh out aspects of a world you need for a novel. So, write that short story (or flash fiction) set in the world of your novel. Or you can write a series of short stories set in the same world (and with some of the same characters) and in this way you may find that you're stringing together a longer work — a collection of stories that will feel very cohesive to readers because of their shared setting and characters.
   
   
5. CHARACTERS: What characters (or types of characters) come to mind based on the inspiration for the story? Do you know who your characters are, what they want (and what they actually need, which may be different from what they think they want), their internal and external conflicts, who and what gets in the way?

ENGAGE

How can you engage with the spark of an idea to fan the fire so you can forge it into a fully formed concept? The tools and tips in this category are: see, hear, walk, talk, and write.

1. SEE: Engage your visual imagination. Create a picture based on the germ of the idea(s) from the INSPIRE x DELVE step. If you're artistically inclined (or even if you're not), draw a sketch. If you prefer to hunt for inspiring images and create your own inspiration board that way, go search Google, Instagram, Pinterest, or whatever is your favorite source of images. You can picture characters, places, situations, or even the mood, whatever comes to mind for your story idea.
   
   
2. HEAR: Engage your auditory imagination. Create a playlist that represents the genre, the mood of the story. Imagine that you're creating a soundtrack. In fact, finding the soundtrack for your favorite movies can be one great method to create a playlist that will channel the "sound" of the story.
   
   
3. WALK: If you're feeling stuck or just need to let your subconscious have free rein to do its mysterious work, take a walk. Some very smart, creative people — for example Einstein, Darwin, Nietzsche — would go for a walk to come up with (or work on) ideas. In fact, Nietzsche said:
   
   "All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking"
   
   I would add "... or in the shower".
   
   There have even been studies to prove that walking enhances creativity. 
   
   
4. TALK: Sometimes you need to work out an idea by talking about it. That can be talking it through with a writing buddy, friend, family member, significant other ... or yourself. Yes, you can talk (out loud or on paper) with yourself about the idea. Talk about the things that makes you interested in the idea, what you'd like to explore, but also the issues and challenges you see trying to shape it into a story concept.
   
   
5. WRITE: Just start writing. Even if you're not a "Pantser" (aka "Discovery Writer") and need that outline in order to write the full story, you can still start. And you don't have to start at the beginning. You can freewrite the ending or a key image somewhere in the middle of the story. You can freewrite about an interesting character, just to see what they'll say, how they sound, how they come across.

ADAPT

These are various ways of playing with and transforming the idea into a story concept, using tools like "What if?", "Flip", "Modify", "Combine", and "Map".

1. WHAT IF...? Take any concept that you come up through any of the other steps above and ask "what if...?" Our brains are wired to answer questions, so when you use "what if...", your brain springs into action and tries to answer it. "What if..." is a creative prompt, because there is no set answer, so it opens up your mind to new possibilities.
   
   
2. FLIP: This means to turn some character or situation or other story elements upside down or on its side. You can flip protagonist and antagonist, telling the story from the antagonist's side. You can flip character story roles, so that the sidekick is really the hero. You can flip a trope to its opposite. Try flipping the order of the story, telling the end (or middle) first. What other things can you flip?
   
   
3. MODIFY: Create a new story by modifying an older familiar one, such as taking a fairytale and retelling it in a modern world.
   
   
4. COMBINE: Take two ideas and combine them. This can be two ideas that came up during the steps above. It can also be combining two already existing ideas. Play with these two ways of combining: "x in y" and "x meets y".
   
   An example of "x in y" would be "Jane Eyre in Space" or "Die Hard on a Ship" (which is the Steven Segal movie "Under Siege").
   
   An example of "x meets y" might be "Dracula meets Hannibal Lecter", which of course has already happened since Anthony Hopkins played Van Helsing in Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula film.
   
   
5. MAP: Even if you are a confirmed "Pantser" (writing from the seat of your pants with no outline), consider mapping out your story idea, just a little bit, as a tool to spark your creative imagination. You can use the FictionMAP narrative structure as a guide for a more plot-based method. I would recommend focusing on just three of the nine steps: "context", "catalyst", and "climax".
   
   Thinking about the "context" (that is the "ordinary world" before some event happened) will help you set the scene in your mind, and you can think about your characters and the story-world in its normal everyday state.
   
   Then think about the "catalyst": what happens that changes everything, and how does that affect the characters?
   
   Now jump ahead to the "climax" of the story, when everything comes to a head. What happens? Who's involved?
   
   It doesn't have to be fully fleshed out. You're not telling the story yet. You're just dreaming and coming up with possibilities.
   
   If you prefer a more character driven story, use the Character Method, picturing a key character "before", "after", and then imagining the "turning point" that changed the character.

This final tool, "Map", is also the beginning of how to take an Idea to a Story, but that is another topic. In fact we have a whole article about it, and a free course with a guide and workbook on 5 Steps to Write Fiction Faster ... and better.

Resources

MY FAVORITE ALL-PURPOSE RESOURCE

The Writer's Treasure Chest - everything in one place, curated, organized

WRITING PROMPTS 

• Reedsy: Weekly Writing Prompts
  
  
• Top 100 Short Story Ideas
  
  
• 400+ Writing Prompts: 16+ Genres to Start Your BEST Story
  
  
• 101 "What If ..." Story Prompts to Inspire Your Writing

PLOT GENERATORS

• Reedsy: Plot Generator
  
  
• Writing Prompt Generator
  
  
• Plot Generator with 500+ Short Story Ideas
  
  
• Random Plot Generator

REFERENCE SOURCES

• Wikipedia - has a featured article, a "did you know..." section, and "in the news..." and "on this day..." sections every day
  
  
• Wikiroulette - a Wikipedia random article generator
   
• Dictionary.com - serves up your "Word Of The Day" and you can combine words, dig into their etymology, use the thesaurus
  
  
• BrainyQuote.com - quotes, searchable by topic, and a "Quote of the Day" 

LONGFORM NON-FICTION

• 5 best longform journalism sites
  
  
• The 10 Best Websites For Top-Tier, Longform Journalism

TOOLS

• Otter.ai - dictation and transcription
  
  
• Readwise - share highlights from Kindle and other sources
  
  
• Obsidian - all-purpose inspiration-container note app
  
  
• Lemome journal - for your hand-written notes capture
  
  
• Levenger "pocket briefcase" - carry index card for quick notes capture
  
  
• Kaweko LILIPUT mini fountain pen - tuck a mini fountain pen in your "pocket briefcase"

RELATED ARTICLES

Once you have your great, idea, it's time to write the story. Here are some articles that will be helpful as you write: 

• Write Fiction Faster! — How to Speed Up Your Story Writing 
  
  
• From Idea to Story: 3 Methods to Develop Your Story Idea 
  
  
• How to Write Characters Who Stick in the Reader's Mind 
  
  
• What Makes a Good Story? — Great Scenes! Here's How to Write Them
  
  
• Make Your Story Sing — Write Great Dialogue!
  
  
• Flash Fiction: How To Use It To Supercharge Your Writing 
  
  
• Blast Through Writer's Block: How to Get Unstuck 

FREE COURSE, GUIDE AND WORKBOOK

Do you want to write fiction faster, while practicing your craft and your writing process to consistently get better? Check out this link to the "Write Fiction Faster ... and better" guide and workbook, which comes with a companion course with 23 bite-sized video lessons and 4 worksheets.