Three things you should know about ideas for stories

“Where do you get your ideas from?”

It’s a question people often ask successful writers, whether they are novelists, screenplay writers or comic creators.

But the answers you might hear are often two things – vague and unhelpful – but at the same time – true.

The kinds of answers I’ve heard are:

1. “Everyday life”
2. “Life Experiences”
3. And the most unhelpful answer – “Ideas can jump out at you from anywhere!”

The thing is, I’ve had everyday life experiences almost every day and I’ve struggled to think of good story ideas. And they definitely haven’t jumped out at me from anywhere. But that doesn’t make these answers any less true for others. So, what I’ll attempt to do in this article is to make sense of what an idea is and therefore we might be able to generate ideas of our own. Here are three things (I think) you should know about ideas for stories:

1. Ideas are made up of things we already know (or at least familiar with).

Sometimes I think people see good ideas as something almost spiritual-like and only the extremely enlightened have access to them. It’s almost like you need to be some kind of guru to have a good story idea. But the thing is ideas are made up of things we already know. Everyday things or familiar concepts. People will never stop writing about love, and there will always be stories about good versus evil, because these are things we’re all familiar with.

But what makes an idea an idea is how we put the things we know together. Like a recipe, ideas are made up of ingredients, and it’s how we put these ingredients together which makes it a meal.

Let’s take two things we know and see how they become an idea.

1. A tree
2. A superhero

We’re all familiar with trees (or at least I hope we are). Trees are things we can say are part of our “everyday lives”. There is nothing special or original about trees but it’s something we all know.

As for superheroes, while they may not be part of our everyday life, the concept of a superhero is something we are all familiar with.

But how can we put these two very different concepts together and come up with an idea? They’re unrelated, not very original, and surely if we did put them together, the result wouldn’t be very good.

But this is exactly what Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby from Marvel Comics did. They took these two concepts and melded them together to make one of the most loved characters within its franchise. The below is the result:

Groot is a superhero who, like a lot of superheroes, has super strength. He is part of an alien race where their makeup is treelike. He travels with his band of space pirates, The Guardians of the Galaxy, and gets into all kinds of adventures.

You might look at Groot and think, how did they come up with such an original idea? But now that we know ideas are made up of things we already know, or at very least familiar with, hopefully it means we understand that ideas aren’t as out of reach as we might’ve thought.

2. Good story ideas are made from conflict:

So now that we understand ideas are made up of things we know/familiar with, how do we best put them together to make a good idea for a story.

There’s a magic ingredient that makes all good stories and that’s conflict.

Think of any story you know, a movie, video game, book, or graphic novel, and you are guaranteed to find conflict. This is why crime is such a popular genre. Detectives trying to stop crime and criminals trying to commit it automatically creates conflict. Even the most wholesome Hallmark movie has conflict. Usually in the form of a miscommunication between two love interests but conflict is conflict and that is what has people coming back for more.

So, let’s look at an example where we take two conflicting concepts and how they make a good idea:

1. Working-class boy living in an industrial town in the 1980s.
2. Ballet.

Immediately we see conflict in these two concepts. When someone thinks of ballet, they may think of an upper-class activity most popular with girls (particularly in the 1980s). That’s not to say ballet isn’t for everyone (in fact the film argues that it can be), but stereotypes exist and that’s what the above idea is working off.

So how does a boy from a working-class town in the 1980s come to love ballet? What would people in his community think about this? Would it be easy for this boy to succeed in such an art? Stories that invoke questions, invoke interest, and these questions usually arise from conflict. “What if” questions are great for generating story ideas.

For those who may not have realised yet, I am talking about Billy Elliot.

The above image from the movie captures the perfect use of conflict. Billy lines up awkwardly among the other girls at the wall. They’re dressed very primly in white tutus, tights and dance shoes whereas Billy is in the middle, looking rather awkward wearing his boxing gloves and boxing helmet. There’s so much conflict you can’t help but take notice.

But the conflict goes beyond this image in the movie. There is conflict between what Billy wants to do and what is expected of him. His father, as a character, is instrumental in portraying this conflict as he doesn’t want his son doing ballet because he’s afraid of what people might think. Because this film has so much of conflict, it also generated so much success.

But we also need to understand that while conflict is important, characters are more important. If we don’t like Billy, then we don’t care if he succeeds and the conflicts in his life become meaningless. Whilst characters deserve an article all to itself, they are the epicentre of conflict. They have wants and needs and as a writer, your job is to put obstacles in their way. If we love the characters enough, we’ll root for them for the whole story. This is why it’s so important to know what our characters goals are and to understand the difference between what they want and what they need. Then we get to work making their lives difficult.

3. Whatever your idea is, it must be interesting to you:

The first two points will mean nothing if you’re not interested in what you’re writing. I wouldn’t write a story like Billy Elliot because not only do I not know much about ballet or what it’s like growing up in a factory town in England, my interests lie elsewhere. One of the most important things about story ideas is that you like them. Writing, while frustrating, should be overall enjoyable. That doesn’t mean you should give up on an idea the moment you hit writer’s block, but you should at least like it enough to keep going back to it. Also, if you’re a reader (like all writers should be) you already have a good idea of what is interesting. And if an idea is interesting to you, then it’s probably interesting to someone else. Believe it or not, writing what you know and implementing conflict will help you enjoy what your writing.

So, there are the three things I think you should know about story ideas. There is more to writing stories than the above points, but hopefully this is of some help, particularly if you’re getting started. Ideas aren’t far away, out of reach entities but are made up of things we already know or familiar with. Adding conflict and making sure you actually like what you’re writing will help you create something others will like too.

Now that we have a better understanding of what ideas are, perhaps we will see them more in our everyday lives. They may even jump out at us from anywhere; we just need to remember what to look out for.