where do story ideas come from?

Quite often, people will email to ask where I get ideas for stories. The implication is that coming up with the idea for the story is hard, while writing it down will be easy, once you have the proper idea.

I argue that the reverse is true – coming up with ideas is easy, but writing them down and executing them well is the hard part. You can see this in other areas of life as well. Apple was not the first company to come up with the idea of an MP3 player or a smartphone – I believe Rio and BlackBerry were the first companies (at least in the US) to try an MP3 player and a smartphone commercially. The Apple iPod and the iPhone were not the first MP3 players and smartphones, but they were a lot better executed than their predecessors.

But all that said, I think it is easy to artificially come up with story ideas, rather than waiting for inspiration to strike. You basically need four things – 1.) a main character who 2.) has a problem, 3.) who has an external conflict preventing him from solving his problem, and 4.) who also has an internal conflict.

Let’s use one of the oldest fantasy tropes as an example – a farm boy who gets caught up in quest. The farm boy – let’s call him Luke – comes home from hunting to find that his village has been burned by orcs and the women and children carried off as slaves. Luke’s also in love with a farm girl – let’s call her Juliette – who has been carried off by the orcs (not to mention his mother and sisters). Right away we have a main character who has a problem – his love interest and family have been taken as slaves – and an external conflict preventing him from solving the problem, namely the orcs will kill him if he tries to save his family.

Now, you might think this sounds flat and boring, and you would be right. The key to make it interesting is to give Luke an internal conflict as well – in other words, he wants contradictory things, and he can’t actually have both. This happens in real life all the time. To choose a minor example, you could want to spend Labor Day visiting family, or sitting on your couch drinking whiskey and playing SKYRIM, but you can’t actually do both. More seriously, this could mean choosing to stay with your girlfriend, or moving to take a job in another state. You want to do both, but you have to choose.

For Luke, this could mean he could help the local knight rescue Juliette…but Juliette is also engaged to the knight. Which means if he helps the knight rescue Juliette, he loses her to the knight. Or the orcs split into two groups, and Juliette is in one group and his sister is with another. Luke has to choose…and then live with the consequences of his choice.

This can go to darker places as well. Let’s say Luke was spying for the orcs, taking their money, but he didn’t think they would actually attack. If he rescues Juliette and his family, the truth will come out, and he’ll be an outcast. Or the warlock commanding the orcs, impressed by Luke’s grit, offers to teach Luke magic…and Luke really wants to learn magic. Having a morally dubious internal conflict can add a tremendous amount of tension to a story.

And it’s also a good idea to throw a few twists in to reflect the perversity of life in general. Think of all the times you were say, late for work, and your car broke down, or your computer crashed just as your taxes were due, or you finally summoned the nerve to ask out a girl just as she gets a call from her landlord that someone ran over her cat. Think of all the times a serious problem got worse just because. In Luke’s case, this could mean that he realizes the orcs intend to eat their captives, so he had better hurry up before Juliette becomes McNuggets. Or Luke finally catches up to the orcs, only to find that the orcs sold their captives to infinitely more dangerous dark elves.

Finally, you want to apply the external/internal conflict to every character in your story. A good rule of thumb is that every significant secondary character should have his own plot arc and his own challenges to overcome.

This technique doesn’t just apply to fantasy fiction – you can use it for contemporary fiction as well, whether thrillers or mysteries or anything. Let’s say we have a 25-year-old woman named Jeanette who works at a gas station. One day she sees a mob crime, and the mob threatens her with violence if she goes to the police. The external conflict is the crime, and the unfolding police investigation at the gas station. The internal conflict could come from a number of ways – she wants to speak out, but she’s afraid to do so. Or she has a massive student loan debt (which is why she’s at the gas station), and the mob bribes her with money to pay down the debt. Or she wants to go to the police, but her father works for a mob-controlled company, and if she does, he’ll lose his job and his health insurance.

To sum up, a good story idea is a character with external and internal conflicts, and what he does to resolve those conflicts.

-JM