by James L. Rubart, @jameslrubart

Have you ever heard the following from a fellow writer?

“I have so many story ideas in my head they could almost fill the Library of Congress!” 

If that’s you, you can stop reading. If it isn’t (and you’d like to hear a few ideas on coming up with strong ideas) please continue on.

Seven Places You Might Find Your Next Great Idea

• Scraps and Fragments
  • The other day I was going through a pile of papers I hadn’t looked at since the first Bush was President (it’s part of my quest to mend my packrat ways) and found a bunch of old story ideas and half-baked pages that instantly shot three manuscript ideas into my mind. Two for novels, one for a non-fiction book. So go through your stack of old journals or pull up that old file on your computer. There could be gold in them thar hills.

• Title Brainstorming Play
  • Great ideas often come from titles. So let your imagination go and jot down twenty titles as fast as you can. No judgement, we’re looking for quantity, not quality here. But the quality just might come when you look back at what you’ve come up with, because those maybe good/maybe not so good titles could spur a killer idea.

• Go Character Wild
  • We’re going to do the same thing here that we did above only this time you’re going to create ten characters rapid fire. Make them strange, outlandish, melodramatic, hideous, gorgeous, inventive … whip them up in any way, shape or form. Then set them loose. Write white-hot (fast) about them. A page for, maybe a little more, maybe a little less, and see where they go. (Yes, even you plotters can do this, I believe in you). They might lead you into a powerful story.

• Crazy Endings
  • Write the ending of a story. Make it outlandish. Surprising. Shocking. Unexplainable. You don’t need more than a page or two. Doesn’t matter that you have no idea how you got there. After you have two or three, let them settle for a day or two, then go back and review them and see if anything rises. More often than not, it will.

• Quotes
  • Head to a website like this one that lists great quotes and start pouring through them. Sometimes reading a slice of wisdom from a deep thinker can spur a strong book idea.

• Movie Soundtracks
  • Try putting on a movie soundtrack you’ve heard is wonderful, but where you haven’t seen the movie. That way your mind will be free to put images in your head of stories that haven’t been written yet. I first discovered this method when I was listening to an instrumental album by Michael W. Smith called, Freedom. To me the album sounded like a movie soundtrack. As I listened I couldn’t help but see scenes playing my head. So I just wrote down what the songs birthed in my mind. 

• Three, Three, Three
  • This is fun little game you play with two other writers. That’s the first Three. It’s simple to play. You write the first page of a short story. Go wherever you want with it. Then you send it to a friend who adds their page to yours. They send it the third friend. That’s the second Three. You do this two more times. That’s the third Three. Each time you have to pick up the story where it left off. When you finish you’ll have a nine page short story I guarantee will have your brain spinning off on tangents you never would have expected, and likely a few strong story ideas will come out of it.

“All Ideas Grow Out of Other Ideas.” Anish Kapoor

It’s True
All ideas do grow out of other ideas. So shower yourself with ideas from unusual sources, and often unusual (and unique and completing) ideas will reveal themselves.

Now go forth and amaze yourself!

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The Pages of Her Life

How Do You Stand Up for Yourself When It Means Losing Everything? Allison Moore is making it. Barely. The Seattle architecture firm she started with her best friend is struggling, but at least they’re free from the games played by the corporate world. She’s gotten over her divorce. And while her dad’s recent passing is tough, their relationship had never been easy. Then the bomb drops. Her dad was living a secret life and left her mom in massive debt. As Allison scrambles to help her mom find a way out, she’s given a journal, anonymously, during a visit to her favorite coffee shop. The pressure to rescue her mom mounts, and Allison pours her fears and heartache into the journal. But then the unexplainable happens. The words in the journal, her words, begin to disappear. And new ones fill the empty spaces—words that force her to look at everything she knows about herself in a new light. Ignoring those words could cost her everything . . . but so could embracing them.

James L. Rubart is 28 years old, but lives trapped inside an older man’s body. He thinks he’s still young enough to water ski like a madman and dirt bike with his two grown sons. He’s the best-selling, Christy BOOK of the YEAR, CAROL, INSPY, and RT Book Reviews award winning author of ten novels and loves to send readers on journeys they’ll remember months after they finish one of his stories. He’s also a branding expert, audiobook narrator, co-host of the Novel Marketing podcast, and co-founder with his son, Taylor, of the Rubart Writing Academy. He lives with his amazing wife on a small lake in Washington state.