So Much More

by Jasha Gutierrez
(Phil)

There are times in life when we want so much more than what it has to offer. As a teen, I always wish there's so much more in life than me growing up, getting a job, getting married and having kids. I thought it was kinda dull. I read books a lot. Especially fiction. Every time I read one I often would feel envious. Real or not, the character become a part of a world, a world that I'll never be a part of. I know it is silly but I would do anything to live Harry Potter's, Bella Swan's, or Susan from Narnia's life.

And that is where it all began. I began writing things. Imagining thingsSaying to myself "what if I...". Then before I knew it, writing became a window. A window that leads me to my own special world. A world where I can forever be young. Surrounded by the thing that makes me wonder and leaves me dazed.

I figured if a write this thing then maybe, in a very unique way, I'll be a part of a world other people will never be a part of and where my fellow readers will soon wish they were.

Talk to a friend.

by Tahlia
(NSW, Australia)

I have a friend who's trying to write a novel and I talked to her about my and her ideas and I came up with the idea for my book/novel. It's going to be great but I'm only in the planning/thinking/idea stages. She really helped me think of an idea and get past just thinking. She helped me really harness my ideas and start to plan it even though only in my head. Now I'm contemplating changing/interpreting and just chopping and changing my plan.

Relax!

Relax a bit. If you think "I want an idea" over and over you'll get nowhere. It's been proven that you think better when lying down. Also look in a dictionary, find random words, and string them into a story!

Listen to a song

by Trea
(Belfast, UK)

sometimes a song will carry across words in the lyrics that can not only mean different things to different people but also give some ideas, plots and even new poems.

That Special Place

by Amanda
(Arlington, TX, US)

Find one place -- real or not -- and store it in your mind. Keep it there and whenever you doubt or get the dreaded Writer's Block, go there and find your inspiration in a unique and different place that is all your own.

Life and Sounds: Give a Twist

My inpiration comes from what I see around me and what I hear around me. It comes from my life.

For example, lately I've been missing someone very, very dear to me, and when I think of this person, I write about the story of how we met. I write it over and over...but it's not the same thing over and over. It's almost like doing covers of your own stories. I give it a little twist every now and then.

I take an interest in what I hear around me because the sounds really inspire me. I live in a patch of pine trees just at the edge of a meadow, and I hear birds and cars on the highway, and my neighbors laughing...I've written several short stories on the sounds around me.

But when I come down to it all, I honestly think that the music I listen to is my biggest inspiration. I listen to rock and alternative. I feel that the songs are very inspiring. My all-time favorite band is MUSE. If you have not heard of them, well I am sorry. They give me so much inspiration with every one of their songs.

So, as I've said before, I think the key to inspiration is just your life. Dreams, music, sounds, memories...everything. They all work. And, as I like to do, give your stories or ideas a little twist and make it specially your own, if you like.

Dreams

by Tal
(Israel)

Our subconscious is full of great ideas, we just have to know how to use them. Some of them might be weird and won´t make sense at all, but if we try to analyze them, we will see that they can actually be great stories.

Stepenie Meyer said she got her idea for "Twilight" after she dreamed about a conversation between two people, that now are her characters, Edward and Bella. She wanted to know what happens next, and that's where the story started to built up.

Pictionary

by Brinkley Thurston

When I'm in desperate need of an idea I head over to the games closet. I grab or pictionary game and I take the cards out. After I grab a pen and some paper and I get comfortable. I pick up a card and look at the words on it and try to make a story out of them. For example this time the words were: Hollywood, Posse, Splash, Lung. From this I got a idea of a Hollywood star swimming in a pool with her posse when suddenly one of them shocked her by splashing her. Next thing she knows she being rushed to the hospital because she almost drowned.

Sit and Gaze at a Garden

by Beatrice Reeves
(Lloydminster sask.)

I mostly love to go for walks and get ideas from looking at nature.. I also love to sit in my garden and think, envision what and how a story can be written from doing this. It relaxes me and the ideas start flowing. Also I like to study people and places.. lots of book ideas have been written based on other peoples' lives and the places where they come from, etc. but the most important one for me is my gardens.

Music Opens The Mind

by Libby Miller

Have you ever had the urge to write but just couldn't figure out what to write about? Turn on your Ipod, throw the head phones in your ears and turn it up!

Listen to your favorite band, or music that gets your creative juices flowing.

Close your eyes and zone the rest of the world out. Before you know it you will have the best idea in writing history. Then the next part is obvious. Write like you have never written before.
Good luck!

Carry a Notebook Everywhere.

by Rabab Shahzad

Whenever you see something which gives you a good idea for your writing, just write it down, so that it is preserved in your mind. Also observe because you can find clues everywhere, and listen to conversations. It will help.

The Burning House - What would you take?

by Lauren Richards
(United States)

So a while ago, a friend directed me to a website called "The Burning House", which is basically a place where people submit photos of what they would take with them if they realized their house was burning.

I've found a lot of ideas for writing from the site. For example, my current story was inspired by a blue wedding dress that someone submitted. It's interesting to imagine how the items would be important to a character, and often you can come up with ways that stem out into an entire novel.

The website is theburninghouse.com. Not sure if this will help anyone, but it's been a really great resource for me. Even if the site doesn't help you, just thinking about what you would personally want to take with you if your house was burning might be inspiring.

Listening to Music

by Belle
(Australia)

Music is always so emotional. Artists pour their feelings into their songs, and I always find great inspiration for writing when I'm listening to music. Also keeping a pen and notpad close by at all times so when you get inspired you can write your ideas down then and there, and also when your writing, don't stop until you literally cannot continue. :)

Ideas bag

by Nicole
(Victoria, Australia)

I created a spreadsheet on my computer and put a few words in each square such as "an empty bottle" and "an antique vase". I then printed it out, laminated the sheets then cut them up and placed them all in a drawstring bag. When I don't have any inspiration to write I select eithe one sheet and use that as the basis for my story or write for 10 minutes picking out a new idea every 2 minutes to include in my story.

around

by clara ruiz
(boston,ma)

While sitting in the rain wondering what should I write about, I mean I love writing but sometimes it get tiring of just writing about my personal experience, I want to make my writing more interesting. This is not an autobiography, this is not a game, and writing is what I love more than anything.

That day I decide to open my mind, to observe. Moments like this are when you realize, life is a work of art. You can get an idea from a book, rain, experience, a lake. Now I can just look at something and write something creative about it.

What I usually do is observe, look everything from a different view. Cry, and write. Laugh, and write. Play, enjoy, walk, read, and write. If writing is something you love doing as much as I do you will find everything around you interesting enough to write something. Look around you, everything is there for a special purpose, look, observe life is gorgeous.

Look around

by Salome Khazaradze
(Tbilisi, Georgia)

Everybody has their own small world in mind, which simply need a bit of help to develop. This help is none other then what inspires a person, is it a movie, a picture, a person, a story, a place, a smell, some music, or all the other things around us.

Sometimes, when I listen to music, but not all kinds of music, these faces I have never seen before appear before me. I don't force myself to imagine my characters, they come themselves, develop themselves, and they make me feel sad or happy for them. It's like their stories have been written in my mind and now I'm reading them. Music inspires some people, it doesn't inspire me, but it helps me develop my story.

It's amazing how I come up with my characters. Sometimes I'm surprised myself.

What plays the most important role in coming up with characters? For me, it's all kinds of drawing and photos.

For example, while surfing the internet, I might find just a simple picture of some celebrity or an average person. It might be an ordinary picture of him or her sitting on a bench, smoking, or walking in the rainy street, or just staring at the camera. These things really inspire me to create my characters. I love the feeling when I see a picture, and I like its concept so much that I can't wait to go to bed, turn on the music, and start imagining the story. The picture is always one little moment of the story, and this little moment creates the whole universe in my mind. This one picture helps me create a wholly new character. A character so unknown to me yet that I have the most pleasant time imagining for it a background, a family, is problems, it's friends, its ambitions, its appearance, and most importantly, its name.

All this inspires me to write a story about the main character, but the main character is nothing without minor ones, right? For minor characters, all you need to do is look around, open your eyes wide and see the things that not everyone can see, all the simple things, and all the simple people who can influence your whole story. It may be a kid hurrying to school, a man busily talking on the phone while driving, a woman waiting for a bus, a girl anxiously waiting for her boyfriend, or boy who's walking in the street with his friends, laughing at their favorite joke.

Just Think

by Jewels
(United States)

I draw from things I know. The little things, tiny little fragments of ideas from books, movies, tv shows, etc. Each little piece is 'part of the puzzle', so to speak. I even ask my friends for ideas. They give me the most random things, but those tiny ideas can go a long way. They grow into more complex ideas and eventually a story is born.

Sometimes I'll be in my room staring up at the ceiling when I get a genius idea. Doing the most mundane of tasks can get the creative juices flowing. Ask around, think, take tiny little bits and pieces from other fiction and twist them around. And most of all, have fun writing. It shouldn't feel like a chore.

Dreams

by Abby
( )

Sometimes I wake up in the morning very refreshed because of a wonderful dream. Then later I remember that dream and I start planning the story, plot, characters, etc. It may help to write down good dreams because I usually forget.

My Fantasy World

by Jacinda
(USA)

Ever writer needs inspiration and the way I get my inspiration is by writing stories that are like my fantasy world, stories of things that I want to happen even if they probably won't. This is why I love fiction because I can express myself as much as i want and expand my imagination as I could and I could create a fantasy world or story that I wish was real and when I'm writing it is real and the best part of writing fiction or realistic fiction is connection to other readers or writers. I look for inspiration everywhere I look my whole entire life is my inspiration, things I wish did happen, things I wish will happen, and things that did happen but usually with a twist or creative difference and sometimes I write non-fiction but its about my self or the world because that's how writing is it could be as small as something as a paperclip and then it could be big as the whole entire universe. Nut the thing is, writing about a paperclip could be small but usually there's much much more meaning to it. You know, writing is one the biggest things anyone could value, and you might ask "then how big is it exactly?" and I would say, "Think of the biggest thing you could imagine, then... make it ten times bigger." The last place I look for inspiration is my imagination because there is nothing more powerful than your imagination especially in the world of writing.

Imagination and Dreams

by Lisa Vandiver
(Savannah Tn)

I get my inspiration to write simply from my head, my imagination, and my dreams, when I can recall them.

I may be in the middle of housework, or simply playing with my daughter when some thought or image comes into my head, and when that occurs, I quickly write it down on a sticky note or whatever is handy, and then go back to it later and work from that note to develop it.

I also use my past experiences and travels to develop story lines.

I also do as much homework on things as possible to improve my craft of writing.

I am well aware of the fact that although I've written poems and short stories since childhood, I am no expert in the business world of writing, so I try to glean as much as possible from workshops, other experienced writers from their blogs, and other writing communities.

Unlock My Inspiration

by Gillian Alberts
(Watford Ont.)

My creative writing comes from the people and things around me, it comes from the music that lies inside of me and the dreams I wish for in the night. My writing style is different when I write I can just look at the paper with a pen in hand and just write. I can take the reader though the clouds to a Island of dreams of a cave of endless fears. If I get stuck when I'm writing then I close my eyes and dream of the place that I am writing about and when I open my eyes the words just flow. And my true inspiration for me is friends and the love that they have unlocked from their hearts.

Inspired by a love song

by L. Banks
(Indiana)

Sometimes, while listening to music I become inspired to write a story to the song, lyric or verse. I'll create a title, then characters from the music I'm listening to. Love songs always puts me in the mood to write. My imagination runs wild when I listen to the emotion envoking oldies. The tear-jerkers inspire me the most.

Experience

by Andrew
(Ithaca, NY)

Imagine this: You're standing at the top of a two-hundred foot tall cliff. You look over the edge and realize how far up you are. You stagger backwards, and inadvertently break the ledge you are standing on. You plummet down, sure that you will die.

While you might not have the same scene in your story, you might have something different that you hope never to experience. None of us want to fall off a cliff, but to write about it, you should probably know a little about the feelings of it. From the situation above, think of an idea of something that might feel close to the same (without dying, of course). A roller coaster probably comes to mind.

I came to a conclusion a little while ago that in order to write about something, you need to have an experience like it. There are exceptions, like breaking an arm or leg. No one wants to purposely inflict pain on themselves, so you can just remember the worst pain you have felt and write about that.

If you're not much of a roller coaster person (or whatever you're thinking of) than ask someone you know who has had that experience and find out what it felt like or what they were thinking. I find this tip particularly useful and I hope it helps you.

Connect the dots

by Arjun Bhatia
(India)

Select the beginning and ending of a story. You may have a few other incidents as markers along the way and then workout the story stringing all of these pieces together.

Photography and Dreamweaving

by A. Shirah

I love taking photos- of my toddler nephew and especially of nature. I live in the country, but love urban settings too. When I'm taking pictures of scenes that speak to me, I later look at the pictures and get a writing idea from the location, or something about the lighting or the subject I was capturing.

It's calming and opens up my imagination. I look at the picture and let my mind take me away to a fantasy world and suddenly I get a character idea, or even at times an entire story idea.

Another place I get a lot of writing ideas is from my dreams. I get little sleep, but when I do, I experience highly vivid dreams. They play out like a movie in my head and I can live through an entire story idea while sleeping. I wake up and quickly write or type everything I saw, everything I remembered about the characters, the story line, etc. And before I know it, I have forty pages of material sitting in front of me.

Use all 5

by Gillian
(Atlanta Georgia )

Stop trying to explain how something looks; try to say how it sounds, smells, tastes, and/or feels!

Dream whilst awake

by CNR

Well I'd suggest NOT checking too much on the internet for ideas because you'll just hear/read the same thing over and over again and since I always turn to the internet for ideas I know just how annoying/intensely frustrating that is. I suggest lying flat on your back on the couch or bed, close your eyes and focus on your breathing. make sure the room's quiet and you're alone or nothing'll work. Now imagine the part of your story you're writing and just let it flow... or, if you're starting a story, do the same thing but just let your mind wander. If you prefer the outdoors, go find yourself a patch of grass and lie down (either in the shade of a tree or warm sunlight, either is inspiring). It's just like dreaming only you're awake, or daydreaming yet your eyes are closed and you're lying down... if you get the gist? Hopefully you'll get an idea, if not, I'm sure there's a million and two ways of curing writer's block.

ps, i'm only 14 yrs ongoing 15 later this year so sorry if this is a little simple (still young so don't know much, plus i'm blonde ^_^) plus i'm only doing this because i found it whist trying to cure my own writer's block ^_^ LOL! tata!

A Story Worth Dancing About

by shariykah
(virginia)

when I started writing stories,I remember sitting on the computer with my notebook,listening to my favorite songs on youtube,one day I was listening to my favorite song of all time SOMETHING TO DANCE FOR BY ZENDAYA COLEMAN from shake it up, suddenly I got my inspiration to write a novel called BORN TO DANCE,later I listened to a song called RISE BY THE MCCCLAIN SISTERS,which gave me an idea for my next novel called MIRACLES. If you can't think of a good story, pop your favorite CD in or your headphones and close your eyes,I assure you you'll have a wonderful story you'll want to dance about.

Watch the News -- More Ideas

by Irina
(Romania)

Even though I don't make a living out of my writing, my job requires me to create unique, engaging content for my boss. All is well when you are only creating a dozen of articles per year, but you can easily run out of inspiration when you are trying to crank out dozens of articles per week.

Under these circumstances, I have discovered a great way of getting past the blog writer's block, which I am sure will be useful for all the readers of this website.

Basically, it expands on your great "Watch the news" tip, diminishing the amount of work that is required and allowing you to get highly relevant ideas. The idea is to set up Google alerts for each phrase that might be of interest. Just do a Google search and you will notice that you can also set up alerts for the search terms that you find to be useful as inspiration starters.

Once you've set your alerts up, you are going to receive dozens of emails daily, thus helping you keep the creative juices flowing.

Another tip I use is to look at things, articles, people that don't have anything in common with my line of work and strive to determine how they would be useful or serve as an inspiration for my writing. As an example, I write blog posts for Thrifty Rent a Car on a regular basis. I was checking out a book about etiquette, the other day, and all of a sudden I thought about writing a "car rental etiquette" article. As you can probably guess, my boss loved the idea and the article is now posted on the blog.

These are just two tips but I am sure that your readers can come up with more interesting ideas.

Don't Anger A Mystery Writer

by Peg Russell
(Murphy, NC)

Because mystery writers are always looking for victims, it is best not to anger one.

To illustrate, once at a local genealogy conference, one of the state officers was very rude to me at the registration desk, in front of seven or eight of us. When our president offered to speak to the committee, I just said, "No. Don't worry. I'll take care of it."

In my next short story, a body was discovered under the banquet table at a genealogy conference. The fictional character had an uncanny resemblance to the rude woman.

A slimy person where I worked was murdered in two short stories, and a man who threatened to run a big machine through our forest died a fictional death because he insisted he could identify mushrooms.

My short story, "Dragon Slayer," just won the gold medal for Senior Games/SilverArts Literary Arts.

When asked where I got the idea, I answered, "from a class." No need to explain that the victim had been the pompous class teacher.

Read or Watch TV

by analogueAssassin
(FL)

Ever seen something and said, "What if this happened?" or, "This would have worked better"? Don't just say it. Prove it. Even writing the dreaded and underrated fanfiction is writing practice. Or maybe it could inspire you to do something new, completely your own. (But, be careful not to plagiarize anything.)