No story ideas? - TRY THIS

this week a story idea came to me from a place that i never expected it to you're a writer so you'll probably know this feeling you want to write something but you've got no story or the stories that you do have just aren't doing it for you what little time you have to write in is passing you by and you're not getting anything down that was me a few days ago i was looking for a story and when one arrived it didn't come from where i thought for once it didn't take hours of concentration the idea came to me so what did i do to make that happen intense research a long contemplative walk browsing through old story fodder no i scrolled through tiktok i know what you're thinking but bear with me i promise you this is valuable for writers tik-tok and places like it can be fantastic sources of story inspiration if you know where to look so in this video i'm going to show you how one single tick tock inspired me to write a micro fiction story and how you can build a breeding ground for your own story ideas easily and for free [Music] you might be wondering exactly what kind of tiktok could have brought me an idea good enough to write about after all tick tock is mostly cat videos or dance routines depending which side of it you're on i actually almost scrolled straight past it but something about that video stopped me in my tracks let's see if it has the same effect on you i've had to change the song because of copyright but here's the video that prompted my story [Music] seems fairly simple and it is so i started thinking to myself why did this bring me a story so i looked at it again and the first thing that struck me about it as it might have done for you was the colour of the sky that's the thing that stopped me scrolling then i read the caption the first thing you want to see when you enter the afterlife it's just one of many tick tock trends and video prompts i suppose but that combined with the woodsy aesthetic made me think of a journey and that was all it took for a story to begin to form before i tell you how i translated the inspiration from that video into a story i want to read you the story itself it's 100 word micro fiction see if you can spot how it relates to the tick tock it's called fires i will return one day and everything will be as it was before we saw the smoke on the horizon before we hiked to the peak and saw fires in town and lost each other in the trees nothing moved as i called for you the wind had no strength to move the trees against a glowing amber sky i will return one day and you'll be home again the air will be clear then the trees will sway and whisper though the sky will still be amber we'll find each other again and everything will be as it was hopefully you can see how the story came about and the reason i ended up happy with what i'd written is because i feel like it carries an emotional weight despite how short it is so here's my method for turning inspiration into story and it's something that i think any writer could replicate stories to me have always been comprised of two separate elements the action or events so what takes place during the story and the message or the meaning of the story when the idea for any story comes to me it'll be from one of these two elements either i'll see some actions taking place or i kind of feel the point i want to make with the message the reason this tick tock led me so quickly to a story because it did both the action and events the character returns home or enters the afterlife the meaning or the message something is lost that can't be regained at least not in this life that's roughly the message anyway the fact that both of those elements came to me at the same time meant that i had a detailed picture of what i wanted the story to be in my mind's eye and that made writing the story easier if i just had the actions and events then i could have written the story using only that but it would have been a bit like this i rushed through the trees frantically shouting your name but you didn't reply there was smoke in the air which is fine but i don't really think it carries much emotional weight and if i'd only had the meaning and message side the story would have been too abstract and hard to visualize for a reader having both elements present is what i think makes readers feel something when they're reading and that's surely what we're all aiming for as writers well that method's all well and good when you've actually found the inspiring thing but how do i do that does this mean i have to download tick-tock no in truth it really doesn't have to be a tick-tock at all inspiration for me is actually just a combination of two common things and you can find them in a million places the two things that generally prompt that storytelling part of my creative mind are music and images where text-based story prompts can be too specific to bring stories to me music and images are far more open the breeding ground for stories in my opinion should be vast and open and it should be filled with things that appeal to your own personal brand of creativity that's what music and images do for me they can work separately but as i've now discovered they're most effective when i combine them that's what happened when i saw the tick tock it was a combination of the image on screen and the music behind it that combined like a flint and steel and created a spark in my mind so now if i'm short on ideas i can put on a playlist of music that makes me feel creative like soundtracks or instrumental stuff and i can find images or videos to watch while i'm listening and combine the two you can use whatever kind of music you like but for the video side they actually have a secret tip it's as simple as knowing what to look for and where to look for it what i do is i search stock footage sites for stuff like drone footage to find ideas for settings and when i combine it with music i get something like this [Music] which is way more inspiring to me than a text-based story prompt hence more ideas that come easier give it a try yourself and once you have your story watch this video for some ideas about how to bring your story to life as always thank you so much for watching and happy writing

Channel: Kieren Westwood

Views: 8,256

Keywords: writers block, story ideas, how to get story ideas, how to beat writers block, writers block music, create story ideas, writers block solution, easy story ideas, free story ideas, story prompts, free story prompts, write a story, first story ideas, how to come up with story ideas, story inspiration, inspiration for stories, inspiration for story writing, inspiration for story ideas, short inspirational story, how to write a story, how to think of story ideas, story writing

Id: yFYdCJE3iDk

Length: 6min 32sec (392 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 20 2022