Last night I was talking to a friend, and they asked me how I come up with all of my story ideas. I thought it would make for a fun post. I told them usually when I’m in the shower, driving on the freeway, or when I’m about to go to bed are the most frequent times… Why is life so cruel?! Ideas don’t just come out of nowhere though. I mean sometimes they’ll pop up into my mind, but generally the best ideas come to you when you have your mind on something specific.

I like to write sci-fi, so I’ll typically think of things I’d like to know more about. Could time travel really work? If you were sent through a teleportation device, is what comes out on the end really you? Is extraterrestrial life out there, and what is it really like? One story that comes to mind is about the future of dating. I had been online dating at the time, and I began to wonder what the future of that would be like in 15 – 20 years. Once you have that question in your mind all sorts of things will come at you. Researching and brainstorming can help immensely once you have a basic idea. Honestly, the idea is the most important part. Once you have that, a flood of supporting questions and ideas can come your way.

There are numerous ways to come up with a good idea for a story. They come best from a passion and the urge to want to know more about something, or to see something come to fruition. There are a plethora of things to write about. You might want to know how to properly protect yourself during a zombie apocalypse, or you might want to know the intimate details of the life of Albert Eintstein, or you may just want to rewrite the “Fantastic 4” in a vision of your own. If you’re not the idea generator that you want to be, than you can always create an adaptation of a comic book or novel that you love. That’s the beauty of this industry. We can create and share the stories we love. Ideas are not hard to come by, and if you put your mind on it there is always an interesting story to tell. I also believe that if you write something that you are truly interested in and passionate about that there will be an audience out there just waiting to see it. There are an infinite amount of ideas waiting in that brain of yours just waiting to burst out. Let them run wild.