Sometimes it helps to defer this important task to another time. A break allows us to gain necessary distance from our piece. A good way to check grammar and spelling is to read a piece back to front. Otherwise our eye tends to skip over mistakes without alerting us. You can use a free account at Grammarly to help you with your spelling. Now your piece is nearly finished. To make sure it is the best it can be, complete two last tasks: print out the piece and then read it out loud.
Make sure you have a pen handy. You will notice things you wish to change and can make notes. Zen Power Writing means writing with a calm and unified mind.
Most writing problems are based on brawls between the Creator and the Editor. When you keep these two aspects of writing separate, it will boost your creativity and bring ease to your writing. Mary Jaksch is best known for her exceptional training for writers at WritetoDone.
Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab. After logging in you can close it and return to this page. Related Posts. About the author. Latest posts. Tips For Writers. How to Write Stories. Become a Top Blogger. Close dialog. The truth is, ideas are everywhere. You just have to pay attention and train yourself to see an idea in what others see as just a normal part of every day life. Here are fifty-three sources of ideas to get you started. Good writers read widely.
A passage in a book, a fact, a line of dialogue, or an unresolved situation can give you an idea for your own work. Movies are more visual than books, but the same idea applies. You may find an idea in something that the filmmakers left unresolved, or in a fact presented in a documentary. Magazines exist for almost every interest and hobby. They are packed with facts, statistics, interesting pictures, sordid tabloid gossip, and boring trade secrets.
Any of this can be fodder for your work. Like magazines, blogs are full of all kinds of stories and information. Read ones that interest you, but also take the time to scan some that are outside of your interests so you learn something new and unexpected. People are fascinating. They do strange things and all you have to do is sit in a public place and watch them. Again, read forums that reflect your interests, but also read some that are completely new to you.
A good lyric or arrangement can give you an idea. Or maybe you start to wonder about the artist who wrote the song, or the drummer who can drum like no one you ever heard before. At the very least, music can set a mood that may make it easier for you to think of new ideas.
Chill out and let your brain do the work. There are plenty of books and websites that offer up brief prompts or situations to get you going.
One jumps up and points at the other and starts shouting. Art is inspiring in two ways. Just being in the presence of creativity and mastery can get you thinking of things you want to do.
You can also use the art as a prompt. For example, if you see a painting of peasants fleeing their homes, pick one of the peasants and finish his or her story. Too often, though, we tune them out. Travel opens your eyes to how other people live and new places. Exercise relaxes your mind and gives you time to think. If you exercise outside, you can combine some nature watching with your exercise. Or just tune it all out and let your subconscious surprise you. Some people crumble under deadlines, but others thrive.
True story: I once won a short story contest with a story I wrote the night before the deadline. I was stumped for a while but then I just started with the first crazy thing that came into my head. Your writing colleagues may be able to help you come up with an idea, or the act of simply hanging out with them may generate an idea.
Hearing how other people experience the book may give you an idea or a new way of seeing the material that can be spun off into your own work. Read the ads, the comics, and the lifestyle section, as well. You never know when something will hit you. Also, if your library has old newspapers on microfilm, trawl through those. Televised news can also be a source of ideas.
Everything from the headlines to the anchors themselves becomes fair game. Just remember to keep the journal private. Write about two people who are physically unable to be awake at the same time. Write about a contract killer literally haunted by his first hit.
Write about a prophet who knows the exact day, time, and occurrence of his death years in advance. Write about two people who dream about each other before they actually meet.
Write from the perspective of a person in the year Write from perspective of a mythological siren stuck on the rocky shore of an ocean, trying to lure sailors to their deaths.
Write from the perspective of a family pet whose fate is decided when its owners split up. Write from the perspective of a different gender when subjected to explicit sexual objectification. Write from the perspective of an inanimate object in nature, like a rock or the wind. Write from the perspective of someone with a chronic but not fatal illness diabetes, OCD, Lyme disease, etc.
Write from the perspective of a fed-up guardian angel whose designated human is prone to self-sacrificial acts. Find a small object in your junk drawer stapler remover, chewed-up pen cap, paperweight, etc and write about how it could be used as a weapon to kill.
Imagine you have to hide documents essential to national security somewhere in your office or bedroom and write a story about wherever you think is the best place. Open a book in your office, turn to a random page, blindly point to a word, and use it as the very first word of your story. Find a photo of yourself and write a narrative about the photographer in that moment.
Pick a room in your house and recount a story, real or fictional, about how a particular object in that room came to be there. Mentally or physically, if you want to rearrange all the furniture in your office or bedroom and write about how that changes the overall mood of the room. Search your coat pockets for old recipes, notes, or trinkets and write a story centered around something you find.
If you find nothing, write about why you empty your pockets so frequently. Pick a small item from your desk drawer and write about a character who carries it around as a talisman.
Take a familiar scene from a book and rewrite it, adding yourself in as a character spectator, narrator, background figure, etc. Reset a scene from a book in a drastically different time period.
Write a different story using the same title as a familiar book. Write a story using only words found in the first and last sentences of each chapter of a book. Write about a group of truckers who all frequent the same truck stops and form a book club for when they see each other again. For instance, you could ride a bicycle through every state in the US, in one year or attempt to break a world record then share the experiences and lessons learned with your readers.
This works particularly well for niche topics. Once you have built up a quality library of posts, you can repackage them into a book. Philip Sandifer is a fan of British sci-fi show, Doctor Who. Tara Gentile has also had a lot of success with this approach, and teaches the technique in her self-publishing clas s. Whether you plan on going the traditional publisher route, or self-publishing a book on Amazon, this is one of the best paths toward writing a book over a more realistic period of time without undue pressure.
Did you know that one in four Americans ages listened to a podcast last month? In fact, according to Jay Baer of Convince and Convert with an assist from Edison Research , the same number of Americans listen to podcasts each month, as use Twitter.
One of the most popular podcast formats is to invite an interesting guest onto your show and interview them for your audience. We talk a lot about how to deploy this book validation strategy in How to Write and Publish an eBook with Tara Gentile.
If the thought of writing a full-length novel is too intimidating, then one very real option is to break your book into smaller chunks that you publish one at a time. You would be in good company if you did, Charles Dickens wrote The Pickwick Papers , his very first novel, as a series of short stories in the 19th century.
With easy-to-use blogging platforms, the Internet now makes this a very easy task. Your friends are already a captive audience. Ask them what they like reading about, chances are there are more people out there who have similar tastes. Write your book imagining that your friends are your target readers. While it may be challenging to remember to write down the reason for every burst of laughter, it could very well provide you with a rich source of material for your next piece of writing.
Of course, you might be embarrassed about what makes you laugh most, and it may not be politically correct. However, the more outlandish or embarrassing the story, the more likely you are to attract an engaged audience for your book idea. Maybe it was your best school teacher, youth leader, business advisor, or simply an older friend or family member. Gratitude is contagious, and this format makes for an incredibly empowering book idea.
Do you live in an interesting, vibrant city? People love to hear stories about interesting people in fascinating places. This book idea is particularly compelling if you already have skill at using a camera.
Have you been into an Urban Outfitters recently? There is a huge demand for visually stimulating books featuring beautiful urban photography and stories explaining the tale behind the images. People love to learn more about their hobbies. Whether you are a cake decorator, an ice skater or a fly fisherman, there is potential for you to share your knowledge with others who have the same interests.
As a freelance content marketer by trade, I can sit down and write for hours in ridiculous detail about something I recently learned. Quite often you can even sell hobby-related books to people who do not otherwise read often. If you have a good music collection, perhaps you could choose to write about the songs they have released, possibly looking at the messages behind them.
Alternatively, you could examine some song lyrics, and see if these can inspire you to tell a tale. Uncovering a correlation between positive social changes in that time period and the positive music that rose in popularity would undoubtedly stir up a readership. Most of us have built up a wealth of life experiences.
Many books have been written by people telling tales from within the industry in which they work. Have you been working in a job long enough to build up a series of anecdotes that might interest or amuse potential readers?
Discuss any major problems or issues that you can identify within your industry and thoughtfully propose new solutions. This will be particularly useful if you can come up with practical and cost-effective solutions to the challenges other businesses in your space are facing, and will help you position yourself as an expert, one of the major reasons people decide to write a book in the first place.
And they do so for good reason, the results of sharing stories of random acts of kindness can be so inspiring that others around the world are compelled to follow in kind.
While newspapers thrive largely on bad news, there is still a huge demand by people to learn about selfless acts and be reminded that good people are out there.
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