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Nothing Ever Happens On 90th Street (Paperback) by Roni Schotter (Author) and Kyrsten Brooker (Illustrator) Find out how one author gets ideas sitting on a boring street.
Scholastic Guide: Writing Stories by David Harrison
Where Do Ideas Come From?
For some writers, the idea is the easy part. They have long lists of ideas for stories, more than they can ever write. Other writers can write a story very easily if someone else gives them the idea for their story. The best writers know how to get their own story ideas, and then to turn the ideas into stories.
Imagination
One way to get ideas is to get used to having a crazy imagination. You can teach yourself to have an imagination by playing games. Put something in front of you--anything at all. Think up ten ways to use the item that isn't usual. For instance, long ago, someone looked at an ordinary rug and imagined what would happen if the rug could fly. Now lots of stories have magic carpets in them, but someone had to imagine the idea first. Every day, try to think up a new or funny way to use an ordinary item.
What If...
Another way to get story ideas is to play "What if." Write those words at the top of your paper. (Use colored paper if you want.) Then make a list of what-if questions. Keep the list in a notebook and add to it as often as possible. What if you heard something tapping at your door and when you opened it, an elephant was standing there? What if your cat suddenly learned to talk? What if you found a magic rock? What if you woke up one morning and could fly? When you need an idea for a story, pull out your What-if list and see if one of the questions would make a fun story.
More Places to Get Story Ideas
Some writers get story ideas from real life. You can write about something that really happened, adding in actual dialogue (conversation) and other things that make it sound like a story. You can also start with a real event and then add pretend things to it. Be sure to let people know it's fiction if you do that. Fiction is a story that never happened. You will probably want to change the names and change the details, too. That way you won't embarrass anyone. It is never right to hurt someone's feelings with a story you wrote.
Some writers get ideas from other books. You have to be careful if you do this. If you write the same story, or practically the same story as someone else and call it yours, you will get into a lot of trouble. It's called plagiarism. You can take the basic idea, though, and change it totally into your own story with all new characters and adventures. For instance, perhaps you read the story of Cinderella. You decide you don't like the way that story went, but you know a better story you could tell about a poor orphan girl who is hated by her family. Perhaps your new orphan is called Cassandra and lives in a mobile home in Arizona and wants to be a dancer instead of a princess. Instead of Prince Charming, she meets a man who loves to dance, too, and they write a ballet and go on to become famous. Your story isn't a bit like Cinderella, except that both girls were sad orphans and met a handsome man. You didn't tell the story of Cinderella. You told a totally new story that was inspired by Cinderella. Cinderella was just the starting point. The way to make sure it is your story is to put the old story into one sentence: "Cinderella is a sad orphan whose step-family hates her." Then write a new sentence about a new girl. Except for that one little sentence, nothing else is the same.
Sometimes listening will get you a great idea. If you sit very quietly and don't fidget, people will forget you're there. People tend to forget quiet children. Have a notebook handy and when you hear an interesting sentence, write it down. It might be a story later. For instance, one day I was sitting by a pool. A young girl and a woman, who was probably her grandmother, walked by. The girl said, "Don't worry. They'll never find it. I hid it really well." They walked on, but I picked up my notebook and wrote down the sentence. All day, I imagined what they had hidden. It was probably something boring, like chocolate, but when you're wrting a story, you'll have them hiding something really exciting.
Ideas are all around you. Once you get used to looking for them, you'll have more than you know what to do with!
Most princess books have the princess kidnapped by dragons and getting rescued. The author of these books had the great idea to mix it up. In her stories, a princess is captured by dragons and likes working for the King of the Dragons so much she refuses to be rescued! Read them to see how the author carries out the idea. They are a lot of fun. I have all of them.