How does a writer pick which idea to go with? Or decide which one will work? Or even come up with an idea to begin with?

Staring at a blank page, wanting to write and feeling blocked is a horrible feeling. But there are ways to get those ideas flowing and take them from initial concept to a fully-realised skeleton or structure for a story.

Here’s how I generate ideas or flesh out that snippet of something that I think I might want to take further.

Ideally, this would be a beautifully smooth, linear process. However, the reality is a constant hopping back and forth between all of the stages, repeatedly tweaking, refining and re-calibrating.

Even when I’ve moved to the actual writing of the narrative, hopping back up to these birds’ eye levels can be really useful if I’m getting bogged down in the detail or need to refresh on where I’m going.

Brainstorming: Character or Plot?

Both go hand-in-hand. However, personally, I find it easiest to start with the lens of character and jot down a quick mind map:

what are their flaws
what/who they’re in conflict with

This is the engine of the narrative, which will keep the story flowing and the reader turning pages. Only once I have a sense of character and what they’re frustrated by, do I start thinking about genre labels and larger, more engineered plot structures.

If they’re bothered by x, what further things would be fun to chuck their way:

structural
ideological
environmental
inter-personal (main character and other characters)
intra-personal (main character and themselves)

And how does this relate to the world they’re in? What might change if that world was different?

Stress-test the character. What kind of decisions do they make when faced with challenges? What would difficult for them? How well are they adapated to the scenarios that you’re spitballing? And what would keep them going through it all?

3 Sentence Outline

Having gone large, with as many ideas as possible, the challenge is now to tightly focus and articulate the core of those scenarios for a three line summary:

who
what (is the main thing that) happens
what changes as a result

Brief

This is a quick outline of how an idea relates to what’s already out there, both similarities and differences.

Similarities can help shape an idea of what readers are out there and who it might appeal to.
Differences are how your idea can feel fresh and subvert conventions or tropes.

Moodboarding

Aka an excuse to hit up Pinterest.

Regardless of genre, non-fiction included, a concrete idea of the look, feel and tone is super useful for establishing consistent writing.

However, it’s a particularly useful tool for fantasy, sci-fi and historical fiction writers. Readers here are specifically looking for immersion into unfamiliar worlds and moodboarding helps set that initial frame of reference, which can be supported later by more detailed research.

Story Grid’s Foolscap Method