When you sit down with a book, are you hoping for a particular type of story experience? This is a common desire, since readers—know it or not—are drawn towards specific genres and genre conventions.

From a writer’s perspective, knowing these genre “flavors” and how to create them to satisfy reader expectations is key to writing stories that will keep readers coming back.

In addition, understanding the genre conventions and obligatory scenes helps you push yourself farther and reach higher to innovate and twist what’s been done before, astonishing readers . . . and even yourself!

How to Write for Suspense Genres

Something amazing has happened to me in my writing so many times that I’ve come to expect it rather than be surprised by it. It’s this:

I’ve planned, plotted, and written most of my story and I’m nearing the finish line. I have a pretty solid idea about how the story is going to end, but I let my mind wander a bit and a new twist for the finale leaps into view. Usually, all it requires is a few tweaks in the previously written parts to set it up, and I’ve added a whole dimension to the story.

Thriller readers expect an extra twist like this before the story’s conclusion. A false ending is one of the genre’s obligatory scenes. If I leave the false ending out of my thriller, I leave readers unsatisfied at the end of my book and they may not even realize why.

They simply won’t move on to my next book, and I’ve lost a reader. I never want that to happen. And you don’t, either.

So, let’s dig into what readers are looking for when they pick up a book in the suspense genres.

Note: I’ve drawn a large portion of this information from Shawn Coyne, author of The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know.  

Mystery Genre Emotions

According to Shawn Coyne, the core emotion readers want to feel—the reason they make mysteries and crime stories their choice of genre—is intrigue. They want to be challenged with a stimulating puzzle and get a chance to solve it while exploring the lives and relationships of engaging characters in interesting settings.

The puzzle usually involves at least one murder, which can also evoke feelings of fear and concern for the characters. And the story’s resolution should bring a feeling of fulfillment or surprise, as well as a pleasurable release of tension when the criminal is brought to justice.

If the mystery is not a “whodunit” murder, but instead a caper or heist, the reader may cheer for the perpetrators and feel anxiety over whether they’ll get away with it or not.

You can help generate these emotions for your mystery readers by creating characters they can care about. It’s also critical to design an intriguing puzzle with clues and red herrings, delivering all the information in the right order for readers to solve the case or experience t

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Mystery Genre Conventions

A genre convention is something readers expect to find in a story from a particular genre. If the element doesn’t make an appearance in the story, readers will be disappointed without really understanding why, so it’s important to include these conventions in your mystery story.

The MacGuffin

The MacGuffin in a mystery is something pursued by the characters, the Object of Desire, and it drives the story forward as the pursuit unfolds. It can be something tangible, like treasure or a coded message—an example is the Maltese Falcon in the story by that name. Or it might be something intangible, such as secret knowledge or proof of innocence, like Roger Thornhill’s quest in North By Northwest.

In a murder mystery, the MacGuffin is most often the solution to the crime.

Clues and Red Herrings

These are the pieces of information gained by the sleuth that send them along a line of investigation. Clues, if interpreted correctly, lead to the solution while red herrings lead to dead ends or false conclusions. For more information about clues and red herrings and how to create and plant them in your story, check out my Ultimate Guide to Clues and Red Herrings.

Antagonist making it personal

As the protagonist sleuth gets closer to the truth, the more uncomfortable the criminal becomes until, at some point, the antagonist makes it personal. This can mean anything from interfering in the investigation and planting false clues to mislead the protagonist, to attempting to “bump off” the protagonist altogether.

A shapeshifter

Someone, somewhere along the line, is exposed as a shapeshifter, hypocrite, or traitor. This is a secondary character who says one thing and does another, impacting the protagonist’s progress in solving the puzzle.

The betrayal doesn’t have to be momentous, and the shift involved doesn’t have to be for the worse. An apparent enemy can prove to be an ally, for instance.

A clock

While a mystery doesn’t apply the same kind of time pressure as a Thriller, without some kind of a clock moving it forward, the story can drift and get flabby. Limiting time is an effective way to keep a mystery story fresh, active, and moving toward a resolution. It’s something readers and writers alike have come to depend upon in the mystery genre.

Clear threat of escalating danger

This danger does not have to be physical. It can imperil the sleuth’s credibility, sanity, or dignity.  Or the threat may impact something else significant. This escalating threat raises the stakes, keeps the reader emotionally involved, and helps drive the story forward.

These six conventions of the crime genre, which includes mystery, are set forth by editor Rachelle Ramirez in her article, How to Write a Crime Story.

Let’s move on now to the obligatory scenes.

Obligatory Scenes of the Mystery Genre

When crafting a mystery story, be sure to include these key scenes in your planning. Without them, your mystery will likely fail to resonate with fans of the crime genre. These iconic moments don’t each need their own scene but may be combined as the story progresses.

A crime or the threat of a crime

According to both Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, long-acknowledged authorities on the subject, this is the definition of a mystery story. It must have a crime or the plausible threat of a crime. Usually, this is what occurs in the Inciting Incident of the story.

An investigation

The sleuth, your story’s protagonist, must actively pursue a solution to the crime and bring the culprit to justice, or enact an alternate, satisfying resolution. If the story is a caper or heist, the plan must unfold and lead to the capture or escape of the thieves.

Speech in praise of the antagonist

This is rarely something as formal as an actual speech. Instead, it entails a character pointing out the antagonist’s prowess or apparent superiority in some way. Perhaps as a warning to the sleuth or a secondary character’s admiration of the antagonist.

Protagonist discovers antagonist’s MacGuffin

At some point in the story, the sleuth comes to understand the criminal’s core pursuit—what he’s really after. For example, the motive behind the crime may become clear, representing a big jump ahead in reaching the solution.

Initial strategy fails

Most successful stories begin with a character, in a setting, with a problem. From there, they go into a series of try/fail cycles until the ultimate “try” of the story’s climax. So, the initial attempt must fail, forcing the protagonist to change strategies and try again. And again.

Core Event in the climactic scene

In a mystery, the core event involves exposure of the criminal and revealing the solution to the crime—explaining what happened and how the truth was discovered.

In the case of a caper or heist, the core event is the enactment of the plan—putting it all into action and moving toward completion or failure.

Criminal brought to justice

The final obligatory scene, which may or may not happen during the story’s climax, is bringing the criminal to justice or an equally satisfying resolution.

In the case of a caper or heist, this is where the protagonist either succeeds and gets away or is caught.

Remember that readers want to feel intrigued by the mystery. Be sure to present a challenging, interesting puzzle and deliver all the pieces to the reader for a satisfying conclusion.

For more about Mysteries, see How to Write a Mystery Novel.

Emotions of the Suspense Genre

Readers of suspense read to experience the feeling of . . . suspense. That uncertainty that comes with knowing there’s something going on below the surface but only getting hints as to what it might be.

These are the stories that mess with your mind.

The suspense genre teeters on the border between mystery and horror. It involves piecing together—not necessarily a crime, as in Mystery—a bigger picture of a hidden reality. You’ll often see these sorts of books categorized as psychological thrillers, but I class them differently since thrillers demand an unrelenting fast pace, whereas suspense can move along at a variety of paces.

For example, one of the most enduring suspense stories ever written is Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca. Fraught with suspense and an underlying sense of peril, it nevertheless moves at a leisurely pace through the dim halls of Manderley.

Remember that Alfred Hitchcock was the Master of Suspense and you’ll have a fair idea of the appeal suspense lovers are looking for. To help you develop this kind of emotion in your readers, work on creating a great atmosphere for suspense. Focus also on techniques for pulling readers into the setting and foreshadowing events. “ The suspense genre teeters on the border between mystery and horror. Learn more about its genre conventions in this article. Tweet thisTweet

Suspense Genre Conventions

Because Mysteries, Thrillers, and Suspense are closely related, they share many Conventions and Obligatory Scenes. In this section, I’ll reiterate where necessary, but focus on the difference between genre conventions.

Menacing atmosphere

Setting is crucial in a Suspense story. A richly drawn, sinister atmosphere is key to creating the mood and tension suspense readers enjoy. The setting can be thick with foreboding or superficially bright with unsettling indicators that all is not as it seems.

A secret plot

The unknown antagonist is brewing something diabolical beneath the surface of the story that the protagonist seeks to uncover.

Don’t know who to trust

The hero of the story will be surrounded by secondary characters, but she’ll have doubts about which of them she can rely on and which might be trying to harm her. This is the primary dilemma of the suspense novel.

It’s personal

In a mystery or a thriller, the antagonist makes the hero his target at some point in the story’s progression. In a suspense story, it’s always personal. In most cases, the hero has been the target from the start.

Clues and Red Herrings

As in a mystery, the protagonist will gather information to help her form an accurate picture of what’s going on. In a mystery, the clues generally help solve a crime that’s already happened. In a suspense, the pieces lead the hero to discover an evil plan in progress or that will hatch in the imminent future.

A Shapeshifter

Like a mystery, the suspense story will feature at least one shapeshifter—a character who seems to be one thing yet proves to be something else. Remember, the shapeshifter doesn’t have to go from good to bad but may instead be someone the protagonist thought was against her who turns out to be an ally.

High Stakes

The risk to the protagonist must be real and significant—usually hinging on life or death. And those stakes should rise as the story progresses. The scope of that risk—meaning the consequences of the hero failing to discover the truth—most often keeps to the lower end of the scale, affecting only the protagonist or a small circle of contacts.

Obligatory Scenes of the Suspense Genre

These scenes represent the must-have moments in a suspense story. Leave them out, and you risk losing readers who sense something vital missing from your book.

Hero enmeshed in the unfolding danger

You must give your protagonist a compelling reason for being in the dangerous situation and show how they can’t turn back, crossing the point of no return.

An investigation

Your protagonist must gather information to make sense of her dilemma and formulate a plan of escape.

Initial strategy fails

As in all effective stories, once the character is in a setting with a problem, her first attempt at overcoming the problem fails and she is forced to scramble for a new plan, usually at greater risk to herself as the stakes rise.

Core Event in the climactic scene

The core event of a suspense lies in the hero exposing the big, underlying secret and destroying the evil plan or escaping its grasp. Or perhaps not. Suspense does not always have a happy ending, though readers do prefer them.

Suspended resolution

Often (but not always) in a suspense story, the ending is left up in the air, an ambiguous conclusion. Readers must decide the final outcome for themselves or remain forever suspended in uncertainty. This is in keeping with the overall unsettled, disconcerting tone of the story. And leaves possibilities open for a sequel.

For more information about what makes a Suspense story and how it differs from Mystery and Thrillers, I invite you to read How to Write a Suspense Novel.

Emotions of a Thriller

Readers dive into thrillers expecting to feel excitement, to experience danger and thrills without actual risk. They want the stimulation of traveling to far off, exotic places without leaving home, the buzz of being privy to momentous secrets, the breathless high of jumping from one narrow escape to the next while staying safe. They want an action story.

Thrillers, like crime stories, also play on a reader’s sense of justice and sanctity of life. Thrillers tend to pit bad guy against good guy and bring the good guy out on top. That is a major appeal of the thriller.

And readers want something more from thrillers—they want to know what it feels like to inhabit a particular sort of world. That’s why there are so many sub-genres of thrillers—to provide the emotions and sensations craved by readers for each milieu.

For example, in addition to the emotional appeals listed above . . .

• Espionage and Secret Agent thrillers let readers experience the thrill of international intrigue, clever tactics, and breaking the rules to achieve a crucial end goal.
• Disaster thrillers allow readers to feel the vicarious terror of panic and destruction, giving them the opportunity to speculate how they would react under such dire circumstances.
• Military thrillers give readers a chance to get down in the trenches and feel the fear, the tragedy, the intimate violence of war as well as rousing emotions of heroism and patriotism.
• Technothrillers allow readers to feel like they are insiders to safe-guarded military and technological information, like they have a Top-Secret clearance to access vital issues of national security.
• Legal thrillers bring readers into the fascinating machinations of the legal system, letting them take part in high-profile (albeit fictional) trial proceedings and feel the associated angst and prestige.
• Financial thrillers allow readers to feel the cachet of wealth and the power that comes with it, and to experience lifestyles of the rich and famous.
• Serial Killer thrillers let readers feel the brush with death and get a peek into a mind so deranged they’ll never be able to understand it.
• Medical and Bio-thrillers are terrifying on such a fundamental level that they create feelings of mortal weakness and helpless fascination.
• Political thrillers impart a strong fear factor as well, inviting the paranoia of conspiracy theories and government takeovers.
• Paranormal thrillers allow readers to be beguiled by the other-worldly and unexplainable, giving them a little chill of excitement.

You can facilitate these emotions for your readers by pulling them deep into the story setting, making sure they understand what’s at stake, providing effective and exciting action scenes, and delivering the information they need to be active players in the reading experience.

Designing cliffhangers that work is another powerful way to evoke the target emotions in your thriller readers. “ Want to learn the genre conventions for a Thriller story? Check out this article!

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Thriller Genre Conventions

You’ll notice a lot of crossover in the conventions and obligatory scenes. For this section, I heavily referenced Rachelle Ramirez’s article Secrets of the Thriller Genre.

Here are the conventions you’ll want to include in your story if you’re writing a thriller. Readers want them. Readers expect them. Don’t disappoint.

Vibrant atmosphere

The setting is a vital part of a thriller and should be portrayed in clear and specific detail, bringing it alive and making it immediately threatening.

The MacGuffin

Remember, this is the Object of Desire, what everyone is after. Nuclear codes, diamonds, cold hard cash—whatever it is, make it crucial for both antagonist and protagonist to obtain, pitting them against each other.

The Inciting Crime

The crime or threat of a crime that kicks off the story must contain some clue about the MacGuffin.

Protagonist has a special gift

There is something—a unique talent or ability—that sets the protagonist apart. His superpower. He may suppress that gift or foster it, but in the end he must unleash it to overcome the villain.

Ticking clock

The pace of a thriller is almost relentlessly fast, and the countdown is an important convention. It doesn’t have to be a literal ticking clock, but you must find some plausible way to apply the pressure of time in your thriller.

Protagonist pursues an investigation

The hero needs to be actively engaged in an effort to catch the criminal and put a stop to his dastardly plans—following up on clues and hunting or being hunted.

High stakes

Nothing less than life itself can be on the line. The lives of innocents must be at stake and depend on the hero’s victory over the antagonist.

Elements of suspense

The story must contain the elements of suspense, providing information that allows readers to predict and anticipate outcomes, heightening the emotional investment and driving the narrative.

Unyielding antagonist

In some types of stories, the bad guy can be reasoned with and possibly dissuaded from his course of action. In a thriller, that’s not the case. The villain is intent on destruction and determined that nothing will stop him.

Speech in praise of the villain

Someone, somewhere in the story, must remark on how cunning or invincible the villain is, highlighting the hero’s disadvantage and lengthening the odds.

Protagonist is the final victim

In the climactic scene, the protagonist is the last barrier between the antagonist and his goal of annihilation—he becomes the final victim and either triumph or ultimately fails.

Clear threat of escalating danger

Not only is there a danger, not only are the stakes high, but that danger must escalate and the stakes must rise in a cause-and-effect chain of events throughout the story.

The Shapeshifter

Again, the shapeshifter or hypocrite is an important part of the story, someone whose deception impacts the protagonist in a real way and usually in a vulnerable moment.

Justice or injustice prevails

In a thriller with a positive ending, the villain is brought to some sort of justice, appropriate to his crimes. In a thriller with a negative ending, the villain gets away and injustice prevails.

However, these are not the only two options: the villain can escape justice (for now) but his evil plan is destroyed. He will rise again with a new plan in the sequel.

Obligatory Scenes of the Thriller Genre

Remember, these are the scenes that will make your thriller. If you leave one out, you will break your thriller. Don’t do that.

Inciting crime indicating that a master villain is at work

The crime must have a perpetrator, leave victims in its wake, and be of such a clever or dastardly design that it must be the work of a master criminal.

Clear point of no return

There must be a point at which the protagonist can never go back to the way things were before. This scene pinpoints the moment when the hero’s world is knocked off its axis.

Initial strategy fails

The protagonist’s first attempt to foil the villain’s diabolical plan fails, setting off a try/fail cycle that escalates up to the climactic scene.

Protagonist discovers antagonist’s MacGuffin

The hero gains insight into the villain’s intentions as he discovers and comes to understand what the bad guy is ultimately pursuing.

Villain makes it personal

At some point as the story progresses, the protagonist’s efforts to obstruct the villain’s plan land him square in the bullseye. The antagonist targets the hero as his primary victim, bringing the conflict to a personal level, and the two are on a collision course for a head-to-head battle at the story’s climax.

Hero at the mercy of the villain

This is the climactic scene where the hero faces the villain at overwhelming odds and has to dig deeper than ever before to unleash her special gift—the thing that turns the tables and makes it possible for her to defeat the antagonist.

False ending

Just as the reader is catching her breath and thinking all is resolved, the antagonistic force rebounds to challenge the hero again.

For more information, check out How to Write a Thriller Novel.

Give Your Readers What They Crave

These landmark scenes will give your story what it needs to hold and satisfy readers. They help your book to resonate, making your audience happy, because those bedrock elements of story are in the reader’s DNA, bred and nurtured through years of absorbing stories.

So, use these conventions and obligatory scenes to make your story work. The trick is in innovating them so they feel fresh to the reader. Bring your own voice and creativity into the process to make that happen.

Above all, remember that readers read to feel something, and what they want to feel from the suspense genres . . . is suspense. And all its glorious offshoots—excitement, dread, anticipation, intrigue.

If you’ve followed this series of articles, The Elements of Suspense, you’ve packed your writer’s toolbox with dozens of techniques and must-have skills for grabbing readers and creating a suspenseful story. And that’s exciting!

How about you? Do you recognize these conventions and scenes in the stories you read or watch? Tell us about it in the comments.

By Joslyn Chase

Source: thewritepractice.com

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You’re a writer. You want to write a story—but for whatever reason, you’re not inspired right now. Or maybe you are, but you just can’t think of a story idea that really interests you. You need some strategies that can teach you how to come up with story ideas.

And you’d like to use these ways to come up with story ideas consistently.

Creative writing is like a muscle: use it or lose it. Coming up with ideas is part of the development of that muscle. And boy, do you have to come up with a lot of ideas if you’re going to be a short story writer.

In this article, I’m going to show you different strategies for coming up with ideas for short stories and how to train your mind to continuously come up with ideas.

Why Finding Ideas Helped Me Write Consistently

When I was first starting out, I didn’t write consistently. Partly because I didn’t know a writing habit was a necessity to be a writer, and partly because I wasn’t trying to “become” a writer at the time. But mostly I wasn’t writing consistently because I didn’t have story ideas consistently.

When I started getting my short stories published, that changed. After that first publication, I got the bug, as they say. I needed to see my words in print, and I needed to see them often. Feeding that high required me to churn out short story ideas pretty much constantly.

I’ve probably written at least a hundred short stories at this point. Not all of them are good. In fact, most of them aren’t. A lot of them didn’t make it past the first draft stage because the story idea wasn’t great and they just fell off.

But it doesn’t matter that they weren’t all winners. What matters is writing all those stories trained my brain to watch out for story ideas consistently.

It wasn’t always easy. I struggled to come up with ideas in the beginning. But as I said, writing is a muscle. It takes time to get that muscle really beefed up.

To exercise my brain, I use these six strategies. “ Have you ever struggled to come up with a brilliant story idea? Try one of these six foolproof strategies!

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6 Ways to Come Up with Short Story Ideas

Below are five of my favorite ways to come up with short story ideas. They are in two categories: active and passive.

• Active meaning you intend to write a short story and you need an idea now.
• Passive meaning an idea is not an emergency.

If you’re new to short story writing, I’d suggest focusing on the active strategies for a while. The passive strategies are what you’re really looking to master, but these will develop over time. Mastering these are how you train your brain to shoot out ideas continuously.

Remember as you look through these strategies, that the key to everything here is a notebook, a note-taking app, or something of the kind. All the ideas in the world mean nothing if you don’t remember them when it comes time to sit down and write!

1. Prompts

Strategy: Active

The most obvious way to come up with ideas for stories is to look at writing prompts. They’re everywhere. Google and you’ll find lists and lists and more lists. We have some here and we also post a couple a week on our social sites. There are prompt books, prompt games, prompt newsletters. There is no shortage of writing prompts out there. There are even story idea generators, like this one.

Want to get started now? Choose a writing prompt below and start writing!

• A middle-aged woman discovers a ghost in her house.
• A long journey is interrupted by disaster.
• A young woman falls in love with a person she’s never met in real life.
• A talented young man’s deepest fear is holding his life back.
• A young prodigy becomes orphaned.

Some writers feel like writing from a prompt won’t produce an original story, but that’s nonsense.

You’ll notice a couple of the prompts above might remind you of famous stories. That doesn’t matter! Prompts are the basic idea of a story. The writer is what makes it original.

A hundred writers given the same prompt will come up with a hundred different stories. The thing that makes a story unique is you!

2. Writing for a call

Strategy: Active

Many short story anthologies and magazines are themed, and will advertise when they are open for reading submissions. They’ll often give a specific prompt. (Again, prompts don’t mean you end up with the same story as someone else.)

Writing for one of these “calls” is a great way to get ideas for short stories. You also know exactly where you’re going to send the story when you submit, so you don’t have to spend a lot of time finding a home for it. I have more on this strategy in my How to Publish a Short Story blog series.

I’d suggest doing some research online for anthologies and magazines that publish your genre. Keep an eye on those places by signing up for their newsletter if they have one, or at least checking in to see what they’re accepting once a month.

There are also places online that do some of the work for you and gather calls for submissions across the internet. Here are a few of my favorites:

1. Horror Tree. This one isn’t just for horror! (It used to be, but they’ve exploded in the past several years and have really branched out.)
2. Submittable. If you’re not already familiar with Submittable, you will be very soon after becoming a short story writer. The basis of this company is to provide a space for anthologies, magazines, and indie presses to accept submissions. You will be dealing with them at some point when you’re getting your work out there. A few years back, they started posting calls for submissions as well.
3. The Grinder. I’ve been using this tool for years. Not only do they post calls for submissions (in a really great searchable way), but they’re also a tool for tracking your submissions.

3. People Watch

Strategy: Active OR Passive

People watching is the all-time winner for writers when trying to come up with ideas. You’ll see a lot of writers sitting around in coffee shops with their laptops. They’re not just writing; they’re spying.

Characters (and stories) don’t come from a vacuum; they come from things the writer experienced in their personal life. People, events, family life . . . it all gets stitched together to make a story.

I’ve dubbed people watching as active or passive simply because when you’re first starting out, this strategy will be more active. You’ll specifically be watching and listening to conversations in order to come up with ideas. After a while, your brain will automatically be “tuned in” to what’s around you and this will come naturally. You’ll catch a snippet of conversation walking by someone in a store and boom! Brilliant story idea.

The next time you’re out in public (or just looking out your window as people pass by), pay attention. Be present and watch your surroundings. There are tons of ideas surrounding you.

Need practice people watching? Try paying attention to these things the next time you’re in public:

• What are people wearing? Description is important, even in short stories. If you’re like me, you live in leggings and t-shirts and are totally unaware of what fashion is. I wouldn’t be able to write a teenager if I didn’t go out and see what teenagers were wearing.
• How do they act when they think no one is watching? This is by far the most amusing thing to watch out for. People are weird, let’s just leave it at that. Go see for yourself.
• How do they act when people are watching? How do they interact with each other?
• What are their mannerisms when having a conversation? You have to have action beats to break up dialogue in stories. If you want to stay away from just saying “she smiled” over and over, you’d better bone up on some other action beats.
• What are they talking about and how are they talking? I don’t want you to go over and sit with them, but try to pay attention to their conversation if you can. And don’t forget to take note of slang, dialect, and accents!

People can make a great source of inspiration if you let them!

Obviously, you can’t be taking notes over every little thing every time you’re out in public. You have things to do after all. But after a while, your mind will start to take note of things that pop out. In the beginning (or if you’re actively looking for a source of inspiration), you’ll need to pay careful attention to the things I listed above.

Eventually, you won’t have to all the time. In reality, a story idea doesn’t have to come from a “true story” you witnessed or an entire conversation you overheard. Snippets will do.

Years ago I was at a Lewis Black show and he did a bit about overhearing a snippet of conversation. He said he was passing someone who was talking to her friend and heard this:

“If it weren’t for that horse, I wouldn’t have gone to college that year.”

Now, he’s a comedian, so this inspired a good five minutes of jokes about how he couldn’t stop thinking about this. It’s been years since I’ve seen the show and I can’t stop thinking about it. The sheer amount of directions you could go with a story to explain how that sentence comes about is mindboggling.

Keep your eyes and your ears open (and a notetaking tool on hand) and you’ll get plenty of passive inspiration as you go about your day.

4. The What If Question

Strategy: Active OR Passive

The What If Question is my absolute favorite way to come up with ideas for short stories. This strategy is pretty much what it sounds like: What if X were to happen?

This is another active or passive strategy. As I’m sitting here writing this, I can actively think of things that might happen around me.

• What if an alien spacecraft landed in my backyard?
• What if someone knocked on my door?
• What if my roof caved in?
• What if I got a phone call telling me I won a prize?

This is me actively looking around in my real-life personal experience for a source of inspiration. This is me teasing a decent idea out of my mundane surroundings. I’m forcing myself to look around and come up with something that might work as a story.

The passive side of the What If Question probably already happens to you. You probably ask What If? questions naturally.

As a writer, you need to take this one step further and train yourself to pay attention when you think these things. And if this doesn’t come naturally to you, practice! Take everyday life experiences and spin them in a new direction with the What If Question.

For example, you might see someone walking along, looking at their cell phone and you think: What if they walked out into the street without realizing it? You can probably picture the outcome, right? But you also probably have those kinds of thoughts daily and don’t pay much attention to them.

Train yourself to pay attention, to bring those fleeting thoughts to the forefront of your mind and play with them.

5. Move Your Body and Don’t Think

Strategy: Passive

One thing I’ve noticed over the years is a lot of writers get ideas while taking a walk. Whether they’re blocked on a project or are just brainstorming ideas, walking seems to be the key to successfully writing. (Stephen King, to give a famous example, has said he walks several miles every day.)

I go for a walk most days. (Preferably outside, but I live in Ohio, so that’s not possible a good portion of the time.) I’ve come up with dozens of story ideas while walking. I’ve also come up with dozens of story ideas while doing yoga. There’s something about the mundane movements of your body that frees your mind to wander.

So if you want a brilliant story idea or just need to get out of a bout of writer’s block, take a hike, literally. Busy your body and turn your active mind off.

Not into exercise? I hear you. The cool thing about this strategy is you don’t necessarily have to do something super physical for it to happen. You can also do something else mundane that doesn’t require much thought.

Try one of these when you’re trying to keep your body busy and your mind off:

• Walking
• Yoga
• Chores (laundry, dishes, and gardening work great)
• Coloring
• Origami

Really anything will work as long as you’re not intaking information in the process of doing the thing.

6. Read

Strategy: Passive 

I can’t tell you how many times new writers have told me they don’t read, mostly because they don’t have time.

Here’s the thing: you can’t—I repeat CANNOT—be a writer if you don’t read.

Not only are you studying the craft just by reading, you’re getting ideas.

Sometimes you’ll be reading something and think you can do it better. Sometimes a phrase or word will trigger a brilliant story idea.

If you’re reading nonfiction books on the writing craft, you’ll often have an epiphany. If you’re reading in your genre (and you should be reading the genre you’re writing), you’ll get ideas to mash up, turn upside down, flip around, stretch out, and smoosh down. If you’re reading outside your genre, you could see a way to take a similar story and push it into your genre.

In short, read. Read everything. And then read some more.

If you’re stumped about what books to read, try Goodreads, asking your librarian for suggestions based on your favorite books, or join a book recommendation newsletter or book club. (We have one, by the way. You can sign up here.)

Ideas are everywhere

As I said at the beginning of this article, creative writing is a muscle you need to use consistently. Otherwise, it fades away. In order to use that muscle, you have to have ideas.

Coming up with ideas isn’t always easy, especially when you’re starting out. If you’re new to short story writing, start by using the active strategies above to get used to coming up with ideas. I promise, after a while, your brain will learn how to do this on its own and you’ll have too many ideas to write!

And don’t forget to carry around a notebook!

How do you come up with short story ideas? Let me know in the comments.

By Sarah Gribble

Source: thewritepractice.com

Visit us at First Edition Design Publishing

The Medium Is The Message

In 1967, Marshall McLuhan wrote a book explaining that ‘the medium is the message’. What he meant is that whatever tool we use has a big impact on the result we get. This is true for any text. How we write and how we edit greatly influences our work.

3 Media To Use To Edit Like A Pro:

1. The computer: with its built-in functions of checking grammar, spelling, punctuation, as well as the ‘editor’-function
2. ‘Read aloud’-function of the computer
3. Editing the manuscript on paper.

1. The Computer

The computer is our first go-to for editing. Editing begins with proofreading. The computer has lots of functions built into word-processing which we can and should use. They tell us about wrong punctuation, spelling mistakes, and basic grammar mistakes. If you switch on the editor-function, then you get even more. All these hints are valuable and should be going into your edit.

Sometimes they fail, however, or they just don’t get that you are using an unusual spelling as a wordplay. These built-in features are very basic. Bear in mind, that there are specific grammar apps like Grammarly which give you more refined results. But all of this is just proofreading. We need to gear up to enhance the message of our text.

2. Reading Aloud

Have the computer read your manuscript to you. If someone else reads the text, you can distance yourself from it.

1. You’ll hear what your style really sounds like to others.
2. You’ll hear the excess words, the wrong conjugations and prepositions.
3. You’ll notice if your sentence has the right ring.
4. You’ll find out if your style is distinctive and consistent, or hotch-potch.

Please fix all of that before you proceed.

3. Final Edit: Paper, Please!

The final edit should be done on paper. But what about those trees? I hear you! That’s why the first edits should be done using the computer. The paper used for the final edit is vital to your success as an author. I can prove it to you.

The Experiment

I once did an experiment with a group of journalists. They were given an article full of mistakes of any possible kind, even wicked ones like semantic and structural mistakes (those are the ones computers can’t find). They were supposed to edit the article within a given time. Half of the group edited the text on paper, the other half did it in their word-processing tool. Guess who found more mistakes.

The group using pencil and paper found about three quarters of the mistakes, the others found barely one third. The analysis of the mistakes found showed that when you edit on your computer, you’ll almost always be limited to proofreading. Semantic mistakes, breaks in register, structural problems, and plot holes are much easier to find when you edit on paper.

That does make a powerful argument for editing a manuscript on paper, doesn’t it?

Paper Has A Superpower

When you edit on paper, you can make good use of the superpower of this medium.

Before you print, prepare like this:

1. Change the font of your manuscript (for example, from Times New Roman to Arial) but don’t go lower than 12 pt. A new font will create a fresh look.
2. Lines should be double-spaced. Leave a margin on the right side, about 5-6 cm wide. This will give your notes the necessary space.
3. Make sure that scene breaks are visible. Scenes are the smallest unit of a novel or novella. Insert a blank line if needed. It’s easier to edit scene by scene.
4. Print the manuscript on white paper, one page per sheet (don’t duplex print).

Once you’ve printed the manuscript, you can set to work. Paper lets you see the big picture.

Here’s how to reap the benefits:

1. Fan out all the pages of a scene on your desk. On a computer, the readable section is usually just half a page of your manuscript.
2. Check the lengths of your paragraphs. Too short? Too long? Always the same length? Even that can be boring. Variation is key.
3. Check the white space of your manuscript. Your reader needs white space to get through the dense bits of your story.
4. Check how often a character, symbol, or leitmotif comes up. Important motifs should reoccur.
5. Repeat this with all your scenes. Check the lengths of your scenes. Your scenes can and should have different lengths (depending on their function). Extremely short or extremely long wouldn’t be good.

Finally, editing on paper even has a health benefit: when you do detect something, then your eyes can zoom in easily. It’s the zooming in and out that keeps your brain fresh and lets you spot more things to edit. Editing on a computer, your eyes tend to blink less, they get all dry and tired. Your attention span is shorter. But who wants to be tired if your master draft needs the final polish?

Be alert and enjoy editing!

The Last Word

I hope this post helps you to edit like a pro with its three easy steps to help you do it.

Source: writerswrite.co.za

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