Idea Generating Part Two

To add to the previous post, here are some other ideas for generating ideas.  Now there are tons of books out there, and also apps that you can download to help generate story ideas.  But there are also processes you can use.

For example, there is the notion of free flowing story generation.  This process requires that one dismiss the inner critic and the editor within your brain, and simply begin with a blank piece of paper (or screen) and just start writing anything.  Whatever is the first word that pops into your brain write it down, even if it is just a random thought about something that is going on in your life.  To increase the flowing of story during this process, set an egg timer for twenty minutes and have yourself simply write anything, even if it is gibberish.  Don't stop flowing across the paper with words for twenty minutes straight.  Sometimes you end up with something that could lead to a story, sometimes not.  But imagine if you did this every day.  Within a year you would have 365 sessions of writing, and somewhere in that is bound to be a few good ideas for stories that you could then flesh out into something interesting and engaging.  I've done experiments in this area of free flowing story generation, and much to my amazement it has led to some decent ideas.

If you're not into using apps, and prefer generating story ideas using something more tangible, I can suggest the following book.  "The Amazing Story Generator" is a flip book that allows for you to randomly set up ideas where the story generator gives you a setting, a type of character, and a situation.  I've actually used it, and come up with some very interesting stories.  For example, I generated the following story idea:  the setting was a zombie apocalypse, the main character was an extraterrestrial with amnesia, and the situation was that the extraterrestrial had discovered that it was pregnant.  This story idea, as strange as it sounds, actually led to a great rough draft for a short story that is currently going through the editing process.

Here's the Amazon link for the "The Amazing Story Generator" -  http://www.amazon.com/Amazing-Story-Generator-Creates-Thousands/dp/1452111006/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1445176568&sr=1-1&keywords=story+generator

In the meantime, keep writing.