Hamonique-ao3 - Harmonique

a little comic for jasons birthday. on being robin & batman and being brave & scared

Find Your Next Plot Idea: 12 Tricks to Try

Waiting for inspiration to strike can take too long. It's also not the best way to improve your writing, since you may not write very often in-between ideas.

I've been there before. When you're getting impatient, find your next idea for a short story or potential novel by trying these simple tricks.

1. Try a Plot Generator

Generators will throw ideas at you that you might not think about otherwise. They don't always make sense, but it's fun sifting through their options!

Check out more than one to find a site you like. You could try:

Plot-Generator

Reedsy's Plot Generator

Big Huge Thesaurus' Story Generator

Cool Generator's Random Plot Points

ServiceScape's Plot Generator

2. Find Random Facts

There are other sites that pull up random facts that could inspire a creative streak. They may also help you with singular plot points your story might be missing or more details while fleshing out characters.

See if you prefer:

Mental Floss' Fact Generator

Fact Republic's Generator

This Random Fact Generator

This Other Random Fact Generator

This Other Fact Generator

3. Check the Current News Headlines

Look up the current news in another city, state, or country. Without reading the stories, see if you can imagine a plot for each headline. It can be a fun creative exercise if you stay away from heavy topics.

You could find the latest news at places like:

NPR (I like their Strange News section too!)

The New York Times

The BBC

Reuters

Global Issues

4. Think About Your Recent Dreams

Dreams don't always make sense, but they can make you think outside of the box. Maybe you recently dreamed about escaping a haunted house or running into your old crush while on a vacation across the world. It could inspire your next story or even just a small part of one.

5. Try Free Writing

Your writing may have come to a halt because you get too caught up in the process. Free writing is an excellent exercise to break out of routines and old habits.

It first started in 1973 and hasn't changed much since. All you need to do is set a timer and open a new Google doc or grab a piece of paper. When the timer begins, start writing your stream of consciousness down and don't stop writing until the timer ends.

Whatever comes to mind should end up on your paper. Don't worry about sentence structure, grammar, or spelling. The exercise will loosen your creative flow and help you think through the writer's block keeping you from your next story.

6. Do Some Digital Eavesdropping

You can always sit yourself down in a public area (like a coffee shop) and eavesdrop on other people's conversations to hear about experiences you've never thought about before. But something about that always creeped me out, so sometimes I go digital.

Scroll through social media sites like Instagram or Twitter. Look for posts with pictures or a quick caption that doesn't explain the full picture. See what's trending, what the latest celebrity gossip is. Make up stories behind it, like with the newspaper headline trick. You'll get much different ideas than you'd find on news sites without carving time into your schedule for stopping by a place in town.

7. Map Your Mind

If you've never tried mind mapping, it could be a great place to start your next brainstorming session. All you need is a central idea or theme.

Imagine picking a theme like self-love. You'd traditionally write it in the middle of a piece of paper and draw a circle or box around it. Arrows then branch off of that theme to whatever idea pops into your head when you think about it.

There's no order to the branching thought bubbles and you can branch off of those as long as you want. Eventually your words could add up into a story idea, scene, or character.

The University of Adelaide has a great example diagram if you're having a hard time picturing your mind map.

8. Write a Re-Telling

There are re-tellings of classic stories all the time. Think of Hamlet turning into The Lion King. Or the folklore that morphed into Disney princesses, who morphed into the gripping series The Lunar Chronicles.

When re-tellings are done well, they give a new perspective on a well-known theme, legend, superstition, or moral.

Many writers feel like they have to avoid re-tellings in their short stories or as future novels, but they can be powerful ways to convey meaningful storylines and themes if done well. They're also a great way to jumpstart your writing after a dry period.

9. Listen to Music

Trying to write something in a quiet room might not help your creative flow. The silence can make your critical thoughts louder than anything else or make it more tempting to set your writing aside.

It's always a good idea to try listening to music while you write. Specifically, you should select a few songs or a playlist that makes you happy. Research shows that creativity greatly improves when people listen to music that generates happiness.

There's also evidence that it's easier to focus while listening to lyric-less music.

Not sure where to start? I've got some recommended background noise apps, websites, and free playlists over on my resource list. It's got everything from rain sounds to my favorite lyric-less low-fi YouTube playlist.

10. Write Fan Fiction

The blank page is even more intimidating when you're not very familiar with your characters or setting. Fan fiction can be a balm for that. Try writing a short story about people in your latest favorite TV show, movie, or book series. You're already very familiar with those worlds, so practicing your writing skills by freestyling new arcs or scenes can be a lot of fun.

11. Analyze a Book's Plot

We all have a favorite book. Think of the one that last dazzled you or made you fall in love with reading. How did it do that?

Sometimes it helps to study an existing book you've already read. You can map it out on paper by writing down character names, inciting events, the plot points that built to the story's finale, and everything in between. Note how each point made you feel and why it mattered. You can reflect those strategies in your own work, which may solve your writer's block.

12. Watch a Documentary

There are some wild documentaries out there that will blow your mind. Pick one and enjoy it, then ask yourself what if things had gone differently? Tweaking part of an event could make it branch off into an entirely new story. It's basically writing fan fiction, but it may interest people who are more into instructional media.

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When you find something that works, enjoy it! Then try something else the next time you want to create a plot. Writing is a craft that changes with time. It's better to have a well-tried bag of inspirational tricks than sit around and wait for a story to pop up in your mind.

What the fuck are people doing when they’re in the shower for 30 minutes

SHE STILL SEES JOHN AND MARTIN AS HER FRIENDS

playing pokemon scarlet and violet epilogue. I’ll be right back

someone commented ‘the sun, the moon and jayce’ under my previous meljayvik post i laughed so hard that i just had to draw it

twitter doesn’t disappoint

Reasons why Jon Archivist is truly a character of all time:

Had the police called on him several times when he was a young child

Keeps his rib and the ashes of the season one antagonist next to his stationary drawer

Promised he wouldn’t get lost in tunnels and then immediately got lost in aforementioned tunnels

Has no clue what a joke is

Learned how remarkably easy it is to buy an ax in central London

Had to have two separate interventions

Told people his place of employment before traumatising them for life

The first character he ever said ‘I love you’ to is a cat

Allegedly participated in amdram

Watches documentaries and collects some kind of weird shit (my headcanon is Soviet Union postcards) when he’s not being a paranoid mess

Canonically looks like he hasn’t slept in weeks

Knows nothing about library science

Fell head over heels for a man that he hated until he learned he lied on his resumé

Has been referred to as Jesus or Jesus-adjacent at least twice

Asexual icon

Knows what a meme is and said “LOL” in the first episode

Rode on a merry-go-round sometime during his university days because he was in a weird place emotionally

Died for our Jonathan Sins

Is probably a computer now playing minesweeper with his boyfriend and evil 200+ year old boss

one sentence(ish) summaries of every magnus archive episode PART 2

(eps 61-110) thank u for the funny comments and tags on the last part i love u guys

the rest of these may take a while as i've caught up to where i am currently in the podcast but i will finish them like in a month i promise

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61. the thrilling sequel to man does not open coffin: man DOES open coffin.

62. surely this doctor can find an easier way to scam people out of money than putting them in a little book.

63. THE DARK ATE MY BROTHER IN LAW.

64. this is possibly the plot of laura croft tomb raider

65. mmm crumchy

66. what's the opposite of an unboxing video

67. as close to a coffeeshop au as you're going to get from this podcast

68. Doctors hate him! Man REFUSES to die from tuberculosis!

69. your college's psych department has the worst idea ever.

70. reverse death note

71. not even death will stop this woman from taking the british subway

72. man doesn't want to be low key racist in his last moments before getting eaten

73. police versus the second coming of dark jesus

74. lady is haunted by an ad for coffee

75. mike crew says "uh fuck it let's just put this guy on a skyscraper forever"

76. ryan from buzzfeed unsolved breaks into a train yard and suffers consequences

77. you're not a enough of a bitch to be my real mom

78. man gets harassed by his cousin and then exorcises him

79. you know that chase scene in scooby doo with the doors

80. stupid idiot motherfucking jurgen leitner

81. i have been personally victimized by the sequel to the hungry hungry caterpillar

82. pov: elias threatens to cancel you

83. mannequin takes matters into its own hands after people don't like its pitch for a new window display

84. a hoarder put newspaper on my friend's face :(

85. hey there's maybe a little man upon these stairs?

86. man gets got by a squiggly thing in the dark.

87. plumber is so oblivious to spooky happenings around him that it possibly saves his life.

88. guys i think this guy likes to dig

89. lesbian investment banker finds a new, less evil job: arson!

90. guy who turns people's bones starts a gym where he promises not to turn your bones! (he is lying)

91. i was stalked by lightning for 10 years and i all i got were these stupid scars

92. jonah magnus is a bad friend // another day another elias slay

93. ocd is no match for purple fuzz

94. let the bodies drop gently to the floor let the bodies drop gently to the floor

95. im so sorry my brain refuses to remember what the war ones were about but i think one guy got gently kissed on the forehead so that's pretty nice.

96. diversity wins! the not-quite-human delivery men who stole your identity and business are maybe gay?

97. man gets gaslighted by an entire town about a hole

98. 🎶mister sandman bring me a dream, actually don't, please stay far from me 🎶

99. another one bites the dust

100. archival assistants face off against the general public (they lose)

101. jon finally levels up high enough to unlock an eldritch horror's tragic backstory

102. LOCAL MAN MARRIES BUG

103. peppa eats a clown and they cover her in concrete instead of congratulating her.

104. pennywise stole my brother's skin

105. it's world war z baby

106. Something Big Is In Space.

107. man is interrogated about the time he saw thomas the train roasts people alive and also sans is there

108. actor is stalked by mask who liked his monologue so much that it tells its mask friends to come watch.

109. sometimes a family is just a serial killer's daughter and that guy who maybe killed some vampires

110. yeah man those spiders be eating

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