How to Catch a Story Idea

The long, honest answer to the question every writer gets asked.

In my FAQ, someone always asks where I get my ideas, and my honest answer is that there's no secret bell pull you can tug to make them pour out of the sky. I really wish there were. I'd hang one right next to my desk.

But that's the short answer, and short answers can be a little unfair. Because while there's no magic trick, there are things you can do to catch more ideas than you're catching now. Ideas are already drifting past you every single day, you just need to hold out a net to catch them before they disappear.

So here's the longer answer: a handful of nets I actually use. Some are for fantasy writers, some work for any kind of story, and a few might surprise you. Try the ones that sound fun and ignore the ones that don't.

Net 1: Raid the monster books, then break the monster

If you love fantasy, go find the weirdest, oldest, most cobwebby books you can about mythical beasts. Bestiaries (that's the fancy word for a book of creatures), field guides to cryptids, folklore and mythology from all over the world. Don't stop at the Greek and Norse stuff everybody knows. Go hunting for the beasts in Filipino, Nigerian, Slavic, and Indigenous stories too. Libraries are stuffed with them, and so is the internet if you dig past the first page.

Dive in and read about all the weird and wonderful creatures out there. Human beings have been imagining and creating and even worshipping them for millions of years!

When you find an interesting creature, don't just borrow it. Break it!

I researched American folklore before plotting my Shadow Sovereign Series and loved the inventive creatures and their crazy names. Knickle snifters are creatures no bigger than a man's thumb, who live in beards and follow trails of crumbs. I took that and broke it for The Lost Diamond of Skywallow. I made them larger, about the size of a raccoon, gave them prehensile tails (like monkeys) but kept the way they left or followed trails of crumbs.

When you ask questions the original stories never answered (why so small? why does it only live in beards? what other foods might it enjoy? what if it could fly?) a borrowed monster becomes yours.

Net 2: Play the game like a writer

If you already like RPG games like Dungeons & Dragons or Baldur's Gate, you're already doing a lot of the same work a writer does!

In a tabletop game like Dungeons & Dragons, someone has to invent a whole world, fill it with people, and then improvise on the spot when other players do something ridiculous the plan never accounted for. That person, the Game Master, is basically a novelist working without a net. And every player at the table is building a character, giving them a history, a voice, and ways to power up and fight (or retreat).

Video games count too, especially the ones where your choices change the story. The next time a game makes you actually feel something, a choice that made your stomach drop, a character you didn't want to say goodbye to, stop and ask why. (League of Legends/Arcane, anyone?!) What did the game do to earn that feeling? Whatever it was, you can learn to do it too. Great storytelling is great storytelling, whether it arrives in a book, a controller, or a fistful of oddly-shaped dice.

Net 3: Fix the thing that let you down

This one is my favorite, and it works for any kind of story, not just the ones with dragons in them.

You know that feeling when a book or a show or a movie disappoints you? When the ending is lazy, or your favorite character deserved so much better, or the whole thing just missed the mark? That frustration is fuel! Ask yourself, seriously, "How would I have done it differently?"

Some of the best ideas I've ever had started as "I wish that story had gone THIS way instead." My kids and I talked for hours after we were disappointed by Eternals. By midnight, we'd rewritten the entire premise, fixed a bunch of infuriating character problems, and basically written an entirely new screenplay!

You are allowed to be a critic and a creator at the same time. In fact, the two feed each other. Every time you notice what didn't work, you're learning how to write a better story.

Net 4: Crash two worlds together

Take two things that have no business being in the same story and jam them together on purpose.

A baking competition, but the judges are ghosts. A middle-school class election, but one of the candidates is not entirely human. A perfectly normal summer at your grandmother's farm, except the barn keeps moving three feet to the left every night.

If you find yourself asking, "Wait, how would that even work?" that's your brain leaning forward and thinking. Follow it and see where it goes.

I'm not exactly sure how Brandon Mull came up with the idea for his fun Fablehaven series, but I imagine it went something like this: A wildlife preserve, only all the creatures are mythical beasts. See how that works? In his Beyonders series, he was standing in the hippo house inside Utah's Hogle Zoo and thought to himself, what if you fell in? And what if the hippo ate you? And what if, instead of being devoured, the hippo was a portal into another world?

Net 5: Spy on real life (politely)

Not every idea comes from other stories. A lot of them come from real people being wonderfully strange.

Pay attention to the world when you're out in it. The man at the gas station buying forty candy bars and nothing else. The two kids on the bus having an extremely serious argument about something you can only half hear. You will never know the real explanation, and that is exactly the gift, because now your brain gets to invent one.

Net 6: Tell the truth inside the made-up part

Here's the bravest one, and I saved it for last on purpose.

The ideas that matter most usually begin with something real you're feeling. Being left out. Missing someone. Being scared to try. You can wrap a true feeling inside a dragon, a spaceship, or a haunted barn, and it will still ring true, maybe even more so because of the disguise.

Some of my own characters carry feelings I know from the inside, and readers can usually tell the difference between a feeling I invented and one I actually lived. The real ones land harder every time.

The actual secret

So where do ideas come from?

Everywhere, and nowhere you can point to on a map. While you can absolutely go looking for ideas (and I recommend you do!), you can also become the kind of person that busts out a net and captures ideas before they vanish.

You get there by being a little bored sometimes. I don't want to sound like every other parent and teacher out there by telling you to put down your phones and video games, but seriously, your mind cannot wander if you're constantly doom-scrolling. So get bored! Stay curious! Let your mind wander all on its own without reaching for a controller, a device, or the remote control.

Notice the weird stuff and write it down before it floats away. Keep a notebook. Fill it with nonsense. Most of it will never become anything, and that is totally fine. You are not collecting finished stories. You are collecting sparks, and every so often, one catches.

Now go be a person who pays attention. I'm betting your next idea is already out there, waiting for you to notice it.