Story

I have been itching to do is to write a story. I really don't care what it is about (as long as it isn't non-fiction, I can't write all the possible semantics of non-fiction) as long as it will be consuming and entertaining. I just need to write something. But what?

That is the main question many writers face when writing a story: WHAT? What happens? What is the setting? What happens next? What, what, what whatwhatwhat? How do they solve it? I sure would like to know. It would be real helpful for all writing.

One of the answers that a Google search will tell you is inspiration. You have to be inspired to come up with stuff. Inspiration could come with anywhere. A song, a line from a book, something you see, the way someone looks at you, something someone says...anything really. But the problem is that it isn't labeled: "INSPIRATION," which I am sure you will all agree it should. So then, without the ability to recognize inspiration in our everyday lives, we must find alternative means of finding inspiration.

I did a quick Google search (you gotta love Google, although it is becoming a kind of monopoly) and looked through a couple of the sites. I have come up with a list of sites that I found to be useful.

This first one is a blog post, by David D Friedman.com, that basically has story ideas...free for the taking. And it says so in the title. These story ideas should be stories in themselves, the way they are written and the ideas in them...whoo! Check it out because these would be some great stories if someone would write them out in long form.

This second one is a story generator from Seventh Sanctum.com. It tells you the main character, the event, the main object, the ending type. It's really vague, but if you want to write a quick story just to write it, this site would be most helpful. It does, occasionally, come up with something interesting.

This third one is an entire site devoted to "flashes of inspiration." It's called Short Story Ideas.com (how convenient). This has a limited array of random characters, scenarios, titles, images (if you get inspired from pictures), random, and first lines. It is like a rotating dial, it continually spins and whenever you click, the one it is on at that moment is shown (while continuously rotating as well) and when you click for a new one, it shows whatever one it is on at that moment, etc., etc. I thought it was pretty useful, especially the first line generator.

I have started to write a story; so far I have a few potential first lines, a story idea and a basic outline for the story. I'll give it to you in small doses, whenever I get to writing the actual story.

Happy Writing! and Get Inspired!