Stuck for a Story? I know the feeling!

If you're stuck for a story, here are some ideas which might help to unblock the creative processes. They are primarily designed for upper school students, but some have helped me get going too!

I'll renew the ideas on this page regularly. If you would like to add a story starter of your own to this page, please e-mail me and if I like it, I'll include it and acknowledge your help!

Idea 1

Idea 2

Idea 3

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Characters are, for me, the most important element of a story: no story exists without a character. The character doesn't have to be human (the faithful dog travelling over mountains to be reunited with his master) or even animate (the haunted house waiting for its next victim). Stories can begin in the middle or at the end; they can be packed with events or consist of nothing more than a character's reflections; they might simply be a description of a scene: but they must always have a character - so start there! Brainstorm an ordinary character using a table like the quick example below: the particular headings will depend on the character you choose. As you fill out the different aspects, you'll begin to get a feel for the character, whether you like them, or what you want to happen to them. The scene will be set (a postman will be on his rounds, a checkout girl will be in the supermarket, etc.), you can develop extended images (like the rather overdone example below!) and you might find the events will write themselves! Be thorough, though, and be consistent and true to the character: Rome wasn't built in a day!

Character: apprentice butcher

Build	Clothes	Voice	Mannerisms	Face	Other
tall, lanky, lean, rangy bony protuberances knuckles, elbows like chicken skin hangs about like a rack of meat	sloppy ill-fitting jeans scuffed shoes cheap check shirt, buttonless open collar	mumbles inarticulate shy- social misfit unable to communicate	jerky movements, like animal being chased becomes absorbed in examining the cuts he inflicts on himself - accidentally?	raw and red skin nose like a meat hook hunted eyes	lingers in meat locker, away from people - rather morbid needs to be pushed out of his comfort zone - perhaps bullied by new worker? falls in love with new girl in the shop?

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Talking of Rome, another useful idea is to rewrite an historical event, but take it from the viewpoint of an ordinary person involved in it. Gettysburg from the point of view of a drummer-boy; the Hindenburg disaster from the perspective of one of the airport workers who held a hawser; how a prostitute feels about the liberation of Paris; the fall of the Berlin Wall as seen by a driver for a Communist Party official. Trying this allows you to look at events your reader can identify with but to approach it in a fresh, quirky way the reader hadn't thought about.

Here's one. This photograph (one of my holiday snaps!) shows the facade of the library at Ephesus. It was one of the three great ancient libraries, but it was burned to the ground by the Goths in the 3rd century AD. The loss to world culture must have been incalculable. Imagine the scene as it burned: how would you feel about it if you were, for example, the librarian's assistant, a slave who had been mistreated but who had come to love the scrolls and parchments kept there? (A useful little detail if you try this - across the street from the library was the brothel, and there was reputed to be an underground passage connecting the two buildings!)

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Still on character, try a brief extract in which you describe a person performing an ordinary, everyday task: reading a newspaper, making a cup of tea, dressing in the morning. The only stipulation is that you must bring out the person's character in this description. You are not allowed any phrases such as "Jeremy was a very uptight young man...": you must reveal his personality through the way he performs his everyday task. The key to this exercise - and one of the main lessons for all good writing - is show, don't tell!   You can easily develop and extend this exercise. What if something goes wrong with the ordinary task - the business section is missing from the newsaper, there's no milk left, a jilted lover has cut all the legs off of every pair of trousers? How will the character react? Or imagine a later scene, where the character you have described encounters someone who has a very different personality: Jeremy meets an attractive, outgoing, pot-smoking young woman on the train to work. What conflicts will be set up? What attraction (or repulsion!) will the character feel? How will this be resolved, if at all?

A drunk meets   a poser

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Drop by again for some more ideas!