Pebblepup's Writing Den

One good way to generate story ideas is to play the What-If Game. This is the game you play by starting a sentence with What if.

What if someone found themselves transported to a deserted island? What if there was a submarine base on top and in a sea mount and lost communications with the surface? These are ideas that just came to my mind while writing this blog.

That’s just two that occurred to me. The idea here is to generate as many what-if questions as you can, written out in full sentence form. Just as I did above. You don’t have to develop all of them into a story. I would suggest that you try to generate at least ten. Make it a numbered list of the sentences. Something like the following.

What if x happened instead of y?

What if someone found themselves transported to a deserted island?

What if there was a submarine base on top and in a sea mount and lost communications with the surface?

That’s the what-if game I’m suggesting. Make a list of questions like that. Then choose one to answer. This will let you develop your story. I suggest you keep the list and come back to it when you need an idea. I have a section in my notebook for story ideas. I put them in there and keep all the results from my brainstorming sessions. That way, I have ideas that I might find interesting at a later day even if they didn’t interest me when I generated them.
That is how I gather ideas. The what-if game allows you to play with decisions. What if a character usually turns left to go to work and one day, just decided to turn left and skip work? What happens? You can ask several questions about what would happen after the initial what-if question. If the submarine base lost communications with the surface, what would the inhabitants do? You get the idea.

Generating ideas, using this method, is easy. To develop them, you just have to ask questions about what would happen if the initial thing happened.

This sort of thing can work for an alternate history story as well. What if Columbus terned back before finding the New World? How would world history have been changed? This method of idea generation can suggest semi interesting plots. This is only a preliminary brainstorming technique, it’s true.

You should see some ideas surface that capture your imagination. That’s the value of this type of idea generation. Working out the resulting plots is the second part of the process.

So, the next time you are stuck for a story idea, try playing the what-if game. You might just surprise yourself and produce a best seller. Good luck and keep writing.