Where to find story ideas

Objects - Yours or other people’s. Rummage around in antique, bric-a-brac, or charity shops. Hold the object in your hand. Ask where it came from, how it ended up where it did.

Music - Turn the lights down low, light a candle, play some random music and write. Could be a record you pick up somewhere, music loaned to you from a friend specially, a playlist on Spotify or the radio. Something different to what you usually listen to.

The bus - overheard conversations are brilliant for story starters. The bus, train, airport, supermarket queue or cafe are good places to train your ears, pen poised.

Newspapers - fill in the flesh around the tantalising snippets of real stories that are found in newspapers or online.

Fairy tales and legends - in a similar way to newspaper stories, traditional tales give you the bones of a storyline. It’s your job to fill in the details, create characters and a situation we can all relate to.

Facebook/Social Media - while there are snippets of information and photos everywhere on social media and the internet that can act as starting points for stories, there are also plenty of sites which specialise in writing prompts. Here are two of my favourites: www.visualverse.org and www.foundpolaroids.com.

Books - pick a random book from your shelf. Ask someone to say a page number, then a line number (or open the book, close your eyes and point). Then write from the words on that line. Or write out the opening sentence or paragraph and continue the story in your own way.

Your life and family - things that happened to you are often good starting points for a story. List ideas you’d like to write about - people, places you’ve been, things that have happened.

If you struggle to start, begin with the words: I want to write about… set your timer for 10 minutes, continue writing and see what happens.