How To Come up with Short Story Ideas + TEMPLATE
Hannah Lee Kidder
NovelPad Author
Do you find yourself stumped for story ideas? You’re not alone!
Short stories are SO fun to write, but it’s often hard to find the inspiration to even get started. Here are eleven methods that might help you jiggle those ideas loose so you can write a great story.
1. Have life experiences
Judith Krantz said, "Surely the whole point of writing your own life story is to be as honest as you possibly can, revealing everything about yourself that is most private and probably most interesting for that very reason."
Now I’m not suggesting everything you write has to be nonfiction, or even strongly related to your life, but telling stories from a lens of your own understanding can lend such a genuineness to your writing.
The more life experiences you have, the more honest things you can pull from to sprinkle into your stories to make them feel real.
So don’t lock yourself in your office with a keyboard all day! Go out, travel if you can, meet people, have experiences. Then come back and tell us all about it.
2. Read other authors’ short stories
Reading lots and lots of short stories can help you grasp the genre, format, and expectations to employ in your own stories.
Along with that, you’ll get familiar with the types of subject matter typically appropriate for short pieces, then brainstorm from there.
Here’s a list of short story collections to get you started:
3. Use writing prompts
There’s nothing wrong with a good ol’ prompts list. You can find random prompt generators online, but here’s a list of $ 400+ writing prompts$ by a real person.
4. Write fanfiction
There’s ALSO nothing wrong with fanfiction! It can be fun to spin a fanfiction so severely that it doesn’t remotely resemble the original work. One way to use other people’s writing (or films, television, and video games) is to draw inspiration from a single facet of the story.
This could be a particular image, a side character, an alternate story that you thought was going to happen based on the first scene.
Be sure not to steal work! Just glean inspiration from stories you love.
5. Write fanfiction of YOUR stories
Now for this one, you can absolutely steal ideas (your own!). Try writing a spinoff, sequel, prequel, or alternate universe version of one of your own pieces.
If you’re a multi-media writer, you can even convert stories into slightly different stories that would better suit a different format. Like turning a book into a stage play, a song into a short story, a novella into a film script—you get it.
Do you ever watch a film adaptation and think it was way better or way worse than the book? Format changes things! That's why reimagining a story in a way that perfectly suits another medium could spark a ton of ideas.
6. Consume media in your genre
Experiencing other media in your genre can be very inspirational. If you’re writing a romantic short story, listen to love songs! Watch rom-coms! Read $ romance novels$ !
Keeping yourself in the headspace of writing for your genre will keep the ideas flowing.
7. Dreams
This doesn’t work for every writer (not everyone even dreams!), but dreams can be an amazing source of story concepts.
You likely won’t convert the dream into a story detail-for-detail—you might not even remember most of it—but if you’ve had a particularly interesting or strange dream, be sure to write it down before you forget it!
When I write with dreams, I’ll typically dump everything I remember about the dream into a document, then flesh out those ideas with intentional thoughts. A lot will get cut, a lot will get added, and you’ll end up with something entirely different from the original dream almost every time.
8. Childhood fears and anxieties
There’s something so primal and terrifying about being a child. If you’re lucky (or unlucky) enough to remember any parts of your childhood with detail, ask yourself what you were scared of.
Brainstorm a list of things that scared you, then use those fears as prompts.
Another way your childhood memories could help you with story ideas is to think up things that you misunderstood as a kid. Children have a unique view of the world, because they don’t have context for anything yet. They often guess the purpose of items, customs, and situations—what did you misinterpret as a child? Could you turn it into an absurdist story idea?
9. Keep notes!
Throughout our days and lives, inspiration is everywhere. Images, lines of dialogue, character concepts, story premises. They’re all over, if you practice noticing them, but more importantly, if you practice writing them down.
I keep a note in my phone for lines of dialogue, striking imagery, and random story ideas that I come across in my day.
When it’s time to write a new story, I fish in those notes for story prompts.
10. Use a template
And of course, we can always strong-arm an idea into existence. What does it look like to create a story without a piece of inspiration?
You can find a $ guide for writing short stories with an outline here$ , but these are the basic steps of using a story template.
Come up with a setting.
Think up a setting that is interesting to you. When does the story happen? Where does it happen? What is that environment like? What time of day is it? What is the weather?
Create a perfect environment for your story to take place. Even if you're not sure what happens in the story, having a strong setting can often make it fall right into place.
Develop a character.
A short story should typically only have one main character, since it’s such a quick piece. You might have background characters or other figures in the story, but you should have one we focus on.
What is your character’s biggest flaw? How does their flaw impact and interact with the story? Do they change by the end of it?
Create a plot.
Not every short story has an actual, fully fleshed plot, but you should at least have an idea you’re conveying. Keep your character and their biggest flaw in mind while you create the problem they have to face. (Or whatever your premise revolves around.)
Connect the beginning and end.
A great way to make your story really land with readers is to connect the ending to the beginning very intentionally. This could be revealing what the title means, calling back to the first line, or revisiting an image from earlier in the story.
When done correctly, this makes your story feel properly fleshed out and can really make the moral land with your reader.
11. Interview people
I don’t mean a formal interview here—I mean talking to people. Who is the most interesting person you know? Who is the oldest? Who has traveled the most?
Having conversations with people who have lived full lives can provide so many different perspectives. Something mundane from their life could make an amazing written story, and they might not even know it!
When I worked in elder home care, I had tons of story ideas just from talking to my clients. A lot of them were in their 90s, some had suffered and survived wild injuries, some had traveled the world, and many confessed to horrific crimes! And bet your backside I was taking notes!
Take the opportunity to ask people questions. Connect with their life experiences, because that's almost as good as living it yourself.
If you’re pulling more than simple inspiration from someone else’s story, be sure to give full credit and get permission where logical before publishing.
How to theme a collection of short stories
If you're working on a collection of short stories, you might be looking for a cohesive idea to organize them.
Here are some common themes you might consider.
1. Tone of story
Many collections connect their stories just through tone. Melancholic, humorous, pessimistic/optimistic, curious.
2. Region of settings
Stories can also be grouped together by region. New England, the south, Paris, Canada.
3. Topic of story
And the general subject matter can group a collection together as well. Think motherhood, coming-of-age, marginalized identities.
4. Perspective of narrator
The perspective of your narrator, whether that's the author, a character, or an omniscient narration, can also group your stories together and make them feel like one cohesive piece. Strong, consistent voice also goes a long way.
How to organize a short story collection
But isn't NovelPad for...novels?
Sure, sure, but open your mind a little and check out how easy it is to keep everything together, reorganize stories, and see the whole collection as one big picture.
I use chapters to separate each story, then obviously the scene cards to separate my scenes. (Please excuse my dumb stand-in titles).
During the process of putting a collection together, the stories will change order a lot. The overhead view on the Chapters page really helps me visualize different options as I write my stories.
If you'd like to learn more about putting together a collection of short stories, check out How To Publish A Collection: Shorts, Poems, Essays
on Skillshare with this $ one-month free trial$ .
Now you're ready to be an idea-generating machine. Go write some stories!
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