Fiction writers often complain about not being able to come up with a great new story idea. Writer’s block is often a result. If no idea bursts forth from their personal muse, they will not be able to write anything at all.
In order to get past this horrible situation, any writer can make themselves a deck of writing prompt cards. To get a quick story idea, all you will have to do is draw cards from each section. For a short story, you should draw one character card, one setting, and one conflict card. If you want to write a novel, you can draw several of each.
You can easily make these writing prompt cards by using index cards and storing them in a recipe or card file box. To keep the types of cards separate, you can either use different colors or put a divider between each section.
Character Cards
Each character card should include some basic information about the character that can be used to draw inferences about their personality. You should include the character’s name, race or species, profession or education level, and some slight information about their family. You should also include information about the character’s motivation. What makes this character tick?
Example: Mary is a 50-year-old married woman with three kids: 24, 16, and 8. Her husband’s name is George. She has been a homemaker all her adult life, and she lives for her kids.
From this character card, you can infer all sorts of things about Mary. Fitting her into your story will be easier now that you have this information. The most important thing it might do is make you begin to ask questions. What does George do? Why are Mary’s children so far apart in age? These might be questions that you answer in your story.
Setting Cards
Setting cards will help you to come up with quick story ideas by telling you the time and location of your story. These can be as specific or general as you would like.
Example: In a subway train at 5:30 on a Friday afternoon.
You might instantly get some ideas about how your story will flow from this setting card. Putting Mary, the middle-aged housewife on the subway train during Friday rush hour could be interesting.
Conflict Cards
Every story needs a conflict. Your conflict cards should highlight one each. The conflicts can be internal or external to your characters.
Example: Evil government masterminds are building a secret mega-bomb.
Now, at first glance, this conflict might not coincide with Mary, the housewife, and the rush-hour subway ride. But just think for a minute! What if the government masterminds wanted to test the bomb underground? Or what if Mary’s 24-year old son worked for this government organization?
By the time you draw your last writing prompt card, your mind should be busy coming up with a great idea for a short story or novel. These quick story ideas can be used for writing practice or to develop publishable works.
By making your own writing prompt cards, you will be able to overcome writer’s block anytime. These cards will combine in numerous ways to give you seemingly endless quick story ideas.
