One Dozen Sources of Inspiration for Writers

It doesn’t matter whether you write stories or blog posts. We all need some inspiration now and then to either get us into the right mood or sparkle some ideas.

So, get your notebook (If you don’t carry one, you might want to change that) out, and try some of my favorite sources of inspiration.

• Read a newspaper & watch the news. Notice the differences in the reporting? How would you have done it?
• Watch your favorite tv-series. Forget about the plot and concentrate on the characters. What makes them so special?
• Go to the supermarket. Watch how people behave & what they do.
• Take your kid to the playground. Listen to the other parents’ stories. If you don’t have a kid, borrow one, otherwise people give you strange looks.
• Stand at the traffic lights and carefully watch the people in the cars.
• Pick a topic and discuss it with yourself. Try to counter your own arguments. Make sure nobody sees you.
• Sit down in a quite room and turn off all the lights. What’s the first thing you think of? Why?
• Read the “Did you know…” section of wikipedia.
• Open a dictionary and randomly pick a word. How would you explain it to a child? Imagine a lot of why-questions.
• Read a chapter from a book before you go to sleep. Put it away, turn off the lights. How would the story continue if you were the author?
• Go to flickr and look at a couple of randomly picked pictures. What could be the story behind it? What would you name it?
• Go to sleep. If you wake up from a dream, write down what you remember. Don’t care whether it makes sense or not.

I hope one of these methods will give you a new idea the next time you wonder what to write about.

How about you? Do you have any unusual ways to come up with topics for your writing you want to share?