Fiction Jackpot Secrets by Jenna Sayles - HTML preview

Finding Ideas from Real Life Stories

Another way to come up with a fictional idea is to think about an exceptional real-life story you may have heard about and add your own creative slant to it.

Be careful here.  You don’t want to use real names if you’re going to add made-up details.  But, you can take the basic premise of the story and turn it into a work of fiction.

You can do the same with non-fiction.  There is a whole category called Creative Non-fiction that is comprised of true-to-life stories that were retold with a bit of creative license.  This is the same concept as writing fiction.

To find ideas, try some of the following sources:

• Watch the television and make note to news stories that interested you when you saw them.  Especially note the ones that made you say, “Wow, that would make a great story”.
• Visit message boards on the internet.  What kind of ideas are other people talking about? What life stories are they telling? People love to share their own experiences, so if you start looking for others’ stories, you’re bound to find them.
• Think back to stories you’ve heard your own friends and family tell.  Maybe your parents or grandparents have a great story to tell about how they emigrated from another country.  They likely had adverse conditions they had to face and overcome in order to get where they wound up.  That’s just an example, but hopefully, my point is made.  Good potential stories are everywhere, if you just think to look for them.

Activity

Start a file called “Real-life Experiences”.  Jot down some real-life experiences you’ve heard about from others (word of mouth, on the news, etc.) that you could write about.