Archive for the ‘Where to Get New Story Ideas’ Category

Writing About Solutions

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

Problems that you can solve with your writing are like alligators:

Stage 1: They are born small.
Stage 2: They get big, strong and smart.
Stage 3: They intimidate.
Stage 4: They can live a long time.

Start writing and sharing your problem solving skills as soon as you discover that your approach worked. Your solution might be exactly what your reader has been searching for and will save them a lot of time in getting to a resolution of the problem. They will thank you for your information and the steps you used to problem solve.

The idea is to share your solutions. Your reader can contain a baby alligator or a small problem because you can encourage them with the knowledge that they are: smarter, stronger and can use your solution or at least try your solution to solve a beginning problem.

Your steps to a solution will help your reader because:

  • It takes less time for them using the steps you found worked for you
  • It takes less of their energy when they have a set of steps to try
  • It takes fewer of their mental and emotional resources
  • The stress reduction will help them get to the result/resolution faster

So turn to your digging tools,  you only need to keep your eyes and ears open, ask a few questions.

  • How’s it going?
  • What’s the problem?
  • What’s getting in the way?
  • What’s the best way to fix it?
  • How can I help?
  • This is what I did to solve that type of problem, my solution might work for you too.

Get your writing tools ready and start sharing what you would do or what you did in the same situation. In writing down your steps you might discover additional shortcuts that will help you the next time you have a similar problem and might help your reader get to a solution more quickly.

 

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Writing News Flash

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Everyone thinks that their problems are unique. They take them in, internalize them and fester on them. They must be unique because if they weren’t they could just find out what someone else did to fix it and do that.

As we grow up we are programmed not to talk about our problems and hence the same situations/challenges (that all human beings face) become personal.

Remember I keep telling you to write out what you did to solve the problem you faced and be willing to share the steps and results with others so they could get to the solution more quickly.

It’s just that you think you are the only one going through problem xyz, that no one else would want to know what you did and you might be embarrassed if they found out you had that problem. 

Even through we all feel that our problems are unique to us, they are in fact a problem that everyone faces at some time in their life. If you can solve your problem and move yourself closer to your goal, then you have created a solution to a problem that millions of others also have and will gladly pay money to read, learn about  or give their attention to.

Ex: Have you ever had the experience of telling someone something and when they explained your problem back to you, you were excited because this person truly understood what you were experiencing and feeling?

They are really willing to listen to you then when they feel like you understand them.  They will become one of your readers because you are helping them with an answer.

News Flash:  Stop thinking you are the only one going through situations in your life and focus on looking for and sharing with others your steps on solving those issues we all face.

Write and share and enjoy the profits you will make by being willing to do that.

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Finding Time To Write

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

 

 

Learning From The Prairie Dog

Learning From The Prairie Dog

 

 

Prairie dog families live in underground colonies called burrows. The burrows can be more than a hundred feet (30 meters) long and have many different compartments (at bottom) where the prairie dogs sleep, raise their young, and stay safe from predators. They are part of the squirrel family and multiply very quickly.

When I was growing up on a ranch in eastern Montana we began to have large colonies of prairie dogs begin to build what were called prairie dog towns.  As you looked across the land you saw many holes where the burrows opened and they came to the surface above ground.

It was very dangerous for the animals who could fall into the holes and injure their legs.  A very costly problem for anyone who had livestock , in my father’s case, horses, sheep and cattle. 

So what does the prairie dog have to do with writing? 

Life can become so busy trying to handle the things that pop up, like the prairie dog popping out of it’s burrow unexpectedly, that it can become like a giant game of  Whack-The-Dog. Every time you solve a problem, two or three even more stubborn challenges pop up to distract you and try to pull your attention away from your life and writing to problem solving mode. 

This can seriously hinder your ability to think about how you want to communicate unless you are jotting down the steps to how you are solving the problem.  Those steps can really help others if you will share what and how you handled the problems you encountered. 

Knowing how you solved a problem that you dealt with can save others many hours of trying to figure out what to do. Think about a solution you came up with when someone else was sharing how they solved a problem.

On the other hand, your mind continually pops up ideas for you, that if you jot down at the time, you can go back to later and add more content to expand on the idea.

 Be pro-active at keeping those dogs (problems) at bay and be diligent at spending a few minutes a day at your writing. Those 5 minutes here and there can even produce a nice income for you.  Click Here!   for more information about how you can do that.

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Writing Can Equal Remembering

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Whenever you are going through old stored things that you haven’t seen for awhile you find written items. It can be  correspondence in the form of old letters, job reviews, invitations, newspaper or magazine articles or a variety of other documentation.

Some of these items can bring back many memories both good and bad.  You might not want to remember the grades you got in the 7th grade but your mom saved the report cards and gave them to you along the way.

On the other hand you might be delighted with a newspaper article about something you really were, at the time, interested in pursuing.

For example: My father’s ranch in Montana was the type site for the Tyrannosaurus Rex.  That means it was the first full Rex skeleton found in the world.  Recently I found an old National Geographic that had a long wonderful article about the discovery and process.  I also found a newspaper clipping about when my mother found a large number of Triceratops fossils.

As a small child, I wasn’t aware of many of the details but found them quite interesting when I read about them as an adult.  I do remember the paleontologists that came every summer.  We used to call them the bone diggers.  They had such cool tools and were so patient in uncovering the fossils. 

Now, you find something that has been put away for awhile and see if you can bring back some memories worth remembering.  You might even stir up a renewed interest in doing something about the information you uncover.

Will I get something going in fossils and dinasaurs?  Probably not, but, I can get the bones I have to the nearest museum so others can enjoy them.

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Moving Adventures

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

Last fall I was notified that I had to move both my business and home so the complex I was in could renovate.  Not much time to sort and go through the things I had accumulated over the time I had been there so it was off to find a new location and begin the project. 

Many funny as well as annoying stories occurred as the process unfolded and is still going on.  I am seeing an end though and the extra effort that I put into going through and sorting and seeing what could be thrown away has been worth the effort.

See if you can think of  the last time you moved and select a topic to write about.  It can be any slant you would like to use funny, sad, disgusting, etc.  There are always assorted ways to look at things as you recall as many of the details as you can remember.

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Writing About Real Life Schemes and Scams Make Good Plot Twists

Monday, March 30th, 2009

Around every corner you can find a scheme or scam.  They are all over the news in every area, every field and often in unexpected places.

These make perfect content for plots and twists in your plot when you begin to write.  One statement that I remember clearly is “truth is stranger than fiction”  I don’t know who said it but it really does apply to the events that are going on around us.

Occasionally you will hear a comment “the person who did the original planning of the scheme or scam didn’t think things through”  because the plan was, in some cases, terribly flawed. 

Select a few events that would qualify for a scheme or scam and keep them in a file.  You never know when you might need a good plot twist to spice up your story.

If you want more ways to explore ideas for writing so you can increase your skills go to  http://freecreativewritingstrategies.com  for a series of exercises to learn which area of writing you like and to become more creative with your writing.

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Stretch Yourself as a Creative Writer

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

Being a good writer means that you can take just a few stories and turn them into many stories just by changing the way you write about the subject matter.  What you add or subtract from the content you have in front of you to give it a new twist. 

Change a story you have already written and see if you can add drama to the story you have or perhaps you can turn it into a comedy or a play that a local theater group might consider adding to their offerings.

It’s all about the combination of the events that happened and how you as the writer put them together in your story line and time line of events.  For example: If you have ever gone to an airport for a flight and found you took longer to go through the security than you expected and then had to run to get to the gate so you did not miss the boarding for the flight.  You have two choices immediately: do you want to go the drama version or the comedy version.  You could try both and see which one you have the most fun with and use that to help you continue to develop that type of writing.

It’s all in the approach you take with the topic.  This type of writing stretches you to think about how to put the information and events into your story in such a way as to get the two different results.  You can always use the twists to develop your writing resources so you can see things from several perspectives.

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It’s Been an Amazing Day to Write

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

Some days you can be inspired by so many things that you can write about and then have to choose what you want to write and how much you want to write.  That is a great time for you to jot yourself a few notes about the topics so you can pick one out to write about later when you need to have a jumpstart for ideas or when you feel a bit of a writers block.  A extra idea file is the best way to keep the ideas together.  Then you can see if any of those can be combined to enrich your content.  Have fun and be on the watch for the ideas to appear.

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Anytime is a Perfect Time to Gather Stories

Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

As you are going to events, shopping or watching tv, you will hear great stories and bits of stories that you can use in your own fiction or non fiction stories.  Take a small notebook with you and jot down, as you can, the parts that you could add to your file for possible ideas to help you get a new story going.  Some of the ideas can be combined to add to the characters you are creating. ex: a story you might hear about a child could be happening to your character in their childhood, something you saw or heard that was happening to a teenager could be the next thing in your stories timeline for your child character.  You can continue to build on the character and what happened through their life by adding the combination of events you are gathering from the variety of information you collected.  It can be fun to build out your story in this way.

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