Writing Can't think of anything

BenJepheneT

Light Up Gold - Parquet Courts
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Every night before I go to bed I make sure I have a tiny bit amount of coffee. As I try to lay myself to sleep, the caffeine prevents me from doing so. Using that time frame between by sleep and the caffeine wearing off, I brainstorm for plot points until I eventually drift to sleep.

So yes, you wouldn't be wrong to say all my stories are, at one sense or another, fever dreams.
 

GDLiZy

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Rule 1 of the Writing Club is that you never, ever, ask where the ideas are coming from. You can ask my bust size, my sexuality, my supervillain secret identity, BUT NOT WHERE I GET MY INSPIRATION. :blob_thor:
 

UYScuti

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Rule 1 of the Writing Club is that you never, ever, ask where the ideas are coming from. You can ask my bust size, my sexuality, my supervillain secret identity, BUT NOT WHERE I GET MY INSPIRATION. :blob_thor:
Why not just list those? Gotta be tiring answering that all the time.

Most of my story is light and fluffy, so usually cat memes.
 

BenJepheneT

Light Up Gold - Parquet Courts
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Rule 1 of the Writing Club is that you never, ever, ask where the ideas are coming from. You can ask my bust size, my sexuality, my supervillain secret identity, BUT NOT WHERE I GET MY INSPIRATION. :blob_thor:
What's your bank account details
 

LostLibrarian

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If you look at story theory, then stories are tales about change meant to answer the questions of people with similar thoughts/situations through actions and themes.

So the easiest way to come up with new ideas is to either find an interesting question the story should answer or a change/obstacle your world/MC has to overcome. Those could then - with some tweaks here and there to fit the genre and style - serve as the core of your story/arc.

e.g.: "What would happen if someone reincarnates into a game world without its system or cheats" was the core question from which my story began. Which I later refined with the massive obstacle "a boy without knowledge in a position of power and the aftermath to his psyche".


So if you want to write but can't find anything interesting, just ask yourself such questions and maybe you find something that you like. If you keep your eyes open, you'll find those themes and questions in a lot of things and how the question often isn't that different but the execution is. e.g. SukaSuka and Violet Evergarden both tackle the same core question of "the soldier's homecoming" and "survivor guilt". But both authors found different ways to explore that question. I also have a story I sometimes think about on the side that asks the same question with a different premise and theme.

So if you want to force yourself to find something to write, just asking questions and changing things up may lead to an interesting idea. Some writers I know just use a random word generator to fill in blanks. You can also generate multiple words from different sources and try to connect "insect" with "surgery" or "engine" with "boyfriend".


But to me the biggest thing is: be self-aware that you are a writer when you consume other media or just go through life. Everything is a story and has some theme or question to it and you'll surely find something that interests you or sparks an interesting idea out of a stupid "what if". Just roughly write down that idea for later where you can look up a whole list of stuff when you have no ideas...
 

DubstheDuke

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Just thinking.

Think and think and think.

Play out scenes in your head. Create characters in your mind. Just think. In the shower, before you go to bed, go on a walk, the more you think about a story the more details come together.
 

ArcadiaBlade

I'm a Lazy Writer, So What?
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When getting inspiration, always try to first gain where you want to take from. Be it from watching TV or from a random youtube, it all comes down from where you want to start getting inspiration. Then, you begin to brainstorm what path you want to take or how you want to go on your story.

Ex: Find a random youtube on a history of guns, you can turn it into a story of a guy gaining abilities to create and customize guns with abilities or you can write a gun tech war to which is the better gun.

You can easily gain inspiration to what you need, just basically look for inspiration and you got yourself a story.
 

minacia

perpetually sour
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Well, for me there's two different approaches (that differ widely in goals and other stuff.

I took a creative class when I was a small morbid fruit, and the instructor's philosophy was that you should write anything when you've hit writer's block. It doesn't matter if you think it's dumb/stupid/bad; it's important to get your fingers/hand moving. As a result, in that class we did a lot of exercises like drawing random words out of a hat (i.e. pineapple, platypus, nuclear) and writing for 30 minutes.

We also did 5-minute on the spot writing, where you write anything and don't look back.

Of course, the idea isn't to write something that you would publish, but it's a creative writing exercise. You'll end up discarding 99% of the things you write, but that's also the point. The point is to emphasize that you don't have to be perfect your first time writing something, and in many circumstances half of what we do is getting our first ideas out onto a page.

On the other hand, if you hate the idea of writing things that you don't plan to publish... well... you'll have to be more direct and just jump straight into your main story.

I usually lie in bed for a bit when I try to figure out what the next chapter will be.

But honestly, I think it's best to write when you're excited. If you watched an anime and got a burst of inspiration from that, I think it's good to ride any bouts of inspiration that you get!
 

Kaguro

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Yo, I want to write so bad but I can't think of anyyything.

Dozo. Discuss. E.G. How you came up with your story idea.
There's not really a secret for it, most writings are spontaneous in nature. You create, then revise what you don't like.

Most ideas though are built off of other ideas. What do you read on a regular basis? All those novels are essentially the setting parameters for your story. Think of the genre you want to write. Think of the setting. Think of the main character and possibly a few others. You can have other people give you ideas, but ultimately you're the one who's going to be doing the writing.
 

JayDirex

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it sounds like you need a prompt: "Demon loli versus the system."

or how about this one:

"Scribbler gets sucked into one of his own stories as the villain.. But then rewrites the story as he goes, because the villain dies in his original story"

something fun like that :blob_reach:
 

Minx

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In my case, it usually came when I enjoy, let's say, an anime. If I enjoy the show, so much that I thought of the what-if scenarios, and then idea of inspiration just came all at once.

I usually didn't plan that far ahead, I'm not really good at that, which explain why I'm having a bit of block to continue the story sometimes. I want to follow the flow, but with me being suck at english as my second english, and my imagination also suck.

Also, a challenge or a writing prompt also help I guess. I have thought of writing one but I'm too busy procrastinating and writing my current novel that I have no leeway to do it.
 

K5Rakitan

Level 34 👪 💍 Pronouns: she/whore ♀
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You're welcome to write alternate routes on my story:
 

Fox-Trot-9

Foxy, the fluffy butt-stabber!
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First, I got to the basement at night and draw a magic circle of salt and set up candles around and light them. Then I take a pen and notebook with me and sit in the magic circle with the candles lighted and pray to the story gods, saying, "Oh Story Gods, give me thy powers!" And I wait there until midnight comes, and when the candle flames flicker off and circle of salt disperses, I get my story ideas and write them down and then go to bed for the night. Afterwards, I wake up and look at what I wrote in my notebook and pick out the least insane story idea and go from there.
 
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