My Tips For Writing

Ideas

A question many authors ask themselves is this: What do I write about?

I think the most difficult thing about writing is getting an idea. (Unless you are one of those people that get ten ideas per second.)

Here are some ways to come up with ideas for books.

1. Real life.
If you are writing a realistic fiction, you can look at situations you see on the street, at school, home, the mall, wherever! And you can add a problem to that. Maybe a fear that the main character has.
Also, if you are writing fantasy, you can have a normal situation, and then suddenly some thing incredible happens.
Example: Jake is late for school. He enters the door; the teacher asks him why he was late. Jake gives his excuse, and goes to his seat. Suddenly, he sees an open window and runs towards it. Jumping out, he turns into a bird and flies away.
BAM. There you have a story.
Real life is a great starter for books.

2. Dreams.
Ah, dreams. How I love them. Anything can happen in dreams. That's why I love them. I also love them because you can get great ideas for stories.
For example, The Creation started out as a dream. I was on a boat, then suddenly I fell, transformed into a bird, and got stuck underwater. I couldn't get out, but I found out I could breathe underwater. Finally I surfaced, and stayed on an iceberg. In the distance I saw a forest. BAM. There you have the four kingdoms. And that's how I got the idea for The Creation.

3. Other books or movies.
Yes, for some of you it might seem plagiarism, but what if you change the plot a little big?
Let's take Harry Potter as an example.
Harry finds out he's a wizard, he goes to Hogwarts, battles Voldemort, blah.
What if someone like the idea for a book so much, that they changed the names of places, and characters?
Example: Bob was a normal teenage boy, struggling with the problems of high school. Then one day, he discovers he is really a god, who is destined to save the world from the evil goddess, Valerie Malvus.
It isn't exactly the same plot. The only similarities are that Harry and Bob both discover they are something they never dreamed of being, and they are destined to defeat the evil wizard/goddess. This is okay, but ONLY AND ONLY IF you don't copy the book word for word or make it SUPER similar so that it's obvious that you went to that book for an idea.

4. Songs.
Write a book about a song. Wrote what the words say, except as a story.
For example: More Than This by One Direction.
There's a guy, Matthew, who's broken because he wants this girl, Hannah, but she's with another guy, Luke. And Matthew really wishes that Hannah would be his. Then one day, he plucks up the courage to go to Hannah's house and tell her that he doesn't think it's right for her to be with Luke, and that Matthew can love her more than he loves her now. And Matthew also tells Hannah that whenever he sees her and Luke together, he's dying inside, and he can't stand them together, because he can love her more than this. But Hannah closes the door in Matthew's face. So he calls her and asks her if he's louder, then would she see him. She hangs up, and then Matthew goes for a walk, and he sees Hannah and Luke together, and he falls to his knees and prays that Hannah would be his.

Get it? It's basically the lyrics, but acted out.
Also, make dire that if you do this, that you give credit for the artist of the song you used.

There are more ways to get ideas for books, but these were the ones that came to mind right now. Hope this helped, and if it did, vote.
Juli.