Finding Your Story Idea
The beginning of your journey to writing your Magnum Opus will usually start with a story idea. A story idea can come to you in many ways. It might happen in a dream. It might hit you in the middle of the checkout aisle at the grocery store. It’s possible the idea has been swimming around inside your head for several years, waiting for the moment when you will allow it your undivided attention.
The idea might be a vision of a place–a beautiful yet broken world that needs mentioning and mending. Or it might be a mere word spoken–one that already makes you want to shout out for joy, or run for shelter, or cover your face and cry. It might get inspired from a newspaper article–something going on in our current times that sparks the desire for you to write a kind of commentary. Often times the story idea is a person. A stranger you have never met before but oddly gives you the feeling that you’ve known them your whole life.
Don’t be surprised if this initial idea is shrouded in darkness and the daunting unknown. So many questions will be firing off the walls of your mind. Who, how, where, why? You might find yourself doubting the idea: “Is it just a meaningless fantasy that will amount to nothing?” Or “How the heck could a story ever come out of THAT!?”
If you find yourself in this situation, guess what? You’ve just been called by an unknown entity into one of the greatest arenas you will ever enter in your life. You have been called to the task of a writer.
DO NOT walk away from that idea. This is the beginning of the greatest story you can possibly tell.
Now, you might have other story ideas brewing that will conflict with the inspired one: ones with the possibility of epic proportion, cool sexy ones that speak to the latest trends, ones that could get you the attention of that agent you’d just die to get a phone call from. But please remember that if those ideas were born of a desire to be recognized by the market, but didn’t come from that deep dark mysterious place mentioned above, then think twice about giving them your precious time and attention.
The closer the story is to you–when it has a touch that makes you shiver, a song that gets you dancing–the more power you will have in telling it. The more knowledge you will possess, the more canvass, the more color, the more pen.
What you love, you KNOW. What you wish to love, you will only guess at knowing.
Write from your instinct. Draw that idea out of your subconscious. Out of your heart. It is the only place your Magnum Opus can live.
If it hasn’t arrived yet, don’t worry. It’s gonna come when it’s gonna come. But the quicker you surrender yourself to living life with an open heart (which will be discussed in my coming blogs) the faster that baby is going to find you.
Doesn’t this just sound like so much fun?!
P.S. If it doesn’t come right away and you need something to do in the meantime, read articles like the one below:
http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/5-ways-to-come-up-with-great-story-ideas
