Stuck on What to Write? Try This Brainstorming Technique!

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The past couple of weeks, I've had some trouble coming up with new ideas. I've been writing microfictions pretty much daily, but I wanted to write something you can sink your teeth into.

I keep a list of general story ideas—if you don't do this, start—and I read it over, but none of the ideas were hitting quite right.

One way I like to brainstorm is by asking "What if?" But that was doing nothing for me this month.

So I hit up an old favorite, Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell, which has a section on "the top twenty ways to get hundreds of plot ideas." (The first technique it recommends is the What If? game. Yes, I got that idea from this book.)

Bell recommends some great techniques on finding new stories, like making up a creative title and going from there or browsing the news for ideas.

But you know what? Not one of those twenty ideas was working for me this time. (I still recommend it. Great book.)

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Here's what I did next:

I created an online board of sticky notes (using Miro's free tier) of possible Themes, Characters, Ideas, Cool Titles, Settings, and Issues I'm passionate about. I wasn't looking for any kind of cohesion, just a bunch of stuff that interests me.

It ended up looking like this:

Once I had these ideas listed in front of me, I wrote down all the genres I like to write or am interested in writing.

Then I just sat there for a bit and listened to what was "calling" to me. I ended up choosing the sci-fi and mystery genres. I decided it would be on a spaceship. Then I decided on the robot character.

From there, I asked myself a bunch of questions and wrote down possible answers. The chosen answers are bolded.

And once I had the basics down, it was pretty easy to get started! I'm about 1,000 words into the story so far, and I'm going to write some more right now.

Anyway, if you've ever been stuck on brainstorming, I hope this method helps you!