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Okay–if you’ve been playing along, you have a notebook with a list of characters and settings that you’ve had spinning around in your imagination. Right there, on paper, ready for you to use to make beautiful stories.
We’re going to make one more list. This is one will be full of situations. Otherwise known as plot bunnies.
These are little one line story ideas. Situations those characters can get into. Just like with the previous two lists, you don’t want to make them too detailed. Just a few words to spark your muse.
Here are some thoughts to get you started:
Start with all the stories you’ve been thinking about writing some day.
Ask this question: What if? It’s the mother of all questions for writers.
Take a favorite story and give it a big twist.
Think about a subplot in a movie or book that you really love.
Add real life to the mix. What are some things that have happened to you or someone you know that might make it into a story one day?
Think about all the odd little things you’ve seen, observed, or heard about in your life.
You aren’t telling the whole story here. Please don’t forget that.
Here are a few from my own list and a little bit about where the situations came from:
A family with a lot of kids is forced into the van life. (I have eight brothers and sisters and growing up when had a massive full-sized van. There are a bunch of big-family stories on my list.)
A woman broken down on the side of the road, braiding her daughter’s hair before her husband shows up. (I saw a woman braiding her daughter’s hair next to her broken down car on the highway in Las Vegas thirty years ago. This one has lived in my head for a long time!)
What if you could see the worst thing that anyone who touches you has ever done or ever WILL DO–but you don’t know which? (This came from a game of ‘what if.’ I love a good moral dilemma.)
What if someone just walked away from their life and went all in on being happy? (I saw a Tiktok video from a woman who did this.)
A teenage boy runs away from home to walk around Lake Tahoe and finds himself caught up with a wilderness camp. (I brainstormed this one when an agent asked me for a list of my next ideas.)
Two boys commit a murder in the summer before eighth grade and go to prison together. (I actually covered a murder trial like this when I was a newspaper reproter in 1999.)
A lush fairytale. (I just really want to write one.)
I hope you get the idea. There’s a lot of crossover with character and setting in this story. There are characters and/or settings embedded in pretty much all of them, because it’s nearly impossible to talk about a situation without them. The one exception, a lush fairytale, is really more of a genre than a situation and I’m not going to be able to write that until I flesh it out a lot more.
Don’t worry about doing this wrong. Just start jotting down situations. On Sunday, at noon EST, we’ll have our live Working Lunch class–and we’ll put these lists together into a fully-developed story idea. This is literally my favorite thing to do and I really hope you’ll join us.
Use this link to register for the call. Don’t worry if you haven’t been working on your list. Still come! You’ll just need one character, one setting, and one situation to work with.
Love,
Shaunta
Shaunta, I never had luck with "What if?" So I revised it.
"Wouldn't it be terrible if...?"
My mind whirls with terrors to inflict on my characters.