When it comes to the writing process, getting started and generating new ideas can be the hardest part. Unfortunately, ideas don’t always flow that plentifully, good or bad, thus, coming up with your next bestseller or viral article can require some work and strategy.
When you’re looking to generate new ideas and you’re feeling stuck, don’t try to come up with one excellent idea. Instead, let go of trying to get something just right and instead focus on generating 100 Bad Ideas.
Once you have all those bad ideas down on paper, you can begin to evaluate them. You never know when a bad idea is actually a good idea. Or you can modify an idea or get feedback and turn a not-so-great idea into an excellent one.
Here are six methods you can use to relax and allow yourself to create 100 awful, ridiculous ideas.
1. Write What You Know
If you’ve ever taken a writing class or workshop, read a book on the art of writing, or even hired a writing coach, chances are, you’ve heard this advice. As cliché as is, it stands the test of time for a reason.
No one knows your life, experiences, and background like you do. Writing about subject matters that you are familiar with is a fool-proof way to lend authenticity to your pieces. People often interpret this advice to mean that one should ONLY write from their own experience. That simply isn’t true. Science-fiction writers don’t have experienced time travel or encounter aliens to write a compelling scene.
While a fiction writer may not have all the lived experiences of their characters, they do have emotions, and the ability to convey those in their characters. Use the following exercises to develop ideas.
Play with your emotions
✏️ Choose an emotion you’re feeling and write about it from a character’s point of view. What does your character want? What makes them feel the way they do? What choices will they make as a direct result of that emotion?
These ideas can develop into a piece of flash fiction, a short story or be the basis of a longer book you write.
2. Show, Don’t Tell
One mistake writers make is instead of showing us how a character feels or what they want, they tell us in one big information dump. Write a scene or some dialogue that evokes and shows the emotion or desires of your character.
✏️ Use the following prompts to show what the character is feeling via dialogue, body language, and actions:
- It’s the night of your 7 year wedding anniversary and your spouse has forgotten, staying out late with friends instead
- She loved the way he said her name
- Ever since his wife left him, Principal Leaman has been a wreck
- If you feel you’ve exhausted your past experiences and personal emotions with these prompts, go within and draw from your past experiences again.
- What makes you angry?
- What strong opinions do you have?
- Is there a recent news event that caught your attention? Why?
3. What Have You Been Avoiding?
Change happens when we are uncomfortable. What ideas and stories have you been avoiding because you don’t want to deal with the discomfort. Have you been thinking about writing in a new genre. Does exploring this new idea force you to confront some emotional wounds you haven’t dealt with? What’s been holding you back? Is it fear?
A few years ago, I had an idea for a personal essay about childhood birthdays and self-worth. I knew it was a unique and heartfelt idea that would resonate with others who’ve had a checkered childhood, but it took months before I set aside the 10 minutes necessary to flesh out a pitch. I had all the excuses in the world for why I couldn’t write the piece, but the truth is, I wasn’t ready to confront the pain of my childhood. Plus, I thought readers might think I was whining unnecessarily.
In the end, writing the essay turned out to be really therapeutic and I was proud of the work I did on it, however, I was more proud that I turned a “bad idea” into a great piece of art. My editor understood my vision and assured me that this piece was indeed important and would speak to people with similar unresolved childhood issues.
Worrying is boring and just holds you back. Take the plunge and write what scares you.
✏️ What scares you?
Think about something, one thing in life that you fear. If your fear was a person, what kind of person would it be? How would they look, act, or talk? Do they have a name?
- Write a character composite of your fear.
- Choose another fear of yours. List three pieces of advice you’d give someone else who had the same fear.
- What’s something that used to scare you but doesn’t anymore. Write about what changed.
4. Let Your Imagination Flow
For as long as I can remember I’ve loved books and writing. Series like The Babysitters’ Club and American Girl provided a welcome and needed escape from my day-to-day life as a child. Writing allowed me to express myself in ways that I couldn’t vocally. As I’ve gotten older and started writing for a living, some of that youthful spark has left. The adult world of writing is filled with adult things like deadlines, SEO optimization, formatting issues, and the dreaded dilemma of whether to use the Oxford comma, or not to use the Oxford comma.
Stream of conscious writing is one technique I’ve used to help me come up with new ideas to write about. Julia Cameron’s morning pages exercise has become popular amongst writers and even non-creatives who just want to use the art of writing to process and illuminate parts of their lives.
As Cameron explains on her website, morning pages are three pages of long handwriting on any subject or thought that comes to mind, that should be done first thing in the morning before starting your day. What this type of exercise in the morning does is helps to clear “random” thoughts and clutter in your brain and consciousness, leading to more clarity and creativity later in the day.
“Moodling,” is another way of letting the imagination guide you to new ideas for writing. Allegedly first used in the early 20th century, moodling is basically daydreaming and letting your mind wander from thought to thought. Use this as a writing exercise by giving yourself a set amount of time to let your mind moodle, say, a half an hour?
Find a comfortable place to sit. If you can be in nature, even better. Allow yourself to daydream and think of anything that may come to mind, writing down things of particular interest if you want, or nothing at all for that block of time.
✏️ Do you dream?
Write three pages first thing in the morning about your dreams from the night before. What details stick out to you. What emotions overcome you while you were sleeping?
If you can’t remember a dream from the night before, maybe think about a recurring daydream or the last time you had deja vu. Describe your deja vu and where you may have had that experience before.
5. Make A Mind Map
???? Mind mapping is a brainstorming tool that uses associations to generate new ideas. Mind mapping begins with one central main idea, word, or concept with branches of connecting ideas, thoughts, and concepts, that then continue to branch into more ideas, concepts, and such. As you add to your central idea, you develop a diagram of ideas.
image: Biljana Jovanovic
In addition to helping you see the connection between different ideas, mind mapping is a useful tool for things like essay and chapter outlining. Research also shows that mind mapping increases creativity and is especially beneficial for visual learners.
✏️ Mind map your way to 100 bad ideas
Take a blank piece of paper and write a word, topic, or idea in the center of the page. Use lines, arrows, or even speech bubbles or joined circles, to make an outward diagram of sorts, writing down smaller ideas that are somehow related to the main theme or idea you’re working from.
Choose one bad idea on your mind map and write three sentences describing it. Do this as many times as you want to develop your ideas into a topic for a story or to pitch a commercial publication.
6. Use Writing Prompts
When all else fails, kick it old school with some tried and true writing prompts. Writing prompts push your thinking outside of your usual train of thought. They ask you to imagine circumstances and then write from there. You can choose ideas that are weird and uncomfortable. You can put ideas together that don’t usually go together. You can ask yourself “What if?”
✏️ What If…
- What if you were in charge of your town or city? What laws and rules would you create? How would you promote change, or make your surroundings better?
- Be your own prompt generator by asking yourself, “What If…?” What if the Berlin Wall never came down
- What if you had got into your dream university instead of staying close to home?
- What if people really were pink, purple, and green?
- Start a story off in a slightly alternative reality and see what new ideas and realities you can come up with.
Connect With Others
Writing can feel like a singular process. It can be lonely and isolating, but it doesn’t have to be.
Community workshops provide much-needed feedback on your writing and any bad ideas you might be coming up with. Workshopping your work in a group or with a critique buddy gives you a space to bounce around your bad ideas and find ways to make them work.
You don’t have to limit yourself to writing either. A book club that reads and analyzes texts is also a great way to forge a literary bond with your peers.
If you’re looking for an online group that allows you to collaborate from the comfort of home, there’s always The Workshop, an online mentorship community for writers where you can get feedback, expand your ideas and find places to share and publish your work.
Joining a community like ours is a great way to forge a sense of belonging amongst creative peers.
