5 Strange Places You Can Find New Ideas For Your Books

Stories are everywhere. They are present in every moment in time, and in every atom of space you look at. You just have to find yours. But it’s not always easy. In fact, it could be really difficult to get inspiration that’s strong enough to want to write a story and make it your own. But it definitely isn’t impossible. In fact, it is possible to find sparks of inspiration is the most weird, wacky places. Here are 5 strange places you can find new ideas for your books.

In your dreams

Dreams are perhaps the strangest places to find stories. Usually, dreams have exaggerated, disconnected, intense scenes that make no sense. But piecing these together, you can usually get a very interesting, perhaps very offbeat story. And if you’re writing magical realism, this is absolutely perfect. Writing about dreams, and meta-dreaming is super cool stuff that everyone wants to read. Psychoanalyst Freud believed that dreams are expressions of our unconscious, and even wrote the treatise ‘the interpretation of dreams.’ Many mystics also believe that dreams hold important meanings. Reading such books can help you further explore the idea of penning down dreams.

Mythologies and folklore

This is perhaps the most primal source of stories. Mythologies and folktales have interesting plots, in which deeper messages are interwoven. They also feature a host of characters from another day and age and even from other realms. Such stories might anthropomorphize animals, or feature giants and gods and fairies and more. Whatever the case maybe, they have a lot to get inspiration from. From basic writing techniques and structures to larger themes, plot ideas and traits of characters, you can pick up a lot from here. Plus, a lot of writers write books set in that era, but add a modern character. Or perhaps they tell the story from the perspective of someone other than the protagonist – in mythological fiction. The possibilities are endless.

Lyrics of songs

Song lyrics induce very specific moods in humans. Music moves people, and this emotionality can be exploited for the purpose of creativity. Or rather, it can be harnessed towards the path of creation. Just by choosing a specific song that stimulates a specific mood, one can really spark ideas of a specific genre. Many writers, like Murakami, play certain songs while writing. That not only creates ambience, but also fuels your emotions in a certain direction, which also impacts and drives your thoughts.

Psychology textbooks

This is perhaps the last place you would look to for a story idea. But psychology textbooks are storehouses of information about the human mind and psyche. And no matter what genre you write in, psychology will factor into the process. Whether you use it to flesh out a character, or to create intrigue, or to drive a plot, human behaviour and its study is an important part of a literary text. Since psychology studies memory, trauma, reinforcement, learning and the effect of the past on the present, it can really spark inspiration.

Old photographs

Finally, photographs from a long lost, nostalgic time can be catalysts to artistic inspiration. Photographs are essentially refrigerators of time. They slow the gently flowing waves of time into a frozen mass that stays still. What I mean to say is that they freeze time and capture its essence in visuals. Just the memory of a certain day, or the thoughts set into motion due to a visual like a domino effect can give you ideas to write. The same goes with movie stills, but since a photograph is personal, it evokes more. Even if you look at photographs of your parents or grandparents, they will have a lot to convey.

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