I has an Idea!

[Ever]

So I have the opposite problem fron Sandstone-Shadow! I can never find inspiration. I was thinking maybe this would work: people throw out ideas and I take them all and roll 'em into one big story :D I've done this with my friends and it was really fun. So what do you think of this? If you think it is a good idea, feel free to give me ideas! I'm planning on writing a fantasy-type story. I would appreciate possible character personalities, settings, or any type of mythical creature that you have created (I promise to give credit!)

 

[Hiikaru]

I think that's a great idea if you can find people to do it with!

What might make it funner is if the others could write, too, or if you played trade-off with a story! For the former, everyone could have elements or ideas that they were required to include, and you could compare and contrast as to how it worked out! For the latter, you could work based on something like chapters, or you could each write until you got bored, or maybe you could each have the story for a certain amount of time. Roleplaying is fun, too, and if it goes well you can write later from what happened with it!

Also, I'd question the idea that you can never find inspiration. Don't you ever look at a piece of fiction and think of what could have been differently, or think about what would be cool to read about or watch, or have neat things happen to you or to others, or just generally think "huh, that would make an interesting story," ever? (if you haven't, maybe you should!) I think a big part of what makes people feel like they don't have any ideas is that they're convinced that the ideas they have aren't real ideas, or aren't good enough! I'm always a bit baffled when someone I know says they never have ideas, because I've heard them voice plenty of viable ideas for stories!

Otherwise, maybe you could think about the times when you have been inspired and try to emulate what happened to inspire you. Reading or watching interesting things could be inspiring, or the news could be, or looking at places with small stories about actual people, or reading people's ideas that either they've abandoned or you can see there's plenty of room for a different spin on them (the NaNoWriMo forum can be a good place for that), or doing those things where you're given a certain word or a phrase, like "sidewalk", or "It's raining cats and dogs."

I've always found that interacting with people and watching people is the most "inspiring" thing for me. It's really easy to write during school hours, for instance (I do tend to write a lot about school, but I don't think that's directly related), and I come up with a lot of material just having conversations with people. Surely you've had some of those silly conversations where you're just talking about something interesting or start bouncing ideas off each other and then go "... wow, that could actually be a thing!" (but people tend to discard the ideas immediately afterward) And hearing stories from others, I'm always really curious and pretty much can't help feeling in the details they left out on my own. If people aren't that inspiring for you, maybe you have something similar that you're not really noticing!

Also, a lot of times if you just force yourself to write despite not having magical inspiration, something will eventually work itself out! It kind of forces you to be creative (maybe not immediately, but if you persevere), since you can't really just keep writing nothing forever.

Something like that is definitely fun even if you have brilliant plots and characters coming out your ears, though. I won't offer anything because I don't particularly like to, but I hope it goes well and that you have lots of fun!