How to Develop Concepts for your Short Stories

You would be amazed on how easy it is to find concepts or ideas for short stories. The inspiration can come from the least likely venues. For a further gander, read on.

Instructions

1. Developing concepts or ideas for your short stories should be a far easier task than writing them. There is no optimal way to think of ideas but dozens of approaches exist.

2. One of the best ways to develop concepts for your short stories is by looking at your life and lifestyle. Does something you have said or done stand out as being the perfect idea for a story? Even in a verbal exchange with someone you can come up with ideas. Or did your cousin come over to your house and go onto your computer without permission? Yeah, so? Well, take that idea and expound upon it. Did Larry inadvertently or intentionally hack into the computer database of a government agency and leave a trace that would lead to your house? Already done a million times? Add more to the concept. Perhaps he accidentally found a database that housed important information crucial to America' defense? Did terrorists infiltrate our system and did Larry unintentionally exposed it? You could expand on that concept for days.

3. Another example is while watching a show on the discovery channel I saw a certain medical examiner talk about a particular case. In the background, in the medical examiners office, I saw a hand in a glass jar. Upon further inspection, the ring finger was missing. Now, I could take that concept and make a short story out of it. Make it a murder mystery where the only thing found was the ring-less finger.

4. There is an endless supply of ideas for your short story if you use your imagination. One night, as my wife and I returned home from dropping off our daughter at my mother-in-law's house, we saw a car parked outside one of our neighbor's house. There was a lone occupant in the car looking at the house and then getting back into his car. I suggested to my wife that is was an FBI agent staking out the place. He was there because the neighbor used to be a serial killer and the FBI finally got a tip. She looked at me and instead suggested that he just got home and was trying to locate his briefcase or something. I told her yes, it was a briefcase, a briefcase filled with purloined secret information from his company that he was going to sell to a competitor for the highest amount.

5. While she rolled her eyes (as she usually does with me), the event I witnessed was ordinary, I made it into a potential short story by expanding on the normal scenario. It is quite easy to do. All you need to do is see the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Tips & Warnings

• Be creative and flexible.

• Look for extraodinary in the ordnary.

• There is no such thing as being weird when coming up with concepts.