As a fiction writer, I often get asked how I come up with story ideas. There are various ways that I’ve done so. And yes, inspiration does sometimes come to me out of the blue.

For example, one time several years ago I was working as a shift supervisor for a security company. It was during the winter and that year we had snowstorms every week on Wednesday. Well, during this time when I had to drive around my home city, the idea came to me about writing a story that took place several thousand years after an ice age started. Think of the movie The Day After Tomorrow but the story takes place thousands of years after when people would no longer have technology that we have today. And the ice age was global not just the northern hemisphere.

I also got the idea for two different stories from songs, one by Cheap Trick called The Dream Police, and another from The Police song Message in A Bottle. The former I am currently in revisions on and renamed it Live Free or Die. The second one looking for beta readers for and it will be given a different title based on recommendations from other people, even though titles can’t be copyrighted.

There’s also the idea of taking an old idea and putting a new twist on it. For my first novel, No Remorse No Regretand the sequel, No Rest for The Vengeful, I put a new twist on the revenge story theme. Often, the revenge story is a male character who was a former cop, special forces, or covert spy operative.

Someone close to him gets abducted or killed and he goes all mad dog and single-handed mows down all the bad guys.

My novels had the twist that the one taking revenge was a female character who was the surviving victim of a serial killer, and she is inadvertently rescued by a member of the Russian Mafia who trains her in weapons and hand to hand combat. She is the one who takes revenge against those who abuse women, while at the same time being a contract killer for the man who rescued her.

If you’re still stuck, you can always use the trusty old Google and type in a search for writing prompts and see what you get. I’ve used some of them myself when writing flash fiction pieces.

There’s also a game called The What If Game. For example, what if there were a race of sentient humanoids that were the size of mice but had a special power? That could be a fun one to play with.

As you can see, there’s no limit to where a fiction writer can get their story ideas. Hope this helps. Make it a great day.