Dear O'Abby: How do I come up with ideas?

Dear O'Abby,

I've been writing for several years and am finding it increasingly difficult to come up with original, new ideas for my stories.  Do you have any advice for someone struggling to come up with something new?

Best,

Clueless

Dear Clueless,

There's nothing worse than staring at a blank page and waiting for inspiration to strike, yet sometimes it is difficult to find that first spark of an idea.  

When you're struggling to find a story, there are a number of places you can go to try and find inspiration.  You can try using writing prompts.  Websites like Writing.com have daily contests with prompts and I've used prompts to spark short stories and even to guide the plot of a (still unfinished) novel.

Reading the newspaper can also spark ideas, especially if you juxtapose two very different stories together.  But sometimes a single story can be enough to start a story.  One of my novels was born from a newspaper article that made me so darn mad, I just had to write something against it.

Reading books and seeing films can also help shake good ideas loose.  I can't tell you how many great story ideas I've had come out of documentary films I've seen.  And I sometimes read a book where I like the premise a lot, but not the actual story the author wrote to the premise, so I then write my own story around that same basic premise.

You can also use your own life and experiences to spark a story.  Think of an event or a person important to you and use that as the basis for a story.  Unless you want to write a memoir, you can fictionalise this story a lot and I'd advise changing real peoples' names to avoid getting in trouble.

Or what about re-telling a classic story? There are hundreds of stories, plays, poems and legends you can make your own while using the original text as the framework. The book I'm currently working on started off as a lesbian re-telling of Romeo and Juliet. Admittedly, it has veered away from the original plot a lot in the writing and most people don't seem to know that's what it was based on...

Hopefully one of those might help you find the inspiration for your next story.  If not, maybe you just need to take a writing break, do something else to exercise your creative muscle.  I often find that doing something different gives my brain the break it needs to find the next story or character I'm interested in exploring.  So grab some paint, or knitting needles or a lump of clay and see what happens.

X O'Abby