How to Generate and Critique Story Ideas (Part 1): What if…

The two most important words for generating story ideas.

“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” Those are the words of Dr. Linus Pauling, the only person to ever win two Nobel Prize Awards. This is sage advice, especially for writers. A strong story concept is one key to the commercial viability of a novel, short story, or screenplay.

Over the next two weeks, I will run a ten-part series: How to Generate and Critique Story Ideas.

Part 1: What if…

The two most important words I know in the process of generating story ideas are these: What if? Simply look at an idea or event and see if you can re-frame it in a new and different way by asking… what if?

Here is an example from screenwriter James V. Hart:

The secret, the great key to writing Hook, came from my son. When he was six, he asked the question, ‘What if Peter Pan grew up?’ I had been trying to find a new way into the famous ‘boy who wouldn’t grow up’ tale, and our son gave me the key.

What if Peter Pan grew up?

Here’s another example from screenwriter Bob Gale:

The inspiration for making the movie, for coming up with the story [Back to the Future] is that I was visiting my parents in the summer of 1980, from St. Louis Missouri, and I found my father’s high-school yearbook in the basement. I’m thumbing through it and I find out that my father was the president of his graduating class, which I was completely unaware of. So there’s a picture of my dad, 18-years-old, and I’m thinking about the president of my graduating class, who was someone I would have had nothing to do with. He was one of these “Ra-Ra” political guys, he was probably Al Gore or something. Captain of the debate team, all this stuff. So the question came up in my head, ‘gee, if I had gone to school with my dad would I have been friends with him?’ That was where the light bulb went off.”

What if I had gone to school with my dad?

For screenwriter Marc Norman who originated the story for Shakespeare in Love, it was: What if William Shakespeare had writer’s block? For Steven Spielberg and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, it was this:

What if the alien (from Close Encounters) had stayed behind on Earth? What if there was a kind of foreign exchange? Dreyfuss goes away and the alien stays. Suddenly, this whole story (for E.T.) hit me like a ton of bricks.

Let’s put those words to another use: What if you set a goal to generate one story idea every day? Stories exist all around us. We just need to be aware… intentional… and use our imagination.

And those two little words — what if — can empower our process.

Tomorrow: Part 2 of the series How to Generate and Critique Story Ideas.