When looking for ideas, always keep in mind that your ideas could be in your very own house.  Look around you.  There are plenty of ideas.  Take my short stories Spy Dogs and A Pirate’s Life for Me for example.  I got the idea for Spy Dogs when my dog snuck up on my brother and jumped on him.  I got the idea for A Pirate’s Life for Me when my school celebrated “National Pirate Day.”  Yeah, I didn’t get the holiday either.  For some ideas you just have to think.  Technical stories, reports, biographies, and bibliographies all take a lot of time to think about.  On stories like those, you have to think about who or what it’s about, where you’ll get the information, how you will get the information, and much more.  I’ve written a couple of these stories over the years, and they are definitely harder to write than fictional stories.  Anyway, ideas don’t just come flooding into your head one by one like mice in cheese race.  They take time to come up with.  Here are some ways to get started:

 

             One strategy is to go throughout a day doing the same things you always do.  Play soccer, take math class, all that good stuff.  At the end of the day, rewind what you did that day in your mind.  I guarantee one good idea will come to mind.  But once you have that idea, write it down!  You may think you will be able to remember, but it’s always a good idea to write it down just in case. 

  

            Another strategy is to walk through your house, looking for good ideas.  When I was five years old, I discovered a section of the attic that I had never seen before.  So, I decided to write a story about a ghost that lived in the attic.  It’s that simple.  Look in your room, the living room, the kitchen, even the bathroom.  This is how many great authors get ideas for stories. 

 

            This strategy is how I get most of my story ideas.  I watch T.V.  That’s right, T.V.  Think about it.  There are thousands of stories you could write from the T.V.  You could write a story about golf if you were watching the Master’s Golf Tournament.  You could write about a mysterious house if you were watching Extreme Makeover.  There are unlimited ideas in a T.V.  You just have to know what to look for.

  

            This last strategy works just as well as the others.  It may seem weird, but it works.  All you have to do is sleep.  That’s it.  I get a ton of ideas from the dreams I have.  I once dreamed that I was being chased by something invisible.  So I wrote about a deranged man who always thought he was being followed.  Everybody thinks he’s crazy, but he ends up being right.  Try the first three strategies before you try this one.  This is a last resort.