Fiction Writer's Guide - The Inspiration Tree

This is a specific continuation of the general Creator’s Guide.

Fiction writers are trained by habit to see stories everywhere. A photograph suggests a character. A song creates a mood. An unusual question becomes a premise. Another story makes us wonder what would happen if one choice had gone differently.

That instinct makes fiction unusually flexible within this community because almost any Seed can become the doorway into a story.

The challenge is not always finding inspiration. Sometimes it is getting beyond the first idea inspiration gives you. Read a Fiction Seed and the obvious response may be another story about similar events. Look at an image and you may instinctively describe what you see. Those can produce wonderful work, but they represent only a fraction of the possibilities.

This guide is designed to help you keep asking, “What else could the story be?”

It isn’t a guide to writing fiction or instructions for publishing a Seed. For the submission process, see Create an Inspired Seed. Instead, the suggestions below are starting points for finding characters, conflicts, worlds, perspectives, unanswered questions, and stories hidden inside the Seeds you discover.

Use one exactly as suggested, combine several, reverse one completely, or let a prompt carry you somewhere we never anticipated.

If the Parent Seed Is Fiction

Another story offers far more possibilities than simply writing a sequel. Somewhere beyond the events the author chose to tell are other characters, other moments, other consequences, and other stories waiting to be imagined.

You could write:

A sequel exploring what happens next.
A prequel explaining how the situation began.
A story taking place generations before the original.
A story set generations afterward, when the original events have become history or legend.
The same events from another character’s point of view.
The story of a minor character who appeared only briefly.
The story of someone affected by the events who never appeared in the original.
The antagonist’s version of what happened.
A story in which the apparent villain was right.
A story about someone who completely misunderstood the original events.
The story of a character who almost became involved but didn’t.
A missing scene occurring between two events.
The story of what happened somewhere else at exactly the same time.
An alternate ending.
A story beginning with one decision in the original being reversed.
A version in which the protagonist failed.
A version in which the protagonist succeeded too well.
A story exploring an unintended consequence of the original resolution.
A character’s childhood.
A character’s old age.
The origin story of an important relationship.
The history of an important object.
The story of the person who created that object.
A story about an unexplored location mentioned in passing.
A story set elsewhere in the same fictional world.
An ordinary person’s life inside that extraordinary world.
A love story occurring in the background of the original conflict.
A mystery set within the same world.
A comedy using an otherwise serious setting.
A horror story hiding inside an optimistic world.
A hopeful story set inside a dark world.
A completely different genre using one idea from the Parent Seed.
A story in which the original events have become a religion, myth, conspiracy theory, or political controversy.
A future historian attempting to determine what really happened.
An archaeologist discovering evidence of the original events centuries later.
A journalist investigating their aftermath.
A courtroom drama resulting from something a character did.
An oral history assembled from people who remember the event differently.
Letters exchanged between characters.
A character’s private diary.
A collection of messages discovered after someone disappears.
A fictional newspaper report about an event in the story.
A government report that contradicts what readers know happened.
An instruction manual for something that exists in the fictional world.
A tourist’s account of visiting it.
A child’s version of events adults understand very differently.
A folktale people inside the world tell about the original story.
A story inspired by one sentence, object, location, or unanswered question rather than the main plot.

You don’t have to continue the author’s story.

Sometimes the richest response is to notice the story they never intended to tell.

If the Parent Seed Is an Article

Articles give fiction writers something enormously useful: ideas grounded in reality. A scientific development, social trend, historical event, philosophical argument, new technology, unusual profession, or seemingly ordinary fact can become the foundation for an entire fictional world.

You could write:

A story in which the article’s prediction comes true.
A story in which it goes spectacularly wrong.
A story in which it succeeds beyond anyone’s expectations.
A near-future story following the idea to its logical conclusion.
A story set fifty years after the development becomes commonplace.
A story about the first person affected by it.
A story about the last person who refuses to accept it.
A character whose livelihood depends upon the issue.
A character whose livelihood is destroyed by it.
A story about someone exploiting the idea for personal gain.
A story about someone trying to stop it.
A mystery created by the technology or social change.
A crime that could not have existed before it.
A love story complicated by the article’s subject.
A family drama showing its consequences at the household level.
A workplace story set inside the industry being discussed.
A satire exaggerating the article’s premise.
A dystopian interpretation.
A utopian interpretation.
A story showing why the supposed utopia isn’t perfect.
A story showing something unexpectedly humane inside the apparent dystopia.
Historical fiction transplanting the central issue into another era.
A story about an ordinary person living through a major change rather than the people causing it.
A fictional interview with someone living in the world the article predicts.
A diary written during the transition.
A newspaper article from twenty years later reporting what happened.
A fictional advertisement for the product, service, or lifestyle the article anticipates.
A story built around one statistic or minor detail that caught your attention.
A character who passionately believes the article’s argument.
Another who believes precisely the opposite.
A story in which both turn out to be partly wrong.

Try asking not only “What if this happened?” but “Who would have to live with it?”

That is often where the fiction begins.

If the Parent Seed Is Imagery

An image gives you a moment. Fiction gives you everything outside that moment.

You could write:

What happened five minutes before the image.
What happens five minutes afterward.
What happened twenty years earlier.
What the scene looks like twenty years later.
The story of the person pictured.
The story of someone just outside the frame.
Why the person came to this place.
Why they desperately need to leave.
What they’re looking at.
What they’re hiding.
What they don’t yet know.
The conversation that just ended.
The conversation about to begin.
A story explaining one mysterious object in the image.
The history of the location.
A story in which the setting is the most important element.
A story inspired only by the image’s mood.
A story inspired by its colors.
A character whose personality feels like the artwork.
A completely different setting that produces the same emotional response.
A story explaining something impossible depicted in the image.
A world in which everything shown is completely ordinary.
A story in which the image is itself an object: a painting, poster, advertisement, photograph, evidence, religious icon, or historical artifact.
A mystery about who created the image.
A story about someone discovering it.
A story about someone trying to destroy it.
A story about two people who interpret the same image completely differently.
A story deliberately contradicting what the image initially appears to mean.

Don’t feel obligated to describe the picture.

Ask what the picture makes you wonder about.

If the Parent Seed Is Photography

A photograph has one particularly useful quality for fiction writers: whatever it depicts actually existed for at least an instant. Your story does not have to.

You could write:

The imagined life of a person in the photograph.
A fictional character who once lived in the photographed location.
The story of whoever arrived immediately after the photographer left.
A story about something hidden beyond the frame.
What happened in that location decades earlier.
What might happen there decades from now.
A mystery centered on an apparently insignificant detail.
A story explaining an unusual expression, object, shadow, reflection, or empty space.
A fictional history of a building.
The story of the last person to live there.
The story of the first person who will live there in the future.
A romance beginning at the photographed location.
A crime witnessed there.
A secret meeting that occurred there.
A ghost story inspired by an ordinary place.
A science-fiction story transforming the location without losing its recognizable character.
A story in which the photograph itself is discovered years later.
A character searching for the place shown in an old photograph.
Two photographs of the same place decades apart with a story hidden between them.
A story told by the photographer.
A story told by the person who did not want the photograph taken.
A story inspired entirely by the atmosphere rather than anything literally pictured.

A photograph can function as evidence from a story that hasn’t been written yet.

Your job can be discovering what that evidence means.

If the Parent Seed Is Poetry

Poetry can give fiction writers something a plot outline rarely does: an emotional starting point.

Instead of translating the poem literally, consider what kind of person, situation, relationship, or world might produce the feeling it created in you.

You could write:

A story expanding one image from the poem.
A character inspired by its narrator.
A story about the person being addressed.
The events that caused the poem to be written.
What happens after its final line.
A story built around one metaphor.
A literal world based on a metaphor the poet intended figuratively.
A story capturing the same emotion without using any of the poem’s events.
A romance inspired by its longing.
A horror story inspired by its unease.
A mystery inspired by something unexplained.
A childhood memory suggested by its imagery.
A story about grief, hope, anger, isolation, wonder, or joy suggested by its emotional tone.
A character who would completely misunderstand the poem.
Two characters who interpret it differently.
A story in which the poem exists and matters to a character.
A story explaining how a fictional culture came to write or preserve such a poem.
A prose story that deliberately changes the genre while preserving the emotional core.

Sometimes poetry gives you no plot whatsoever.

That can be its greatest gift. It leaves the plot entirely to you.

If the Parent Seed Is Audio

Audio can bypass the analytical part of storytelling and create a place, character, pace, or emotion before you know why.

You could write:

The scene you see when you close your eyes and listen.
A character who seems to belong to the music.
The place where you imagine the piece playing.
A story whose pace follows the rhythm.
A quiet story inspired by a sparse composition.
A frantic story inspired by something energetic.
A romance suggested by the mood.
A thriller suggested by tension in the sound.
A fantasy world inspired by unfamiliar instrumentation.
A science-fiction setting suggested by electronic sound.
A historical setting suggested by traditional music.
The story of a fictional musician performing the piece.
The story of someone hearing it at an important moment.
A character who associates the sound with a memory.
A story about why a particular recording became important.
A scene without dialogue inspired by the audio.
A story whose emotional progression follows the piece from beginning to end.
A completely contrasting story, such as something disturbing inspired by beautiful music.
A story based on sounds in the background rather than the primary performance.
A fictional culture for which the music has ceremonial, political, religious, or historical importance.

Try listening without writing anything.

When the audio ends, ask yourself:

Where was I? Who was there? What was happening?

You may already have the beginning of a story.

If the Parent Seed Is Video

Video gives you story, image, movement, sound, people, places, and ideas simultaneously. The opportunity for a fiction writer is often to turn away from the camera and explore what the video couldn’t show.

You could write:

The story of a person who appears only briefly.
What happens after the video ends.
What happened before it began.
A scene occurring between two moments shown.
The story happening somewhere else simultaneously.
The internal thoughts of someone on screen.
The perspective of someone watching the events.
A fictional backstory for a location.
A story inspired by one visual detail.
A story inspired only by the soundtrack or atmosphere.
A fictionalized version of a real subject explored in the video.
A character who sees the events completely differently.
A story about the consequences the video never explores.
A future in which the events shown become historically important.
A fictional documentary made decades later about what happened.
A story in which the video itself is discovered evidence.
A mystery in which something visible in the background becomes the crucial clue.
A story about the person behind the camera.
A version translated into another genre.
A story that begins precisely where the video’s subject ends.

Instead of asking what the video was about, sometimes ask:

What story was happening nearby that the camera missed?

If the Parent Seed Is a What If?

For a fiction writer, a What If? is almost an invitation to cause trouble.

It provides the change. You get to discover the consequences.

You could write:

The moment the What If first becomes reality.
The first person to discover it.
The first person harmed by it.
The first person helped by it.
Someone who becomes enormously wealthy because of it.
Someone who loses everything.
The person responsible who immediately regrets it.
Someone desperately trying to reverse it.
Someone determined to make sure it can never be reversed.
An ordinary family adapting to the new reality.
A child who has never known the world before it.
An elderly person who remembers how things used to be.
A love story possible only because the world changed.
A relationship destroyed by the change.
A new profession created by it.
An old profession made obsolete.
A new crime.
A new law.
A new religion or philosophy.
A political movement built around it.
A black market created by it.
A business nobody anticipated.
An unintended environmental consequence.
An unexpected cultural tradition.
The first election fought over the issue.
A courtroom deciding something society never previously needed to define.
A school teaching children how to live with the new reality.
A rebellion against something most people consider beneficial.
A character who discovers the What If isn’t actually what everyone thinks it is.
The best possible outcome.
The worst possible outcome.
The most ridiculous plausible outcome.
The smallest, most personal consequence rather than the global one.
The world one day later.
The world ten years later.
The world five hundred years later.
A future civilization that no longer remembers the change ever happened.
An archaeologist trying to understand our world from before it occurred.
A story in which the premise is completely normal and never explained.

Don’t stop at “What would happen?”

Ask “And then what?” repeatedly.

That’s where a premise begins turning into a world.

If the Parent Seed Is Other

Some Seeds will resist obvious categorization. For a fiction writer, that can be an advantage because you’re less likely to arrive with assumptions about what kind of story should come from them.

Start with whatever caught you.

Was it a person? An argument? An object? A memory? A fact? A joke? A place? An emotion? A strange detail? Something you disagreed with? Something that frightened you? Something that made you curious?

Then begin asking questions.

Who cares about this?

Who wants it?

Who fears it?

Who benefits?

Who loses?

What happened before?

What happens next?

What if everyone believes something about it that isn’t true?

What is the worst possible moment for this to happen?

What would make an ordinary person risk everything because of it?

You don’t need the Parent Seed to contain a story.

Sometimes it only needs to contain the question that makes you start one.

Use These Ideas as Starting Points

Don’t treat this guide as a list of story assignments. Its real purpose is to interrupt the moment when your imagination automatically chooses the most familiar path.

Take a prompt from the Fiction section and use it on a photograph. Take something suggested for a What If? and apply it to a poem. Combine an imagined newspaper report with a minor character’s story. Turn a romantic premise into horror. Take something enormous and make it personal, or take something intimate and follow its consequences until they affect an entire civilization.

Also spend some time in the Artist’s Guide and Photographer’s Guide. An artist thinking about character portraits, maps, costumes, artifacts, architecture, posters, or abstract interpretations may give you ideas for stories about the people who created or used those things. A photographer’s search for what lies outside the frame can be exactly the question a fiction writer needs.

The guides belong to disciplines.

The ideas don’t have to.

Looking Forward

As the community grows, we hope to make this kind of creative exploration part of the experience itself.

Future Creative Accomplishments might recognize fiction writers for trying new approaches: writing from an unexpected perspective, creating a story from an image or piece of music, exploring a new genre, building fiction around a minor detail, responding to every Seed Type, or completing other creative challenges we develop with the community.

Separate milestone badges may recognize sustained contributions to Fiction and other forms of creative participation. These features are intended for future development, and the accomplishment ideas themselves can continue growing as writers show us approaches we never thought to suggest.

For now, give yourself the challenge.

Find a Seed that catches your attention, but before writing the first story that comes to mind, look through this guide and find three other stories that could come from it.

Then decide which one you can’t stop thinking about.