How To Find A Story Idea

People often ask me how to find stories. The easiest way to find a story is just to look at your own life - the things you've learned the hard way. Embarrassing moments are a great opportunity to craft a story. Recently someone in a speaker Facebook group asked us to share an embarrassing moment. I went one step further and instead of just sharing the moment, I crafted it to include:

• A beginning, middle, and an end
• A conflict for the main character - me
• Details that would make the moment more interesting (humor, description, imaginary characters, sharing of random thoughts in my head)
• Natural word choice to make it friendly and conversational, so it wouldn't feel too scripted and polished
• A point to the whole story - a lesson - something I learned from it
• A rough outline of how the story goes and fun lines I want to be sure to include (the happy balance between memorizing and winging it)

I didn't overthink it, or spend hours on it. I just made sure not to weigh it down with too many unnecessary words or scenes, and just enough context to let you know where I am and why the details matter to the story. And here is what came out of the process. It took me an hour tops. I kind of like it. Hope you do too.

And, by the way, if you're having trouble crafting stories, then maybe you need my book The Story Formula.