Quick, before newspapers go completely out of business, buy a Sunday paper from any medium sized city.  Large city will do also, but it’s not necessary.

Go through and scan the headlines.  If any headline intrigues you, or even interests you, or isn’t the usual story you’ve seen a zillion times, read the story.  I’ve found that short, two to five paragraph stories are often the best source.

I’ve used this technique in talks before.  I’ll just bring in a newspaper and start reading headlines to the group.  After each one, I’ll stop for a few seconds.  At the beginning of this exercise, no one will speak during those seconds of silence. So, I may go on, or I may choose to read a little of the story.  Sometimes, I’ll prompt with a, “What if such and such happened?” based on the story.  I’ll ask for ideas.  On the first story,  I may get a suggestion.  Or not.  So, I may have to suggest one myself.

After a few stories, someone will throw out a question or comment during my brief pause after the headline.  Maybe it’s, “Read the first of the story.” But before very long, people will say, “There’s a book idea there.” And soon, many in the group will be suggesting directions where a book idea may take off.

Some years ago, I read a three paragraph story in the L.A. Times. Out of it grew a 95,000 words suspense novel. The newspaper story had the barest germ of an idea.  But germs have a way of growing.  All you have to do is sit down at the computer and start typing.

I just picked up a local art bulletin, flipped open the back page. Here’s the headline.

Northeast Texas Regional Film Commission

Imagine a file crew coming into a small rural area to shoot a film. How many stories could come out of that. A big name star coming back to his roots. Maybe he met the girl he loved years ago. Or maybe one of the youngsters manages to get attached to the crew, leaves with them when the shoot is over, and …  Or someone with the film company recognizes an older woman (or man) as someone who had been a star many years ago. But nobody in town knew this. What might this cause?  And on and on.

I once took a short story class from Jory Sherman, that great story teller who has published more than 350 books in his career – everything from westerns to mysteries, to science fiction to literary, romance and poetry.  He told us to just start thinking of anything that might make a good title.  We didn’t need a story in mind, just an interesting title.  Most of us wrote down a half-dozen to a dozen titles in a few minutes.  Then he said, pick one and start, right now, writing a short story.

As you can imagine, most of these titles had no story behind them when we put them down on paper, just a collection of words that sounded good together. But nearly everybody in the class started writing, based solely on a title they had dreamed up.  Now, I’m not going to tell you that every story was a contest winner.  But several were.  One person who had never written a short story before, wrote a story that placed in a short story contest that year.  All from a title conjured up in a few minutes of silence.

This highlights another important point.  The discipline to simply sit and write, undisturbed, for a period of time is one of the keys to writing. 

So, what can you write about?  Story ideas are milling around you every day, every hour.  Just observe, listen, look for the story.  Paul Harvey had a program called, “The Rest of The Story.”  Follow his lead.  Listen to the news story.  Read the newspaper story.  Listen to a bit of conversation in the checkout line.  And then ask yourself, what is the rest of the story?