When I started my new Romance series I needed to come up with seven new romance ideas I researched tropes and came up with seven ideas that way. My ideas will change as I write each book though. The first book was a simple girl meets a boy who has the complication of a child and the story has morphed into that story but also a story with an incredible subplot about a small-town bad girl who gets her feelings hurt and seeks revenge by kidnapping the love interest and the daughter. This is a pretty good story. It’s like nothing that I’ve ever read in the Cowboy genre before.
But if you’re stuck without an idea to write about research is always a good place to start if you have a grain of an idea already. You research and expand or reduce your idea appropriately.
Here are ten ideas to get you started if you don’t have any idea at all, what to write your next book about.
- Write about what pisses you off most. Think about the things that set your hair on fire and write a book about those things.
- Do something remarkable then write about it. The hard part here is doing the remarkable thing.
- Start a blog and write chapters one post at a time. For example, in a cooking blog, each blog could be one recipe and then in a year, you have a book.
- Create a podcast and then write a book about what you’ve learned from your podcast. If you interviewed lawyers about social justice once a week for a year at the end of a year you could write a book about what you learned from your Social Justice podcast or What you learned from your lawyer podcast.
- Ask your friends what they like reading most, and write something for them. If your friends are into a love triangle between humans and extraterrestrial vampires and werewolves then write them a book like that but give it a new twist.
- Jot down everything that makes you laugh for a week and write a story about that.
- Write about what makes you laugh hardest.
- Write about the most upsetting experience you’ve ever had.
- Write about the person who’s had the most impact on your life.
- Take photographs of your city and write about that.
Some of these ideas will give you enough to write a book others you will have to carefully choose your angle to have enough shareable information to write a book. For those of you who would consider writing a magazine article, blog post, or other publishable work this is an easy list for you to dig into and write to your heart’s content. To always have something to write keep a notebook of your ideas as they come to you. Always be prepared to have an article or book idea ready you never know when an opportunity may present itself.
