3 Ways to Snatch Story Ideas Out of Thin Air

A proactive approach

I’ve written multiple times here about where story ideas come from and how to find them. In this post, I offer up three really specific ways to generate story ideas without waiting around for a news hook or some divine inspiration.

Photo by the author

1. Back in October, I interviewed social psychologist Megan Shen for a story, What We Really Want From Life (But Might Not Know It). She spends a lot of time with people who are dying, and our interview went off on a tangent related to the regrets people express when they know they’re doing. That was a story idea I’ve had in mind for as long as I can remember. So rather than flood the October story with that angle, I asked Shen if I might circle back later on to talk more about it.

We did a separate phone interview in January, which provided the foundation for a February story: Advice to the Living from People Who are Dying.

The lesson: When you interview a source, always be on the lookout for the other stuff in their brains that could spawn another story. I often close interviews (email or phone) with some version of: Is there anything else you wish I’d asked? Or: What are you working on now?

2. Since I first used Twitter back in social media prehistory, I’ve contended that any story can be told in 140 characters, or a 140-word news brief, a 1,400-word feature, or a book. Each just has different levels of depth and context. That in mind, here are a couple of inspirational posts from the Medium Blog that might get your creative juices flowing, whether you write on Medium or anywhere else:

• How to turn your Threads, Bluesky, or X thread into a Medium story

• Three Academic and Scholarly Experts Share Their Top Medium Tips

Related, from the Writer’s Guide archives:

• How Long Should a Story Be?

3. Kathleen Murphy, who writes for my Medium publication, recently wrote a great perspective on our broken healthcare system.

The story works, and was applauded muchly by readers, largely because the writer had a view from the inside—from her quite distant past—on a topic of high current interest.

Throughout the company, everyone began to feel pressure to spend less on our members’ claims. While our customer service department shrank, our legal department swelled. Even our internal language changed: Doctors became “providers” and our customers became “policyholders.” I was beginning to realize that my number-one responsibility wasn’t to enhance my company’s reputation. It was to ensure its soaring profitability.

The story was successful not just because Murphy expressed her experiences engagingly, but because she got beyond her own take on things to provide additional, informative context.

For decades, the high cost of health care has burdened families. About half of US adults say it’s difficult to afford their health care costs, according to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll. Moreover, one-fourth skip or postpone needed care due to the cost, and more than 40% carry medical debt. Moreover, a Commonwealth Fund study of the key performance measures of 11 high-income countries’ healthcare systems found that — despite spending far more of its gross domestic product on healthcare — the US ranks last overall.

The lesson: If you’ve got insider knowledge—even if it’s from your experiences ages ago—it can be a great brainstorming exercise to daydream what you know that many people do not, or what you know that illustrates what people know and are frustrated by—or delighted by. If it’s interesting, entertaining and/or useful, then figure out a headline and wrap your lived experience around it.

Stories don’t always come to us. But often we can find them right up there in our own heads.

Cheers,
Rob

PS: Here are three previous stories I wrote about finding story ideas:

• 6 Specific Ways I Find Story Seeds

• Where Do Great Story Ideas Come From?

• How a Trip to the ER Spawned Two Story Ideas