6 Specific Ways I Find Story Seeds

Story ideas are everywhere. These reliable tactics will help you find them.

Writers often wonder where other writers get their story ideas from. I’m asked this a lot. So this week, I’m going to reveal some of the key specific tactics I depend on to generate story ideas. These should not surprise trained  journalists or experienced writers of any stripe. And these are not the only tactics for turning up story ideas, but they’re some of my go-to approaches I fall back on when the well needs priming, and they should be in every writer’s toolbox.

To be clear, this post is not about how to develop story ideas, or how they sometimes are dreamed up out of thin air. I covered those more esoteric aspects of ideation in a previous post, Where Do Great Story Ideas Come From?. This post is more about the daily nuts and bolts of rooting out story seeds that are scattered all over the place, available to anyone willing to put in the time and energy to look for them.

This is more first-person that you’ll normally find in the Writer’s Guide, so bear with me as I share one writer’s perspective. And keep in mind it’s not the way all writers go about their craft. My approach is rooted in journalistic training. Also, because I write about science and health, my tactics may not be as useful for someone who writes about, say, entertainment or sports. But if your beat is business or technology—topics I’ve also tackled—the advice below is solid.

What I look for

Broadly speaking, I’m looking for anything in science and health that interests me and which I think will interest lots of readers. If an idea doesn’t satisfy both those basic criteria, there’s no point in pursuing.

I look, primarily, for a hook—something beyond the generics of a topic, something that is current, relevant, compelling, surprising, or otherwise offbeat or unique. It might simply be a question I have, or something I wasn’t aware of, or something I figure most people aren’t. “Unique” is a relative term when it comes to fulfilling the needs of readers who do not, can not, read every other story out there. But still, I aim for, at least, “special.”

I don’t waste much time pursuing obvious story angles, things written about a gazillion times. When I do chase an obvious or common story idea, I look for a fresh spin, some overlooked angle or aspect that begs to be the focus or at least an entry point. A detail that can be cultivated. 

Where I find the seeds

Here are 6 specific, routine, reliable sources I pay attention to on a daily and weekly basis for ideas:

Press releases. The sea of new science and health research is vast, so it’s easy to be overwhelmed. A generalist can’t possibly keep track of everything. I lean on press releases as one important source of new research. I’ll dig into specifics in a future post, but whatever your beat, industry or genre, look for organizations that collate and provide press releases in that realm, and sign up. If there are particular companies or orgs that weigh heavy on your beat, get on their lists, too. Yes, the emails can be overwhelming. I didn’t say this would be easy.

Pexels/Gelgas Airlangga