Story Starters: How to Jump-Start Your Imagination, Get Your Creative Juices Flowing, and Start Writing Your Story or Novel

by Lou W. Stanek

If you have the passion and energy to write fiction, but have trouble finding an idea and getting started, this is the perfect book for you. Lou Willett Stanek has helped scores of new authors in her acclaimed writing workshops—and now she shows you how to look and listen, how to find stories and begin shaping them like a writer.
Here's how to find inspiration from neighbors and strangers, reshape classic tales, cull current events and use other tricks of the writing trade so effectively you'll soon find yourself brimming with ideas, your imagination revved to its full potential. Begin with a snippet of overheard conversation, an unexpected event, a simple character trait, a place, a problem—Ms. Stanek teaches you to get past "what really happened" and reinvent reality in ways that will astound and delight you, and hold a reader's attention. Here too are hundreds of "what-ifs," simple situations you can guide to endlessly different conclusions—and use to learn new ways to fashion plot, describe character, develop conflict, paint with language, create a setting, employ flashbacks, build suspense, and much, much more. For every writer who could use a jump-start, from novice to pro, here is a book that will help you keep the faith and. . . Thousands of stories are just waiting to be told—by you. Get started!

Genres: Writing, Reference, Nonfiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1998

Reviews

[Christine Ku · Rating 3 out of 5]

It does talk about various aspects that you can use as inspiration to think up a story but I find Lou too academic for my taste in that she will often bring in references to all these classics that I have no idea about.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another one I would recommend for a writing class because I've used the story starters to generate a lot of material. There are hundreds of story starters in the book and a lot of them are just plain fun to play around with. I like to take a story draft that is a bit one-dimensional and then use one of these story starters to insert a second and completely off-topic thread into the story. Used that technique in a few of my published stories.

[Shaindel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Indispensible in the creative writing classroom. I use it every year.

[Julie]

Story Starters by Lou W. Stanek (1998)

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tend to have my own ideas when I write. But this book is able to kind of get the juices flowing and unstick me at times. Pretty fun book with interesting ideas.