Finding Writing Inspiration by Guest Author Savannah Cordova (@savannahcordova)

Where to Find Writing Inspiration When You Think There's Nowhere Left to Look

So you’ve re-read your favorite books, watched your favorite movies, even started a dream journal – anything to find inspiration for a new story. But, you’ve found nothing worth writing about.

Before you retire that pen and paper, check one more time. They say you always find what you’re looking for in the last place you look, so search a few more places for that pesky inspiration.

Here are my five favorite places to find writing inspiration. They’re free, easy, and instant, and I always have something to write about every time I sit down to write. And now you can too.

Music that tells a story

Take a scroll through your music library. What do your favorite songs say? Songs tell a story as much
as prose does, so put your music on shuffle and really listen to the lyrics. 

You can find an entire story condensed into the four-minute run time of a song. What does the artist choose to highlight in those precious few minutes? Let’s look at “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey as an example. The lyrics present us with vignettes of different scenes. We see images of midnight trains and busy street corners. We even smell a few of the characters in this song. There’s a lot of life being lived in the lyrics of “Don’t Stop Believing”. 

But, even with so much given to us, there’s a lot happening under the lyrics. We only see characters for a single verse, but the chorus of the song connects them all to the same sense of longing — of looking for more out of life. So what’s happening with these characters? Why did Journey choose to highlight them? And what do we think happens to them after the song finishes?

Create character profiles for the characters in your favorite songs. Tell us what’s happening to them before and after the four minutes of lyrics we get about them. Extrapolate a backstory from the information given in the song. Give them a voice and actions. Put them in new scenarios. When you’re writing, check out our favorite writing playlists for each genre.

Art with a story

If you’re a writer, you’re an artist. You’re creating art every time you sit down to write. So, why not look to fine art to inspire your own? Fine artists often tell a story in their work, leaving the viewers to decipher it for themselves.

Take Georges Suerat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” as an example. 

There is a lot going on here. The longer you look at this painting, the more you see happening. There are children running around, rowers on the water, and, in the foreground, a lady with a monkey on a leash. Take the woman standing at the water’s edge in the yellow hat. Maybe she’s in conflict with the woman sitting behind her. What could they be arguing about?

There are thousands of stories waiting to be seen in this painting. We can only glimpse a fraction of a second of these people’s lives, so we’re forced to imagine who they are, where they came from, and what they’ll go on to do.

Take a trip to a local museum or a virtual tour of one you’ve always wanted to visit and pick something that speaks to you. What is it saying?

Bonus: Art work is a brilliant thing to practice your ‘show don’t tell’ skills with. We’re shown so much in this work – how can you show just as much with prose?

Pictures with a thousands words to say

Much like art, a photograph can tell you so much about a person. Take out an old box of photos your
parents actually had developed, or check out that coffee table photography book. What photos catch your attention? Take note of why. 

This exercise may spark memories of your own life story, but maybe you find a photograph that you have no background knowledge on. What does the photo say to you? What do you imagine happening before and after this photo was taken?

You can even pick a handful of photos and write a story that links them all together. Include the details that made each photo stand out to you.

Stories unfolding around you

As writers, our biggest job is to start noticing. Notice what’s happening around you while you’re out for the day. Notice the way the grass smells, notice how people do that half-run-half-walk thing as they cross the street. Go to a cafe and eavesdrop a little on what people are talking about. Take in as many details about your day as you can.

Take notes of what you notice. Whether you carry a notebook with you and write things down everywhere you go, or journal at the end of your day, it’s important to really soak in what you’ve noticed. Add these details to stories you’re writing, or use them to launch a new narrative.

Did the clerk at the grocery store say something that caught you off guard as he was packing your groceries? Maybe the bank has a distinctive smell of fake leather chairs, pen ink, and hand sanitizer. That person you overheard on the phone, what’s their life story? These details are real, and will help bring your prose to life. It may even help spark your creativity to start writing again.

Inspiration on the go

No matter how you’re collecting inspiration for your writing, take note of it. Whether in your phone’s
notes apps or in an analog notebook, keep a running list of what stands out to you during the day. Do some journaling in this log as well. Write scenes of what’s unfolding around you, write the story points you’ve uncovered from a photo or song, or scribble your 3am I-just-woke-up-from-the-weirdest-dream thoughts here. 

You’ll create a never-emptying well of ideas and passages to draw from for a new short story. The key to this is that this log should be uncensored. Don’t judge this writing, it’s not for publication — it’s all for you to work through ideas and keep gold nuggets of inspiration in.

Having an idea log can save you so much time in your writing sessions. Instead of staring at a blank page, wondering what in heavens you’ll write today, scan your notes for anything that jumps out at you at the moment and run with it.

The more you open yourself up to unusual inspiration, the more you’ll find. As writers, we can’t sit and wait for inspiration to strike, or we may never write another word again. Go out and find your own inspiration — and then lock it away in your notes so it can never escape you.

Savannah Cordova is a writer with Reedsy, a marketplace that connects self-publishing authors with the world’s best editors, designers, and marketers. In her spare time, Savannah enjoys reading contemporary fiction, listening to audiobooks, and writing short stories.