How to Generate Better Story Ideas Using the Ones That Don’t Work

Generating ideas is the most underrated skill in a novelist’s toolkit—more essential than an appetite for cold-blooded revision, a head for structure, or a gift for dialogue. Generating more story possibilities within a single manuscript separates a competent draft from a novel with depth, complexity, and staying power.

So how do you come up with more ideas? Fortunately, it’s not about generating more good ideas—it’s about generating more ideas, period. You won’t even recognize a good story idea until you’ve stacked up enough bad ones to spot the difference.

Weak ideas aren’t wasted time. They’re reference material.

I can tell when a writer hasn’t given their story a fair shake during the brainstorming phase. The manuscript clearly isn’t quite there yet. The story is thin, missing the dense interconnectivity that makes it feel almost chewy. The writer leaped forward into drafting with one of the earliest workable solutions that came to mind, revised what turned out, polished the sentences, and called it done. It’s obvious that they never paused to consider whether they’d written the thickest, densest, juiciest version of the story they were trying to tell.

The result is dry, superficial fiction. Competent but not compelling. The story fails to drive home the resounding blow of a climax that feels inevitable yet somehow still a surprise.

The authors of these novels have rushed past their story’s development phase. Story development is about finding more ways to deepen and corkscrew what’s already there. It’s about forging more causal links between characters and events. It’s about draining and tossing what’s already in the pot, not throwing new spaghetti at the wall.

Read more: What’s more important, storytelling or writing craft?

The Clogged Pipe Problem

Songwriter Ed Sheeran describes creativity as a backed-up pipe of water filled with muddy water. To get to the sweet, clean flow behind it, you must blow out the line. You can’t leapfrog past the muck; you have to run it clear first.

Story development works the same way. At the beginning, before you get to the good stuff, your notes will be full of all the obvious stuff: the predictable moves, the clichés and tropes, the twists you’ve read in a hundred other novels.

Don’t resist the lure of these ideas. Note them all. Let them exist on the page—because this is the way to get past them.

Why Bad Ideas Are Progress

The process of reviewing all ideas, even the bad ones, is what helps you spot what makes a particular idea bad for this story. It’s pattern-matching. Each weak idea you discard sharpens your sense of what’s missing from the story. You figure out what would change the situation, what would matter to this character, what would ripple forward and backward through the story instead of squatting on the page in sullen silence.

The writers who don’t reach their best ideas are the ones who quit too soon. They open a blank document, scribble a few thoughts, decide nothing rises to the top, and walk away. The next day, they begin drafting based on the best available alternative—except they never got past the muck in the pipe. They mistook early output for final output.

Here’s My Technique

The humble list is the ultimate tool for story development. I tell my writers to start with three separate lists:

List #1 notes at least ten things you could do in the story that would solve the issue you’re working on. These things feel like solid, logical fits for the story. You need at least ten of these ideas; it might take more than one brainstorming session.

List #2 adds five more things that feel a little left of center. You probably feel like the best options are already on List #1, so the ideas on List #2 seem a bit strained, over the top, or even melodramatic.

List #3 yanks the wheels off the cart: five more things that are completely out of proportion in your story and would stop it cold. Think big: the death of a main character, a natural disaster, a surprise pregnancy, an alien abduction … Too much? Not for you to decide—yet. Put your trust in the list and write them down anyway. You need to get all the options lined up.

Once your lists are complete, sleep on them. Get out of the chair and go do something else until tomorrow.

What Each List Is Actually Telling You

The next day, you’re ready for creative work with a fresh eye.

List #1 maps the predictable terrain. If these solutions came easily to you, they’ll come easily to readers too, so they’re not innovative twists—but they’re not worthless, either. They’re good for building the story’s framework and setting baseline expectations.

List #2 is where it gets interesting. These ideas cost you more effort to find, and readers won’t arrive there on their own. That’s exactly why these ideas are worth a second look; this is fresh story territory. Implementing these ideas feels exciting but will probably require ripping up sizable chunks of story. That’s the revision life. Get a fresh cup of coffee.

List #3 shows you the outer edge of your story’s world. This is the line defining what’s too far for this story. Don’t step across it—but do sidle right up to the precipice. Stories are fundamentally about how far the protagonist will go for something that matters profoundly to them, so walk them to the edge. If your draft never gets them there, you’re not putting them to the test.

Before You Discard Anything

There’s a meaningful difference between an idea that turns the story the wrong direction and one that turns it in a direction you hadn’t considered yet. During brainstorming, however, the two can feel identical. Discomfort isn’t a reliable signal that an idea is wrong. Sometimes it’s a signal that the idea is bigger than what you’d initially planned.

You’re not generating ideas to confirm what you already knew you wanted to do. You’re generating them to find the possibilities that wouldn’t have surfaced any other way—the ones that require you to blast the muck out of the pipes first.

Predictable ideas come quickly and feel safe. Interesting ones feel strange. The best ones might make you a little nervous. Stay open. The idea that seems wrong for your story today might be exactly what it needs once you’ve slept on it, and come back to the list with fresh eyes.

That’s not a sign that you’ve lost the plot. That’s the list doing its job.