Where do you find story ideas? Sometimes I see them develop between the drops during a big rainstorm. I see a couple walking along the boulevard holding an umbrella and laughing, soaked to the bone and eager to get home and take off their clothes to make love.

The white line separating a road opens up a whole new world of possibilities. A hitchhiker traveling across country who gets picked up by a strange man. A truck driver falling asleep and crossing into the opposite lane. A woman who had too much to drink being asked to perform a sobriety test, but she needs to get home to take care of a sick child. A pilot in an emergency situation trying to land his faltering plane on a lone country road.

A man walking down the street and talking to himself gives me lots of ideas. I think about his past when he was a little boy and experienced a traumatic event. The event was so bad that he began to drink and do drugs to ward off his demons. Or he developed a case of schizophrenia after college and tried to self-medicate.

Where do you get your ideas?

I see a couple arguing in the car next to mine and immediately conjure up a scenario whereby the husband cheated on his wife and got caught. She’s threatening to divorce him and he’s doing all he can to make sure she keeps her eyes on the road. He doesn’t want a divorce because he knows his wife will clean him out, but he doesn’t want to stay in the marriage, either. They have three kids and the custody battle would be brutal and expensive. She nearly stops the car and kicks him out, but traffic is too backed-up for that.

A man in a restaurant is arguing with his waiter. Either the food is bad or the service is. The waiter argues that his steak was cooked perfectly and the man disagrees, and wants his money back. The steak cost seventy-five dollars and the man refuses to pay, threatening to leave a terrible review on Yelp if the waiter presses the issue. The owner comes out and tries to make the man happy, arguing with the waiter, but the customer begins to curse out the owner and his restaurant. They go outside and a fight almost breaks out. The cops are called in to settle the situation.

The banana man walks around the street selling bananas, but a few kids steal some bananas from his stack. He shouts at them and drops the bananas, threatening to chase the kids, but then someone else might steal his bananas. So he picks them up and starts hawking them again. An elderly gentleman with a kind heart buys his entire stack, feeling sorry for the man. Then he takes the bananas and hands gives them out to all the homeless people begging for coins.

Where do you find your story?

A would-be magician comes into a shop owners market every day and buys an apple, but before he leaves he makes the shop owner watch one of his silly magic tricks. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. The magician never spends much money in the shop and he takes up much of the owners time with his silly magic tricks. The magician tells him that he’s a retired doctor and the shop owner can tell that the man is lonely and wanting of attention, but the magician is a bit of a narcissist and always needs attention. One day he interrupts the owner during a big sale and insists that the owner and his customer stop what they are doing and watch him perform his trick. And that day he didn’t even buy anything. The owner loses his temper and throws him out.

I guess the point here is that story ideas come from everywhere and anywhere. From observation of daily life to listening in on a conversation at a coffee shop. If you’re a writer, you too can find stories in every aspect of life.

So where do you find yours?

All the best,

Joe