Need an idea for a story? Think books and films
Bookshelves and/or DVD racks are commonly found in our living rooms, featuring all manner of titles, e.g. ‘The Grudge’, ‘When Will There Be Good News?’, ‘Robin Hood’. Think about each title in turn and you should find all sorts of ideas for short stories, or even something longer, start to come to mind.
Let’s take ‘The Grudge’ to start with. This is a well-known horror movie but your fiction piece doesn’t have to be in the horror genre. You could write a romance, perhaps about a long-term grudge held between two neighbours. How they resolve it and get together is up to you. Or perhaps the title starts you thinking about a crime story where a grudge gets out of hand.
‘When Will There Be Good News?’ is a book by best-selling author, Kate Atkinson featuring the loveable but always in trouble, private investigator, Jackson Brodie, but the good news or lack of it doesn’t have to relate to a crime story. What ‘news’ ideas come to mind? Happy news – an engagement, passing an exam, getting the all-clear from the doctor, a missing child found…any of these can be turned into stories. What about bad news? The possibilities are endless and will make for an equally compelling story.
Most of us are familiar with the story of Robin Hood. What about a Robin Hood story with a twist? Maybe it’s the Sheriff of Nottingham who’s the good guy or why can’t Robin be a woman? Re-writing well-known, classic stories can make for very entertaining reads. They’re always popular in small press magazines and a well-known tale will stand out in a competition.
These are just a few examples but from three books/films, several ideas have sprung to mind in a matter of moments.
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Esther Chilton 
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