Write the Stories You Love: A Story Generator

You just published the story you've been working on for the last 37 months. Or you submitted your script to this month's big screenwriting contest. Now, you're faced with one big question:

WHAT NEXT?!?

Dear God, you've not had to actually think of a new story idea for months or even years. How does that work again? Who knows. There's no secret to generating ideas, but there's also no clear way that works for everyone.

The Write the Stories You Love Generator has been around the internet in one form or another for decades. This is my version of it.
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With this story generator, you will take the fundamental elements of the stories you love and create something new. This also helps you talk about and elaborate on story elements you find essential or provoking. (A writer should be able to do that, IMHO.)

For this story generator, you have three steps to complete before you write the pitch for your new idea.

1. The Favorites. List your favorite movies, TV shows, and novels or short stories. Take a few moments. Don’t worry about anything from the literary “canon.” In fact, slip in a few that you wouldn’t necessarily admit to, but you loved reading and watching.
2. Favorite Story Elements. List your favorite elements of each story. For example: In the face of all odds, the protagonist has a “Not Today” moment. Story starts in the middle of the conflict. Multiple narrators. Story isn’t in sequential order. A hunt for a lost treasure. These elements should be what you liked about the story, not what critics say the story is about.
3. Mix of Favorite Story Elements. This is the fun part. Mix elements from different stories to give yourself the foundation for a new story idea.

Now it's time to write your story pitch based on the elements you chose.

Here are my examples:

So, running through the generator, here’s my first pass at a new idea:

Mix of Favorite Story Elements
Characters can be in prison even when free.
Dark comedy.  
Character in a world where he doesn't belong.

My Story Pitch
Enid is OK - Fenwick Newhouse, an Ivy League educated, cosmopolitan wine sommelier, is diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder. An enzyme found only in a particular strain of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer can keep him alive. To stay alive, Fenwick is forced to move near the distillery in backwater Enid, Oklahoma, a place Fenwick calls a “geographic disorder.” Fenwick and Enid are not ready for each other.

Call me, Hollywood.