Often we're tempted to use a lack of ideas as the perfect excuse not to write, citing that if only we had that one perfect idea, we could sit down and get started on the greatest story we've ever told.

But the fact is, ideas usually aren't delivered fully-formed into our waiting brains. Idea generation is a skill, and like any skill it needs appropriate training to be done well.
Rest assured, we all have ideas. We might not recognise them as such, but they're there. The moment our imagination is sparked by something we read in the paper, or the images conjured by song lyrics, we're having ideas. Sometimes we simply dismiss them for not being rich enough, but that's a mistake. What arrives in our head at those points is the idea's nucleus.

Just like an atomic nucleus, our simple idea needs to be supported by surrounding elements. And that takes some work on our part. For example, there's a story in the news today about a 'virtual' police station being trialled, whereby the public can take part in a video webcam conversation with a police officer. There could be a good story in there, but at the moment I'm not sure what it is.

As I wrote that last paragraph, there's been an advertisment on TV about identity theft - a hot topic in the media; it concerns fraudsters' impersonations of individuals, using information pulled from their utility bills and credit card statements. It's a problem made possible by the fact that we live in an electronically-managed society, which brings my mind back to this electronic 'virtual' police station. By placing the idea of identity fraud around the nucleus of virtual police contact, a stronger idea starts to form about identity fraud being made simpler when the police are simply part of the electronic loop. Perhaps a young computer hacker who uses a stolen identity to play a game of cat and mouse with a policeman.

Looking at the photo in the virtual police news story, the Superintendent looks like a fairly young chap. But what if he was more our idea of a classic fiction bobby or Inspector? The kind of outwardly-bumbling figure you'd find in a Miss Marple story. Put this guy at the end of a webcam, and you immediately have some dramatic tensions. For a start there's our old-school Inspector, who is reluctantly having to adapt to a new policing age, where technology is ruling the roost. Perhaps there's some elements of the tech-centric TV show CSI in there. And then there's the conflict of characters; the young technical genius as ther criminal matched against the seasoned wits of the Inspector.

So without too much effort, and using a mixture of stimuli in range of my desk, I've developed my idea nucleus into the bones of a story. Far from complete, but maybe worthy of further development as a thriller or two-hander play. Perhaps I'd then go for the easy conclusion that the Inspector ultimately wins out through old-fashioned smarts, thus completing his character arc through coming to terms with his environment, and making a point that technology isn't everything. Or maybe I'd add a twist where the Inspector has only a measly pension to look forward to before this incident opens his eyes to the ease of electronic crime. There are still a lot of elements which can be added to our nucleus to make it into a rounded idea.

Of course, by going through this process you may find that not every idea you have has 'the legs' to really go very far. That's to be expected, since I hope by looking at idea nuclei in this way you'll realise that you have lots of them every day. The important thing is to get them out of your head and written down before they fester. When it comes to ideas, there's something very true about that old theory of only being able to hold 7 things in your short-term memory. I find that if I keep ideas in my head, I'm pushing out a lot of fresh ones to avoid losing my grasp on the first lot. Write them down. And don't be tempted to only write them down when they're more fully fledged. Just get them down in whatever embryonic form they come to you.

If being suitably stimulated is proving a problem, then you may be stuck in a creative rut. Again, there are active exercises you can engage in to counter this. The overriding idea here is 'doing things you wouldn't normally do'. Our minds become seasoned to our habitual routines, so it's little wonder that when we feed our imagination with an unchanging diet, the same ideas (or lack of them) spew forth as a result. Doing things differently exposes us to new experience and trains our mind to accept other possibilities. It could be anything from taking a different route to work to visiting a new continent, but you should do it regularly. You may not always enjoy it at the time, but that shouldn't matter; this is a means to an end. I'm quite lazy, so I tend to limit my new experiences to exploring different kinds of media. I find it useful, since it exposes me directly to creative approaches I might not have thought of. I like to:

Play computer / video games
In case you haven't caught up, video games have come a long way since Space Invaders. These days, the games often involve exploring a detailed 3D environment and interacting with other characters. And despite what you might thing, there are plenty of games that don't involve looking down the barrel of a shotgun. Games are great for firing the imagination because they are an active, rather than passive experience. Unlike a movie, games require your constant participation so your brain remains switched on. Most games also offer some puzzle-solving elements, forcing you to think laterally and deductively which is great for sparking creativity. Also, many games are sufficiently non-linear to allow players to explore in their own way - in a sense, creating their own story within the game world. I'd recommend you play Neverwinter Nights, Maniac Mansion (which you can download for free), and the Myst series.

Read different books and listen to different music
I don't know about you, but my normal taste in books and music is remarkably narrow. I could probably count on my fingers the authors and artists whose releases excite me. I don't own an iPod, mostly because I don't know what I'd fill it with. But now and then, I deliberately mix things up. I'll read a books from a genre I'd never normally consider (in my case chick-lit and spy novels come to mind), and maybe listen to a heavy-rock radio station (again, normally not-me). While this leads to mixed enjoyment levels of the works themselves, it certainly opens my mind to new approaches.

Scour for unusual news stories
It's very useful that fact is stranger than fiction, because this lends an air of legitimacy to stories that might otherwise be dismissed as far-fetched. If you're up for some 'ripped-from-the-headlines' inspiration, you'll find that if you dig deep enough, you can find bizarre little news stories that never make the front page. These are almost always great story starters, with their sheer oddity making for the most original tales. Again, I'm lazy so rather than scouring the paper, I just visit Ananova's Quirkies section and get a daily fill. Today there's a story about a prison offering comedy training to inmates and another about a Welsh Assembly Minister mistaken for a Dr Who baddie. I defy you to miss the story potential in those!

Surf the web
The internet is a perfect implementation of the concept of 'mind mapping' - drawing links between related concepts.However, many of us use the Internet these days in much the same way: we open Google, search for what we're looking for, click on our preferred result, and repeat until we find an appropriate page. While effective when looking for something specific, this method is a bit different from the way the web was envisioned. The 'surfing' analogy stems from the way that pages on the internet are contextually linked, with users traversing from one idea to the next much as a real surfer catches the next wave. Jumping around from idea to idea can often lead you down unexpected avenues and rekindle interests you'd forgotten you had.

By using these exercises I find I can open my mind to new avenues of creativity. At least, they're new to me and that's enough for me to put finger to keyboard and get started. I hope you can make use of them too.

Happy writing,
tamper