As writers we love stories. For many of us, we first started reading and fell in love with the written word in some form.

We love putting words together adding the beautiful descriptive words to settings, characters and the fiction world we create.

There are many reasons writers write fiction.

Some fiction writers are brimming with passion and deeply feel the need for self-expression. Their creativity needs an outlet where they can engage others and express powerful emotions through their stories.

For other writers, they need to express conflicts they’ve gone through in their life and they do it by writing stories.

But, an important question we need to ask is how to discover topics and ideas that spark your passion to write the fiction that you love? Listen to the Video or keep reading below…

A great place to start is to ask: what kind of fiction books do I love to read?

Perhaps you love reading mystery novels. What are some ideas that would involve a mystery?

What would happen if… a single mom’s only son is snatched from her as she is at her small town’s fair? Who would have taken her son? Perhaps the father of the child left her when their son was still a baby.. did he change his mind and want his son back? Or perhaps the single mom is working for a company that unknown to her — is neck deep in human trafficking and maybe in the past couple weeks she’s been asking too many questions and her bosses decide they need to do something to scare her and to control her so she’ll keep her quiet.

Maybe you’re passionate about writing Science Fiction with the subgenre of YA Dystopian.

You could think of scenarios. What if it’s the year 2150 and only a few hundred people survived the last terrible war. But the leaders of the people are so fearful that they decide to control all the people in their city.

Perhaps there is a 16 year old girl, whose father was just killed because he found some information about the newest form of mind control they want to implant into people’s minds. Maybe her father is a scientist and discovered the government’s plans and exposed their plans, so they got rid of him.

Now the 16 year old girl is fighting for her life and for her mom and two younger brothers. And she has a couple of friends who have been her best friends since childhood. What do they do to stop the government in this world of fiction?

Perhaps you love writing romance. Maybe you love writing the subgenre of small town beach romance.

Maybe a widowed mom has just inherited her grandmother’s house that is on the beach. She has a 12 year old daughter who doesn’t want to move to the beach house from the city, but the mom doesn’t have a choice as she was just fired from her job as waitress in a hotel. She has no money and all she has in the house. Problem is the taxes on her newly inherited beach house are coming due and she has no money and is worried about what to do.

Does she talk her best friend from the city into coming to visit? Maybe together they come up with the idea to try making the beach house into a bed and breakfast.

Maybe a man who is around the widow’s age — who has lived alone in that small beach town for all his life — and he does not like that his new neighbours suddenly have more people coming to home. This could turn into an enemies to lovers trope that could make for a intriguing beach romance.

It’s important to understand what you love to write. I encourage you to brainstorm ideas that really spark your interest.

For myself, after much trial and error, I have found it really helpful to combine what I love to write (which has been small town sweet romance under my pen name)… and to combine that with what my specific audience of readers loves to read.

In the beginning I read quite a lot of clean or sweet romance books so I would have a good idea of what readers love about this genre of romance.

Then I wrote my first book. It was a fairytale retelling with a twist… a fake marriage(or marriage of convenience). Not long after I self-published it(a few years ago), I started getting reviews from readers… and as much as I disliked reading my own reviews, I felt like I really needed to hear what readers were saying about what they liked and didn’t like about the book.

That was helpful feedback from readers.

So, why do readers crave good stories to read?

Some readers would say because it helps them to relax when life gets stressful or hectic. They would tell you it’s a good way to unwind after a tough day.

Which can seem strange when you consider that most novels take readers vicariously through many tough situations while reading a novel. The characters are the ones going through it, but readers are reading about these stressful, situations filled with struggle and obstacles.

This constant turbulence of a reader’s emotions, would make a person think that fiction books are not relaxing at all, right?

Not long ago I read a book for writers by the late David Farland titled: Millionaire Dollar Outlines.

Anyway, I seem to remember reading about the tension readers experience as they read fiction books.

I don’t remember exactly how he phrased it, but the gist of it was that as readers read… and as the tension and suspense gets stronger in a story and the closer readers get to the climax of the story…the readers tension rises.

When the problems are resolved and the tension is released, the reader also relaxes.

So when readers say they want to read fiction books to escape… it’s really what they’re doing.

Readers “escape” stress by escaping from the struggles in their own real life and become immersed in a fiction world.

Readers crave a story that is good… that also satisfies them. Where readers in the fictive world — are seeing through the eyes of the Hero — and are put in situations with meaningful conflicts that build and deepen and grow.

So the more the reader loves your story —the deeper they dive into the imaginary world… the more their body and emotions respond.

And oddly enough — even through reading as you search for answers to the problems in the story you are reading — your body releases dopamine in small amounts and when the obstacles in the story are resolved, your body floods your bloodstream with serotonin.

I hadn’t realized how the human body reacts to even reading fiction books. It certain explains why I feel so much better when I’ve finished a good novel!.

So it makes sense that when your story is well written — with just enough tension and conflict that in the end comes to a satisfying conclusion to meet your reader’s deepest emotional needs — the better your books will sell.

This is the reason why it’s critical that you find a story idea/topic that you Love.

This might not be a popular advice, but I truly believe if you aren’t excited or are not passionate about what you are writing not only will you have a tough time writing the story — but the reader will be able to tell somehow as they read that there isn’t much life to your story.

For example: I know I am passionate to write about small towns and cowboys and horses and ranches and the many different and unique townsfolk that live there… so that’s why my Cowboy Sweet Romance series is a good fit for me as a writer.

I believe that when you are searching for ideas of stories for you to write — it should begin with what you love… what brings life to your soul.

“The first rule of successful story-telling is… FIND A FEELING. Or, if you prefer a different phrase: Get excited! Hunt till you uncover something or other to which you react. With feeling. The more intensely, the better.”  by Dwight V. Swain

Great emotion and feeling is the motivation that drives us to write our stories. future, not the past.The story is burning a hole inside of you and you write for the thrill of that excitement. you tell excites you.When you have this level of passion for the story you are writing, you will begin to have ideas everywhere and the story will burn like a fire inside of you.

Here’s the interesting part: As readers read the novel you wrote, many times they can tell if the writer is passionate about the story.

This makes sense in regards to your reader because Readers love reading stories… because they love feeling deep emotions. They will be able to tell if there is that deep sense of feeling in your story.

One last thing. Not one of us writers does this writing thing perfectly coming out of the gate.

At some point each of us had zero experience. We just were willing to try even if it meant failing. And we just continued to try again and again until we had more experience of that combination of what we love to write combined with what our readers tell us they love to read.

The practice of writing stories and getting feedback from readers is important because it gives you the experience you need to continually keep getting better.

You’ll discover what works and what doesn’t and learn little tricks like how to begin and end each chapter so that your readers keep turning the pages.

Each time you write a story, you learn just a little bit more and your stories keep getting better and better.

Also, as you publish your stories, you get feedback from readers and you begin to learn who your readers are. You learn what they love, and what they dislike.

You will begin to learn what comes naturally to you— because invariably readers in reviews will let you know “this author is good at dialogue… I love the conversations in this book” — AND Of course readers will also let you know the other side — what they didn’t like too.

But this is part of the try-fail cycle that every writer goes through.

You will get better as you keep writing.

Next week’s video is Part 2 in this 7 video series on: 7 Steps to Nail down the Foundation Elements of your Novel.

The next video is where you will get a chance to write down memories or themes from your own life (bad or good) and combine those memories with themes/tropes from favourite movies/novels that inspire you.

Meanwhile, happy writing! 🙂