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An Easy Method to Generate Story Ideas

Struggling to come up with story ideas? You don’t need a lightning bolt of inspiration—you need a situation that challenges your characters.

In this post, you’ll find:

  • A clear explanation of the Fish Out of Water method and why it’s such a powerful story engine

  • A personal example from my own writing showing how this method sparked a full story

  • A step-by-step exercise you can use to generate your own story ideas in minutes


By the end, you’ll have a simple, repeatable way to create tension, conflict, and character growth from the very first sentence.

One of the most reliable ways to generate fiction ideas—especially when the page feels stubbornly blank—is the Fish Out of Water method.

You’ve probably encountered it before, even if you didn’t have a name for it. A character is taken out of the environment where they feel competent, fluent, and in control, and placed somewhere that quietly—or violently—undoes them. From that mismatch, story emerges.

At its simplest, the method looks like this:

Take a character who belongs somewhere.Put them somewhere they don’t.Pay attention to what cracks first.


Why it works

Stories thrive on pressure. When a character’s familiar rules no longer apply, every choice becomes harder. Their instincts fail them. Their self-image is challenged. The situation forces them to confront something they’ve been avoiding—or didn’t even know they believed.

This kind of tension does a lot of narrative work for us. Instead of inventing plot twists, we let the environment do the pushing.




A Personal Example

My latest story, published in Family First, Unedited, is about a perfectionist newborn photographer who has a baby with a cleft lip. It’s a clear example of the Fish Out of Water method—and in fact, that’s exactly how the idea was generated.

The starting point was personal. My own baby was born with a cleft palate. While that experience is different—there isn’t the same visible, cosmetic element—it opened the door to a larger question. What if I explored a character for whom the visual aspect mattered enormously? What kind of person would find themselves truly destabilized by having a baby with a cleft lip?

That question led me to the character. I asked myself: For whom would this situation turn the world upside down? The answer came quickly—a perfectionist newborn photographer. Someone whose professional life revolves around controlling light, angles, details, and flaws. Someone trained to notice and correct imperfections for a living.

Once that pairing clicked—the character and the situation—the ideas began to snowball. The tension was built in. The story didn’t need to be forced or plotted from scratch; it grew naturally out of the mismatch between who the character was and the reality she was suddenly living inside.




Fish Out of Water: Story-Generation Exercise

Step 1: Make a list.Choose one of the following:

  • Write down five types of characters (professions, personalities, identities, belief systems), or

  • Write down five types of life situations or environments (settings, circumstances, communities, emotional states).

Don’t overthink originality here. Familiar types work just fine.

Step 2: Create the mismatch.For each character or situation, ask:

  • What kind of character or situation would be the opposite of this?

  • What pairing would feel uncomfortable, destabilizing, or upside down?

Think in terms of values, instincts, skills, or assumptions—not just surface differences.

Step 3: Apply pressure.Once you’ve chosen a pairing, ask:

  • What would this character need to learn in order to survive—or thrive—in this new environment?

  • What instincts or beliefs would fail them at first?

  • What does this environment force them to confront about themselves?

Step 4: Find the story.Finally, write one paragraph answering this question:

  • What changes first—the character, or their understanding of the world?


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