In an article for Writer’s Digest, Tracy Badua shares her process for finding stories in her personal experiences, as well as four open-ended questions you can try.
- What keeps drawing you—and others—in? Have you heard a story at a family get-together that would make for a good story? Write it down.
- What have you struggled with? “Dealing with the fallout of a friendship, facing the final video game boss, doing your own taxes for the first time—the frustration and fear of looming defeat are common threads no matter the problem we’re trying to tackle,” Bauda says.
- What would you have done differently? What-if scenarios make for great stories. “Jot down a few events in your life that could have wildly changed trajectories if you had been bolder, quieter, absent, or otherwise different,” Badua writes. “Follow where that takes you.”
- Who would have seen that same scenario differently and why? Think of stories from your own life and imagine them from someone else’s point of view. “Whose point of view in those scenarios would be the most intriguing or pack the most emotional punch?” Badua asks. “How would the story be different from the points of view of the person who was supposed to receive an expected text and the person who never sent it?”
