Below are today’s ideas to produce seeds for NaNoWriMo (or any writing project). Remember: the point is not to develop an entire plot. It’s simply to create inspiration. Write what is suggested for each numbered item, or whatever else may come to your mind. Then set that aside for now and do another one.

1. Write a detailed setting based on the above picture. Try to include all five senses. Whatever your instincts or preferences for setting and detail, try to over-exaggerate the scene. Write it however you’re comfortable–with a person there to experience it, from a first-person perspective, or simply describe it from a distance.

2. Visit an online plot generator site like this one. Play around with it until a plot or combo of elements shows up that strikes your interest. Then write a scene from the story that you think would result. (For this one, I suggest keeping both what you write and the item[s] generated that prompted it.)

3. Write a scene from this image. What has happened before this was taken? What else is going on around this? As a result of this? Look at the details, the background. What emotions might be present in the people who live around here?

4. Think of an event in your life that produced strong emotions–anger, fear, elation, etc. Write a summary of the event, making sure to include a lot of detail about the emotions you felt.

5. Write about these two people. What are their names? What are they doing or talking about? What is their relationship to each other? Find a way to include their clothing and their surroundings, either as what they’re meant for (if you know what that might be), or in a completely different way. Be specific.

6. Go back to the pictures and find some way to make them all fit together. This doesn’t mean that they all have to somehow be worked into the same scene, or even the same day within the story. But find some way to connect them all to each other, some story that would encompass them all. Then write the synopsis (as broad or specific, long or short as you need it to be) that involves three images.

You do not have to stick with what you already wrote for any of them; you can go different directions with any of them to make them fit together.

Other posts like this one: Story Seeds 1, Story Seeds 2, Story Seeds 4