R. L. Stedman

Writer

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What Can I Write About – 6 Ways to Come Up With Ideas

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Finding Your Ideas

I’m often asked ‘how do you come up with your ideas?’

writer's notebook
Notebook – Image from Pixabay

Actually, being a fantasy writer, I’m almost never at a loss. But I know other folk aren’t as lucky (or as unlucky, it’s a real pain sometimes, all these stories sloshing about inside). Here’s some tips to help you find your ideas, with examples of how these have worked for me.

6 Ways To Generate Ideas

  1. Inspiration. This doesn’t actually happen that often. It was how I wrote A Necklace of Souls though – I had a dream, and scribbled it down.
  2. What ifs. I tease out an idea I’m interested in. I did this for Inner Fire, because I was interested in the idea of facial recognition technology, and what might happen if someone might be able to change their face at will.
  3. People I meet. My boss’s daughter works in a shoe-shop, and somehow that morphed into a Cinderella remake. Go figure! (That’s in Upon a Time, in case you’re wondering.)
  4. Family stories. I once wrote my grandfather’s story – he was a conscientious objector in World War One. This was published in The School Journal, Feb 2012, which made my entire family very happy!
  5. Change up an old favourite. – That’s my entire Upon A Time collection, as they’re all retellings of fairytales.
  6. Look online. There are some great ideas on this tumblr blog (Writerswrite.org). I’ve also pinned images on my pinterest boards to act as story inspiration. You have to be careful with this though, or you’ll end up with the same ideas as everyone else.

Want more information or downloadable resources? Check out my “For Teachers” page, or check out this FREE printable resource.

How to Move from Blogger to WordPress

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Moving from Blogger to WordPress?

I’ve just moved my blog to my wordpress website.

I changed because I prefer the look and feel of my website (plus, it offers a bit more functionality). Now I know that this is the sort of thing that gets the blogger excited but is relatively boring for the readership, but if you’re about to do this too, here are some resources that might help.

How to move from blogger to wordpress.org

(assuming you already have a wordpress.org site)

– import your blog content. Here are step by step instructions (from Labnol.org)

– set up your blog page. Here’s the you tube video I followed . This video is by Mike Kim; it’s a little dry, but it’s nice and slow and really easy to understand.

And having done all that (which took me a whole frigging week because I am so non-techo..) I DELETED all the old blog posts from my new site. Why?

Because on my new site, I’m starting again from scratch. And here I am!

Link to my old blog here. So far, I’m enjoying the wordpress experience.