How to find a short story idea?

Question

How to randomly generate short story ideas without any inspiration?

And how to implement that idea and get a unique short story?

Answer 1

Everything can be the first idea for a story:

• the old laundry hall I see when I look out the window
• the young woman on her mobile phone that I pass on the street and who seems to talk about difficulties in her relationship to a friend
• the news about the decision by Chancellor Scholz to not send Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine
• the sign that asks not to block the fire exit

Whatever it is, I can create a story from it.

How do I do that?

Simple. I ask myself, who would be affected by this and how?

• If the fire exit were blocked and a fire broke out, everyone in the university library (where I now sit) had to find another way out. For example, the narrow windows that are ten meters off the ground. How would we all get down from there? Can we tie our jackets together or find something else? I think there was a fire hose somewhere in the staircase. And so on.

I'll not go through all the inane story ideas that I listed above, but I'm sure you understand what I'm doing: I employ my imagination and let it run free.

Of course this will work better if my first idea is something that interests me or that already triggers a train of thought. What that might be for you, I cannot say. What I do is carry a notebook wherever I go and write down everything that I find interesting enough that goes through my mind. And with time the seed of a story begins to coalesce from all these random thoughts.