How to find ideas worth writing about

1 The bottom line

Collect ideas all the time, then keep only the ones that stick and pull at you. A subject you cannot drop will carry you through years of work, and a borrowed one will not.

2 Key takeaways

• Capture every idea the moment it arrives. You will not remember it in the morning.
  • Tish Rabe13:26 keeps notebooks in her pocketbook, her car and by her bed, and cites a Chinese proverb that lines on paper outlast a million dreams.
  • David Sedaris12:06 logs useful moments in a diary guide indexed by subject, so under "t-shirt" he has 50 years of entries.
• Dig for ideas in your own anger, shame and repeated questions. Strong feeling marks where the material is.
  • Steven Levitan15:30 and Chris Lloyd swapped weekend stories on Monday mornings and found them more compelling than the show they were developing. That became Modern Family.
  • Peter Attia29:50 recovered his personal final chapter mostly from his own journals, diagrams included.
• Let ideas age and keep the ones that stick. Time sorts a flash of excitement from a real subject.
  • Harlan Coben3:45 keeps pages and pages of what-ifs. Most pass, but now and then one snags on a hook in his brain and will not let go.
  • Henrik Karlsson1:27 says his best pieces all came from topics he had read about for years and lived with.
• Choose the idea you are obsessed with, not the one that looks smart or sells. You cannot predict reception, but you can predict your own stamina.
  • Dean Koontz55:15 says a book he thinks is his best can sell about 20 percent less.
  • Wright Thompson12:05 loved a story about Archie Manning that went unread, while a night out with rapper Cal Wayne melted the internet.
• Test an idea cheaply before you give it years. A short trial shows whether the idea holds and whether you enjoy it.
  • Daniel Pink15:46 wrote for 10 days on The Invisible Present, then called his wife to say come home because it was not a book.
  • Scott Galloway4:00 tested The Four as a talk. It drew 300,000 to 400,000 views, and an agent then asked for the book.

I don't think there's such a thing as a good or a bad story idea. I think it's something you're obsessed with.

Wright Thompson, The Barn

2.1 Notice more before you list anything

Ideas come to a mind that is paying attention, so make room for looking and wandering.

• Spend most of your effort looking and thinking. Ocean Vuong35:30 says 80% of writing is looking and thinking, and the last part is syntax.
  • Take walks and slow down to notice what is actually in front of you.
  • Eduardo Corral took nine years to write a 45-page book. Vuong says you can tell he looked at moss for a long time.
• Schedule unstructured time, because good ideas cannot be scheduled. Morgan Housel24:10 says he cannot structure creativity, so he structures unstructuredness.
  • Hooks and stories come in the shower, on dog walks or at 2 a.m., never when he sits down to force them.
  • Leave your phone at home and walk for an hour with only a notebook. Mind wandering combines unconnected ideas, which Johann Hari32:07 calls a core part of creativity.
  • Move your body and send yourself voice notes. Robert Macfarlane29:55 does this while running, and Elif Shafak does it while walking.
  • The title The Psychology of Money hit Housel on a New York street in 2017. The Art of Spending Money came while he zoned out on a treadmill.
  • Hari says his daily walk is almost always the most creative hour of his day Hari32:07.
• Pay attention instead of trying harder. Anne Lamott4:24 quotes her priest friend: the point is to try less hard and resist less.
  • She says writer's block is usually emptiness, and the cure is better attention, not more experiences.
  • Notice the greenish yellow at the center of an orchid and you can use it later to describe someone's eyes.
• Look outside your own bubble. Read anything that speaks to you, as Elif Shafak15:55 does, who wants writers to be intellectual nomads.
  • She reads classics, graphic novels, cookbooks, political philosophy and neuroscience, and rejects the highbrow and lowbrow divide.
  • Watch what readers want elsewhere. Jon Yaged15:44 says New York publishing is a bubble that misses trends, and that monitoring self-publishing shows what comes next.
  • Macmillan saw readers wanting things it did not publish and launched Swoon Reads, which produced some great successes Yaged15:44.

2.2 Mine your own life

Your anger, embarrassment and repeated questions are the richest vein, and the one you will not find in anyone else's work.

• Write down what angers you, what you find stupid and what you think is unfair. Taylor Tomlinson2:05 takes this from Judy Carter's old advice.
  • Sit down with a notebook and a day free of expectations, and write out subjects you could talk about for a couple of years.
  • Keep a private journal of daily irritations and show it to no one. Ted Gioia46:51 says it must be absolutely honest.
  • After about 30 days, read it back. People who think they have no ideas find a month of material Gioia46:51.
• Chase the most embarrassing true thing. Jack and Ryan of AJR6:02 changed their writing when they asked what the most embarrassing thing about themselves was.
  • Odds are the audience feels the same thing, so the embarrassing idea is the connecting one.
  • Keep two lists on your phone, one of flaws and one of memories. Pair a memory with a flaw and the pairing becomes the story Michael Jamin15:09.
  • The pushed VW bus in Little Miss Sunshine came from Michael Arndt's48:57 childhood, when the clutch broke and his father had to start the bus in third gear.
  • Arndt's five earlier scripts failed because they were imitation movies Arndt48:57.
  • AJR's early dorm-room party songs drew no one to shows. After songs about what embarrassed them, people showed up and wrote back that they had been through the same thing.
• Look for the question you already keep asking. Suleika Jaouad30:10 says her book's subject was the thing she was already discussing with friends and writing in her journal, but it had not occurred to her it was a subject.
  • Ask which question or obsession you keep circling, because it is often too close to see.
  • Keep a book of beautiful questions and add to it whenever you ask one David Whyte51:54.
  • List your earliest memories and ask what each says about who you are, what you stand for and what you believe David Perell8:27.
  • Whyte's poem Coleman's Bed grew out of one question, why we keep coming back to these places. It took him a dozen years of visits to answer Whyte51:54.

2.3 Capture everything, even the dumb ones

An idea you do not write down is gone, so build a habit that catches it wherever it lands.

• Carry a pocket notebook and jot fragments without processing them. Robert Macfarlane18:40 uses A6 notebooks for images, scraps of talk and sensory fragments.
  • Jot again each evening, even when tired in a tent, while the day is only hours old.
  • He comes back from big trips with five to ten notebooks, which become the raw material for books that take four to eight years.
• Catch the ideas that surface at night. Rob Henderson41:57 once woke with a memory, assumed he would keep it, and lost it.
  • Now he goes to his computer at 3 a.m. and types a few sentences, then fills in the blanks the next day.
  • Write on your phone just before sleep, nonsense words included, then filter out what no longer makes sense in daylight Lulu Cheng Meservey28:06.
  • A forgotten, shameful memory of vomiting at a Jack in the Box drive-thru came back to Henderson this way, and he also called old friends to ask what they remembered.
• Keep one running file, not a calendar. Maria Popova16:09 keeps a log of what she means to write about and dips in when she feels like it.
  • Let ideas fade or resurface on their own.
  • Dump news, evolving thoughts and stray good sentences into one phone note all year, so you have a pile to shape and not a blank page Dan Wang16:25.
  • Popova's file is 20 years old. She can scroll to find that in 2016 she wanted to write about Susan Sontag's list of likes and dislikes.
• Write down every thought before you judge it. Tom Segura9:58 was told by a friend to say them all and not filter, because the editor can't come too early.
  • An idea you dismiss on paper can turn into something better once you perform it and see how people react.
  • Copy passages you want to remember into a commonplace book, dated by start and finish. Each entry can start a long chain of thought Dana Gioia2:39:59.
  • Gioia has a notebook running from 1986 to 2016 with about a thousand quotations Gioia2:39:59.

2.4 Turn raw notes into a spark

A note becomes an idea when it turns into a what if, a question or an image that holds one.

• Ask what if. Jodi Picoult8:14 starts every book with a what if about something that troubles her.
  • Change one parameter of a situation you see or read about and ask how the story shifts. Then let it percolate before you write.
  • Follow the ripples. Ask what must be true because of the premise, then what must be true because of that Adrian Tchaikovsky6:19.
  • Then ask who would suffer most inside your what if, and the premise turns into a character Will Storr9:42.
  • Picoult's Hollow Bones began with a Post Secret postcard saying everyone who knew the sender before 9/11 thinks they are dead.
  • Tchaikovsky's Children of Time came from one premise: a real species of jumping spider evolves into a civilization Tchaikovsky6:19.
• Start from an image or question you cannot answer yet. Noah Hawley6:38 begins with an image that contains a question, and the story becomes the answer.
  • Treat a story as a set of unanswered questions David Baldacci34:55.
  • Follow an image you find intriguing even when you cannot say what it means Rosanne Cash56:18.
  • Test it by asking why a million people haven't written about this already Francine Prose23:25.
  • Fargo season 1 grew from the image of two men meeting in an emergency room.
  • Baldacci's The 6:20 Man came from the Panama Papers, which showed the money existed but never said what you do with $30 trillion Baldacci34:55.
  • Prose found her subject in a museum wall text about a woman race car driver who later spied for the Gestapo Prose23:25.
• Force new connections when you feel stuck. Stefan Sagmeister1:25 starts from something random, because the brain is lazy and prefers paths it already has.
  • To design a glass, start from a sock instead of other glasses. Try the same with a headline or opening.
  • Glue unfinished ideas together and sand off the seams. Check your abandoned drafts for parts that fit Andy Weir4:32.
  • Curate and remix existing ideas, give credit, and add your own experience Ana Lorena Fabrega7:22.
  • Sagmeister got a glass that is hard at the top and soft at the base, so it stands on uneven camping ground, in about 10 seconds.
  • Project Hail Mary combined three separate concepts: a mass-conversion fuel, a first contact story and an abandoned story about a woman with godlike authority Weir4:32.
  • Fabrega drew on attending 10 schools and teaching for five to six years Fabrega7:22.
• Write ten opinions and pick the one with a charge. Scott Dikkers10:15 asks people for ten opinions on anything, because everyone has them.
  • Run the best one through a funny filter such as irony or reference.
  • Start from something true and shift the point of view so it surprises Robert Mac2:07.
  • Dikkers says one or two of a list of ten are almost always already a funny article.
  • Mitch Hedberg's "I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too" holds two true thoughts in two sentences Mac2:07.

2.5 Let ideas age

Time separates the ideas that stick from the ones that only flashed.

• Give weight to the ideas that keep coming back. Andrew Stanton48:11 throws thoughts into a notepad or Google Doc and keeps moving.
  • The ideas that return weeks, days or years later tend to be the most ready to be baked.
  • Coben says a novel is like a marriage, so the idea that snags is the one worth a year or more of work Coben3:45.
• Let an exciting idea sit for a year before you write it. Henrik Karlsson1:27 says a draft written straight after the excitement comes out ungrounded.
  • Read books, make notes, revisit them months later and talk about it until the material becomes an urgent question that matters to you as a person.
  • When you feel that energy in your body, you are ready to write.
• Wait until a story has both a meaning and a vehicle. Atul Gawande19:08 keeps one running note of article, research and book ideas.
  • Many entries sit for years because they are a striking story without a bigger point. An idea moves only when he has the abstract idea and a story that carries it.
  • He filed the woman who scratched through her skull as a cool story. He wrote "The Itch" only after he found what it showed about the brain.
  • His note is now past 400 items.

2.6 Test and choose

Before you commit months or years, check that the idea obsesses you, has depth and survives a cheap trial.

• Choose what you are obsessed with over what looks impressive. Wright Thompson12:05 used to hunt white whales, stories no one else could get, to impress bosses and readers.
  • Now he picks something he is obsessed with enough to spend years on, a personal thing done publicly.
  • Don't scope the market. Schemes like mixing Jaws with an alien invasion never work, and eventually you won't like what you are doing Koontz55:15.
  • Shelve projects that are polished but not burningly urgent R.F. Kuang50:07.
  • Kuang has shelved many good technical exercises that had no subconscious push Kuang50:07.
• Ask what compels you to write it. Robert Greene1:10:28 asks young writers what is so important about the book that they must write it.
  • He says many books are unnecessary. You need a reason that is yours.
  • Write one line that says what you are for, and use it as a filter when many opportunities arrive Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar9:35.
  • Lean toward the nervous feeling in your stomach. Matt Haig29:06 treats it as a sign the project is right.
  • Pick something you are afraid of screwing up Koontz9:41.
  • Greene's first book came out of deep wells of anger about Hollywood and the world.
  • Bentley and Kwedar's line is "tell stories of human connection in impossible places." They wrote it over 15 years ago and say it matters more the longer they work Bentley and Kwedar9:35.
  • Haig wrote the strange book he would not normally risk after his publisher dropped him. It became his most successful book in the UK at that point Haig29:06.
• Check for depth and a reason it matters now. David Grann8:28 asks three questions: does the story get under his skin, does the research exist to tell it, and what is it ultimately about.
  • Curiosity alone is not enough, and a great story with no records can never be told.
  • Ask how many layers down the subject goes. A 10,000 word story can follow one line, but 300 pages needs dimension Susan Orlean44:25.
  • Say your premise in one sentence full of concrete nouns. If you cannot, you are still flailing Andrew Hunter Murray0:54.
  • Grann found The Wager in a 16-year-old midshipman's digitized journal, checked that the logbooks existed, and saw it as a parable about post-truth.
  • Rin Tin Tin turned out to cover World War I, the German shepherd breed, silent film and the history of modern Hollywood Orlean44:25.
  • Murray's The Last Day (the world stopped turning 30 years ago, half in light, half in darkness) was easier to write and pitch than The Sanctuary, whose premise he struggled to state Murray0:54.
• Run a cheap trial before you commit. Daniel Pink15:46 writes a 30 to 40 page proposal as a test of the idea and of whether he enjoys working on it.
  • If you hate writing 30 pages, you will hate writing 300.
  • Test the idea as short newsletter posts, then as a talk. If the talk does well, you are onto something Galloway4:00.
  • Ask whether a claim is true, in how many situations, and whether it is useful. Then try to break it Alex Hormozi7:12.
  • Pink has proposals he never submitted.
  • Hormozi treats a model he cannot break as done. His value equation has stood for years, and people republish it without changing the core variables Hormozi7:12.

2.7 Where writers disagree

Writers split on how long to wait, where to start, and how early to expose an idea to doubt.

• Wait for the idea, or write every day to produce more of them.
  • Jerry Seinfeld says the way to get better ideas is to produce more of them, and to let the audience judge which have potential. David Perell30:33 tells people who wait for a good idea that they have it backwards.
  • Henry Shukman4:42 never chooses a poem's subject. He waits for a line to arrive and says deliberate machinations never worked.
  • Both can be true. Write daily to fill your file, and let the file, not your will, decide which idea you take on.
• Start from a theme, or start from an image.
  • Mitch Albom8:17 starts every book with a universal theme and treats plot, characters and setting as tools.
  • Hawley and Cash start from an image and work out what it means later Hawley6:38, Cash56:18.
  • The Five People You Meet in Heaven was really about people who think they do not matter, and heaven was just a good way to show it Albom8:17.
• Protect a fragile idea, or attack it early.
  • Sam Altman33:07 says the best ideas are extremely fragile. He warns against people so smart they see why every great idea is bad.
  • Hormozi7:12 hunts for a counterexample to his own model and treats it as finished only when he cannot break it.
  • A workable order is to protect the idea while it is a sketch, then break it before you commit years.
• Follow trends, or follow your obsession.
  • Yaged15:44 recommends watching self-publishing to see what readers want next. Koontz55:15 says you can't predict what will sell.
  • Fast topics need fast formats. Tyler Cowen15:46 writes on Substack, blogs and Twitter about the near future, and chooses topics frozen in historical time for books.
  • Ezra Klein21:40 now follows the news cycle only where it connects to him emotionally, and lets other pitches go by.
  • Cowen says a predictive book on AI is not feasible, but a book on the early history of AI is Cowen15:46.