Image via Wikipedia

Good writing ideas for flash fiction or short stories are difficult to come by.  Once you do have a good idea, by putting a different spin on it it can be used several times with each time being as fresh and seemingly new as the first time.

There are only so many basic ideas that a flash fiction story or a short story can be written from: the end of a relationship, the beginning of a relationship, death, birth, the first time for something or the last time.  There are others but the ones already listed will serve our purposes.

Let’s take the end of something as our basic short story idea.  How many spins can we come up with that have something to do with the end of something?  There is the end of love, of youth, of trust, of hope, of a job, of poverty, of honesty, of innocence, of dreams and of wealth.

Let’s take another basic short story idea.  How about the beginning of something?  There is the beginning of life, of a marriage, of a friendship, of college, of a job, of sobriety, of hope, of desire, of love or of trust.

Let’s take one more.  How about death?  There is the death of a spouse, the death of a sibling, the death of a pet, the death of…

Well, you get the idea.  The good ideas are all around you.  You don’t have to look far.  What you do have to do as a writer is to take a basic idea and to use it to create something fresh and new, something of your own.

A writer does not have to re-invent the wheel.  What a writer does have to do is to take the old ideas that have been around for ages and to reshape them and retell them for a modern audience.  I have an idea that you might find useful. 

How about writer’s block?