5 Tips to Find an idea for Your Next Bestseller

This is a question that is either extremely difficult to tackle, or pretty easy. It really depends on what type of author you are. Some spend weeks trying to find a topic for their next book, others only need to look out of their window. That’s nothing to be worried about. It’s just plain normal.

And it actually doesn’t matter that much. Here are 5 tips to find ideas for your next book.

Please no rules

1) Let’s start with a rule – something creatives usually don’t like very much: You can’t force creativity. Sounds simple, but it means more than that. You should never put too much pressure on this topic. You can’t force creativity, but you also can’t expect creativity to spark if you are under pressure. What works for diamonds doesn’t necessarily work for writers. Sure, it does work for some. Just like some people need deadlines to deliver a great product. But in most cases it won’t work because a creative mind needs a certain level of calmness to come up with great ideas. Pressure does the exact opposite. Pressure makes your mind nervous, you’ll get restless and anxious.

2) Nature. Nature has always been a great inspiration for creatives. Some of the most famous images ever painted were inspired by nature. The same goes for colors. Many products are colored after what the designers found in the wild, raw nature. For writers, though, it’s less about getting an idea from watching leaves fall – I mean it can work. For writers it’s more about letting the mind wander if you hike through the trees. Staying in motion has always helped people with their thinking processes. A famous example? None other than Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is known to have gotten his greatest ideas during his daily walks around Cupertino. Who knows if the world would have ever seen the iPhone or iPad if Steve had been kept tied to his desk?

The only difference is that Steve Jobs walked through the streets instead of a forest but I guess he was heavily inspired by the forms and functions of everything he saw on the streets. From car mirrors to billboards. 

Our favourite tip

3) Sitting in a cafe. This one is our favourite tip. Sitting in a cafe can be inspiring in so many ways. From the interior – which you can steal for locations of your novel – , over how the barista is acting with the customers, to how different people behave. You may even be able to secretly listen to a few dialogues – which are a real gold mine of inspiration. You’ll probably get to hear conversations that your very own mind can’t make up.

 Not to forget the smell of fresh coffee…

 Long story short: Highly recommended.

4) Watching movies. Similar to sitting in a cafe, you can again steal so much from what the director put into the movie. Plus: You’ll get a visual idea of a foreign city – probably a city you want your story to take place in. The only thing that’s coming near – and actually is superior to that in that some ways is the Look Around feature we built into Untold Novel. Using this you can jump right to your novel’s crime scene and wander around as if you were there. 

5) Talking to others. This one is like a light version of sitting in a cafe. Light version might sound weird here because you are talking to others actively instead of passively listening to them in a cafe. But the difference is that you are partly the director of the talk. So it won’t unfold as naturally as a discussion among other people would. It can still be beneficial for you because you not only get to learn other views of certain things but can monitor closely how the person talks. Any quirks you can use to make your characters more realistic? Less flat?

Bonus

Don’t use AI. Yes. Sounds weird nowadays, but it’s true. If you rely on AI to get new ideas, you’ll never train your own mind to come up with new ways to find inspiration. Even worse, chances are that the same algorithm sends the same ideas to many authors. Which the reader will eventually figure out.