Every person, regardless of how rich, poor, introverted or introverted they are – the have things happen to them (or around them) on a daily basis. You just don’t notice them. You might be swimming through our thoughts, or perhaps doomscrolling on our phones. Maybe you’re just daydreaming.

If you really think about it, every day something happens. Sometimes, it’s something big, and sometimes, not so much. But things happen to us; you just have to focus and take notice. And all those things can be crafted into interesting stories.

In this article, you’ll find some tips/tricks that’ll help you spark that creative bulb and show you ways to turn the daily mundane into inspirational stories.

3 Ways to Get Ideas from Everyday Life

If you know where to look, you’ll never be short of ideas for stories. The things you go through everyday, memories, and observations will give you so much material to write about; you’ll have stories coming out left and right.

Let’s see what to do to turn everyday life into inspiration.

People-Watching and Conversations

This could get really creepy really fast, so let’s just preface this part by emphasizing that you should not eavesdrop and you should not stare at strangers.

Rather, when you’re out, you should observe the patterns of people, how people relate/communicate to each other and the way individuals behave. Focus on the space occupied by people, the characteristics of the people and their attire plus other distinguishing features.

That doesn’t mean you need to actively eavesdrop, but if you’re sitting next to people talking to each other and catch a snippet of their conversation, it can give you an idea for a story.

Childhood Memories

The memories you have from your childhood are a very rich source for story ideas. Remember the smells, tastes, the sounds of your past and you’ll start to feel strong emotions that you can translate to paper and get vivid, immersive scenes.

And you don’t even need to go into personal details; you can use your memories to go into topics that are universal, like friendship or loss.

Capturing Moments of Change

Life is full of transitions. A new city becomes home, a new job is undertaken, a new partner is found – these are instances of utmost gratification.

At that very particular time, you might not think that such situations can be an inspiration for plots. Naturally, it doesn’t have to be something big/dramatic, like the death of someone dear or the birth of a child that motivates.

It can be as little as buying a flower vase to decorate your house, or making the choice to having tea instead of the usual coffee that day.

3 Ways of Using Daily Life Occurrences to Craft Your Stories

Story Arc

The main character has just missed the bus. Something happened. Now, all that’s left to do is how the character reacts to the situation.

The conflict in this story (example above) is that the character has missed the bus. And missing a bus is nothing important. But remember that butterfly from above. Because the character has missed the bus (instead of being the usual early bird), now they have to adapt. There’s frustration, stress, fear, and confusion involved.

Will the character now have to wait for the next bus and be late to work? Can they take a taxi, but they don’t have enough cash to pay at this moment – how will they pay? Can they call a friend, but their phone battery is at 1%, and it dies mid-call. Or perhaps you can go in deeper, that the character goes through emotional turmoil because the bus leaving is a trigger to cause their fear of abandonment that has been prevalent in their childhood to surface.

There are so many possibilities from a very simple thing as ‘missing the bus’, and you haven’t even scratched the surface yet.

Senses and Emotions

If it weren't for senses and emotions, everyday life would be bland, uninteresting, unexciting, neutral, grey, boring.

Use that to your advantage. Think of how something might trigger butterflies in your stomach, or something that will make you cry. Or how you like the feeling of a cotton blanket on your skin, or how you hate the scraping sound of cutlery on a plate.

Your character (if you develop it well enough) will have that same life in them.

Write down all your character's interests, traits, perks, likes, dislikes, and more somewhere where you can easily access it and regularly update it. As you write more of the character, more ideas might strike you to make the character even better.

Just make sure that, if you make some big/fundamental changes, you edit everything that has been written before in accordance.

As an example, take the case of the moment when the bus has just left. You’ve barely missed it.

You can explain how the atmosphere felt a little breezy or how the referred character was almost enfolded in the smell of the exhaust fumes when the bus left. Help the reader to be there.

The frustration of missing the bus doesn’t just have to be because of how inconvenient that is; it could be a sign of something bigger, like being scared of getting left behind, perhaps connected to some child trauma (e.g., fear of abandonment).

Polish up your Writing

Once you’ve created content in the first draft, the next step is to improve the work and ensure the logical movement of the paper. And that there aren’t any grammatical mistakes.

If you have no experience with this (or if you don’t have time to do it yourself, since it’s very time-consuming), you can hire book editors. These independent book editors are professionals who you can hire to ensure your book is ready for publication.

This means: eliminating grammar mistakes, ensuring there are no plot holes, no redundancy, no missing/confusing story parts, and that the readability level and tone/style are the same throughout the whole story (because it might’ve taken you a few months to write the story, and during that time, your writing style improved/changed which is now a problem).

Moreover, great/experienced editors will even leave/make suggestions to further improve your story. You can take those suggestions, or you don’t have to. But it’s always a great idea to get a fresh set of eyes onto the text, since you might be too close to it, and too heavily invested to see the same.

Conclusion

If you lack inspiration for your story, or a fresh new project, just take a step back. Focus and think about what has happened to you today. Yesterday. The day before that.

Any of those occurrences can be a foundation for an amazing unique story. If you’re creative enough, you can form a story out of anything. Not almost anything. Out of anything.

Don’t take things that happen in your life as insignificant or for granted. They are important. They could be the basis of the next best seller.

You don’t think your life is interesting enough? Well, tell that to Helen Fielding after she wrote "Bridget Jones’s Diary". Or J.D. Salinger after he wrote "The Catcher in the Rye". Or Virginia Woolf and her "Mrs. Dalloway" (just some of the examples). All mundane daily occurrences turned into something spectacular.