New year, new ideas: an introduction to Story Starters

Stories can come to us from anywhere — perhaps an overheard conversation, a newspaper report, or a long-forgotten memory. But sometimes months can slip by without a spark of inspiration. If you’re experiencing a drought of story ideas, the new Story Starters workshop series could be just what you need to kick start your writing in 2025. We asked co-facilitator Lorna Partington to tell us more.

I have never been to a book launch or reading where someone in the audience didn’t ask the writer, ‘Where did you get the idea from?’ More often than not, the answer is ‘by accident’. The writer happened to read, witness, find or hear something that sparked their imagination. This is what we all hope for as writers: the bolt from the blue. But sometimes our daily life doesn’t present us with new ideas as frequently as we hope. That’s where Story Starters comes in.

For three years, Rosie Carnall and I have been running Writing Workouts, a semi-regular 2-hour session designed to stretch writers’ creative muscles. Last year, we introduced Complete Fabrication, a 5-week course that helps participants complete a 1000-word original story. There’ll be more Complete Fabrication offerings this year, but we are also trying something new: Story Starters.

Every Monday in January, Story Starters will offer you the chance to develop new ideas. It might be an idea for a compelling character, situation, or location that might form the basis of a new story, be it a piece of short fiction or perhaps a scene that could grow into something bigger. Like the Writing Workouts, there’ll be a series of stimulating, fun prompts. Unlike the Workouts, Story Starters will be less about vignettes of creative writing and more about finding the all-important heart of a story.

Story is all about a character’s inner journey that is brought about by life-altering events, encounters and situations (i.e., the plot). As an editor, I often read fiction in which plenty is happening TO the character but not so much WITHIN the character: all plot, no story. However, the most satisfying narratives — the novels and short stories that become timeless classics — strike the perfect balance of story and plot. Story Starters — as the name implies — starts with story. This means that the activities will prioritise the WHAT and WHY of the story before the WHEN and HOW of the plot.

The good news is that there will also be an opportunity to build on those initial ideas in our new Prose in Progress sessions, starting in February. These sessions are open not only to Story Starters participants but also to anyone who has started something they’d like to finish, be it a short story, a scene from a novel or memoir or a personal essay. This is a chance to move forward and, with group support, find routes through to the completion of your piece.

So, if you need to get 2025 off to a flying start and build yourself a bank of story ideas, join us at The Writers Workshop, Sheffield, for one or more of the sessions on Monday January 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th. Anyone booking all four receive a discount until January 5th!