To tweak your imagination so more when looking for story fodder, try the next Fiction Writing Exercises – Ideas for Writing Fiction #11:

11. Picture This.

Pictures and photographs can often suggest ideas. Try visiting your local art gallery, or just look in a newspaper or magazine.

Sometimes using an existing visual image can help you develop and/or enhance your ‘written’ image, helping you provide the reader with enough detail and background to help them ‘see’ the scenes and people who inhabit your stories, adding and using things you might not have thought of when relying on totally imaginary places that exist only in your mind. Rather than try to keep it all in your head, you can have an image or images nearby to help keep it straight as you write, i.e., what’s what and where everything is in relationship to each other.

Even if you decided to use a totally fictional locale, taking pieces of other places, say from photos, to ‘build’ your new one, can make it easier to avoid mistakes in continuity or accuracy, especially as your works get longer and more involved.

(These ideas are adapted from the work of Nick Daws, who is a best-selling author living in Staffordshire, England. His book, “Write Any Book in Just 28 Days OR LESS” is available at writequickly.com )