Getting started; coming up with a good idea for a story is not as easy as one would think it would be. Even experienced writers often struggle with how to fine tune an abstract idea in preparation for a new story. A good peice of advice I have often heard experienced, published writers give new writers is to “ask a question” and then try to answer it. Show the world how a problem dealing with some challenging aspect of life can potentially be solved.

Most people share the same problems at some point in their lives, as human beings are actually more alike than they are different. When the writer expresses her own fears, her disappointments, her tragedies, her successes, her joys she connects us all. By asking a question and unraveling the answer through the pages of the story, the writer has the power to help the reader in her discovery period and subsequent healing.

Perhaps the writer asks the question about whether people have the ability to re-wire their brains to feel acceptance and love after having been neglected as a newborn for the first critical years of life. The story could have a protagonist who is bitter and hateful toward himself and others as he strives to be loved and to learn to love others, while re-visiting the steps he took during his past that led him to the place he ended up. Perhaps as he moves through the chapters he finds himself and in doing so finds the ability to love, therefore; solving his problem and potentially solving the readers’ problems to some degree. At the very least, the story has the power to comfort the reader to know he is not alone.

After all, if the writer asks the question, chances are a good portion of the rest of the world has asked it at some point in some way as well.