Using an Online Story Generator

If you're stuck with a difficult story, maybe it's time to turn to an automatic story generator. Plotshot mixes plots and images to inspire your writing.

It had always been my opinion that story generators take the fun out of writing. That they somehow rob the writer of the best part of the experience - coming up with the wild, inconceivable plot twists and making them work.

But then, I'd never been totally stuck with a story before. I'd never been completely out of ideas of what a character should do next. I don't write novels, but for people who do I'm sure that 'stuckness' happens all the time.

This week I decided to delve into the world on online story generators, just to see what's out there. There are plenty. There are fantasy plot generators, romance plot generators, and science fiction plot generators. Some story generators supply an entire plot, while others provide a single-sentence jumping off point. For example, the writers at Nanofimo, suggest, as a plot twist, "Send in the ninjas!"

There are even websites that provide lists of character names to choose from.

Of all the story generators I found online, I particularly liked Plotshot. Plotshot gives you a one paragraph story (most are funny, if pretty far-fetched) and pairs the story with images from Flickr, Yahoo's photo-sharing site. The photos are randomly selected from Flickr based on keywords in the text.

What I like about Plotshot is that even if the plot doesn't inspire you, sometimes the images will. And even if the images don't inspire you, if you click on them you end up in the Flicker database. There are enough weird and wacky things in there to spark any writer's imagination.

I don't know if I'll be turning to random plot generators anytime soon. But still, it's good to know there's lots of help to be found.