You know that point when you’re puttering along, writing your novel, and you get stuck? You can’t decide what this character should say next. You can’t figure out where this scene should go, or what dilemma to present. Some people like to call that writer’s block, I just call  it my stopping point.  I truck along elsewhere, I do laundry, I take a nap, I try to get around to finishing that review for that one book. I read. I don’t really let it get to me, because I know that the next scene or scrap of dialogue will present itself to me eventually. It always does.

I was on Twitter earlier, looking up all the tweets under the hash tag #firstworldproblems. If you’re not familiar with Twitter, you should be, because that is where your characters are just waiting to be born. And I’m talking more than just 140 of them.

This got me thinking of all of the places I randomly steal snippets of dialogue, facial expressions, and weird people-isms for my writing. If you’re stumped on ideas of where to go next in your novel, considering it’s NaNoWriMo and all, here are a few really unique places I find them.

1. Twitter. It depends on what kind of character you’re looking for, but if you’re looking to write a funny, sort of shallow character, type in the hash tag #firstworldproblems in Twitter search, and let the character write itself. In scrolling through the tweets from the hash tag #firstworldproblems, you get a lot of shallow people basically making fun of themselves. If you’re not familiar, consider this tweet. And this was the one that gave me the idea for this post.

“My cleaning lady hasn’t texted me back yet. WTF! #firstworldproblems.”

If a character in a novel said this, I would crack up. I would just die. These are the characters I love. They are kooky and sort of shallow, interesting and good natured. These are the kinds of things you could use as character dialogue because they are real and relatable. Admit it, even though it’s fiction, we all love characters that are real and relatable.

Also, try reading a few bios on Twitter. They’re short, but they are great starting point for developing character background. For instance, I read one bio earlier that read “Motorcyclist, Robot-fighter, writer, living in Brooklyn.” What are you waiting for?

2.  Post Secret. We’ve all heard of Post Secret by now. People send in their secrets, a few people publish them in a book. Aside from the heart wrenching experience it is to look through all of those secrets, it really is a great place to find ideas. One secret can make an entire character. I read this one about this woman who would write love letters to men and stick them in various mail boxes, so their wives would think they were having an affair. That’s a story just waiting to be told.

3. Texts From Last Night. There’s a wonderfully dirty website out there that it’s okay to be caught looking at called TextsFromLastNight.com. It’s powerfully hilarious. Look at any of the texts people send each other there, and you are automatically forming stories from them about the night before. And you weren’t even there.

4. Trashcans. Specifically, other people’s. The other day I went into a friend’s bathroom and saw the following: the box for a pregnancy test, rubber bands, and an empty duct tape roll. I’m not talking digging in there, but just a glance inside the occasional trash can once in awhile. There’s bound the to be an odd combination of items that might get your juices flowing.

I’ll have you know that I am ever-discovering new ways to keep myself amused, and in so doing, fiction is found. This list may grow as long as your hair, in which case I’ll either edit, or post anew. Stay tuned, and good luck.

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Monique Muro

Monique is an exceedingly happy human from LA. She runs the blog A Novel Quest, and writes. A lot.

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