A good way to expand your brain for better story ideas is to practice. Take any newspaper headline and spend a few minutes spinning out different possible plots. For instance, a headline I saw a few minutes ago was about how the accounts of many video games players have been hacked. Here, just off the top of my head and with no claim to being good, are a few story ideas that come to mind:
* The hacker is able to track the purchases of all the people whose accounts he has hacked and blackmails thousands of them who ordered pornography;
* One person whose account was hacked decides to try to change back to a life without computers and smart phones;
* The company executive responsible for those accounts kills himself, which triggers a crisis in the life of the hacker;
* How the crash of the game affects a young Chinese man who has been earning money playing a computer game for Westerners who want to move up several levels without spending the time (this actually is big business in China);
* One man's identity is stolen and the wild times someone else is having with his credit card shows him how boring his own life is and he begins to change his lifestyle to match the imposter's--and in the process encounters him.
The idea isn't to come up with something you will actually write, although you might decide to; the point is to become agile at spinning out story possibilities. When this becomes fast and easy, it will benefit the things you ARE writing. Bonus: it's also fun!
(For more ideas on how to be more creative, get my newest book, "Creativity Now!" from Amazon or your other favorite online or offline bookseller.)
