What to do with story ideas?

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I'm an avid day-dreamer. Small things in my day can spark any amount of story ideas.

Obviously I can't, and shouldn't, start developing more stories. So, what do I do with these new future novels?

Word Document

What I actually do is I have a single word document saved on my DropBox account so I can edit it anywhere I have a computer.

This actually works better for me as I'm an avid keyboard user.

I can easily go back, read the ideas I have and decide a few things:

1) Is it a good idea? If not, get rid of it. 2) Can it be combined with another idea? 3) Is it something I SHOULD write about?

These are things I need to figure out every time I open the file. What is good about using a .doc file is I can highlight and delete very quickly or make any annotations whenever I need.

Write it down

One thing I used to do was the take a pad of paper and jot down my idea. This gives you a tactile recording or our idea. A physical sketching. While this does give you a "hands on" approach, to me it was messier and not as useful. Doesn't help I have  terrible handwriting.

So, pick your poison. But don't lose your ideas. You never know, they could end up being  your masterpiece.

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