How To Come Up With Original Topics To Write About

YOUR DESK - Every day many people submit their carefully written articles, stories, and comics to the Neopian Times only to have them rejected because they lack originality. Considering there are currently over 150 published issues of the Neopian Times, there are a lot of previously covered topics. With all these subjects, jokes, and story plots that are already published you may feel stressed when it comes to choosing a unique topic to base your writing on. The following will give you a few tips for thinking creatively and will hopefully aid you in coming up with new and interesting ideas of your own.

Looking to your daily life outside of Neopets may be a helpful place to start when you are in dire need of a topic. However, unless you live in a fairy tale, the ideas that you get from studying and thinking about your daily life may not be very creative or out of the ordinary. If someone at your school or office tells you a humorous joke, you may be able to incorporate part of that into a new Neopets comic you are writing, or add it as part of a dialogue in a short story by adding your own personal touch to it. You can also look through some old photographs or letters that you may have. Doing so may jog your memory of a fun, interesting or dramatic event in the past which you can incorporate into your writing as well. You may choose to use events from other people lives as well, or interesting stories that your parents, grandparents or relatives have told to you. You can alter these events to fit into your writing however you want to. After all, it is your writing and you should try your best to be as creative as possible!

By observing things that occur on the Neopets website you may also broaden your range of ideas. Since you are trying to think of ideas to submit to the Neopian Times and your writing must be about Neopets, what better place to look for ideas than on the Neopets website itself? If something new pops up in the news page and it seems interesting, maybe you could write an article relating to it or put a portion of it in your comic, story, etc. New things to the website seem to be very popular, so many users would be interesting in learning all that they can about it. Also writing about things that have seemed to be forgotten and not talked about very often on the website may be a good idea as well. You may spark the interest of people who did not know about this certain thing before and you may start a new trend of some sort. Chatting with other neopet users may also help you realize interesting subjects for writing too. If you notice a lot of people are talking about something specific and still many people are clueless about it, writing about it may provide a lot of confused Neopians with answers and clarity. If you were writing a comic or humorous story you could possibly poke fun at some of these confused Neopians, although that really doesn't sound too nice. As long as your jokes are tasteful and not just being obnoxious then I doubt anyone would have a problem with them. Whatever topics you choose you should use the events currently going on in Neopia to benefit your writing!

Try to remember your main audience, or people who would most commonly view your Neopian Times entry, and keep in mind things that they would like to see. For example, if you were going to baby-sit a four year old you wouldn't try to read them an encyclopedia intended for college students, would you? The same concept can be applied to the Neopian Times. If someone is browsing through the comic section they probably want to see something entertaining and funny, not boring.

Think about things that you would personally like to see published in an issue of the Neopian Times. If a certain topic greatly interests you then feel free to write about it. Chances are there are probably many other people who would enjoy hearing about that topic as well! My reasoning for writing this specific article can be used as an example of this too. A little while ago I received a dreaded letter of rejection for a different article I was working on because it wasn't an original enough topic. I was a little frustrated and I thought to myself "How can I write an interesting article? I wish there was a guide to doing so!" Then I decided that I could make one myself, to hopefully benefit other people who are in the same situation and need some ideas to help improve their submitted works. If there is a topic that you would like to see in the Neopian Times there is nothing wrong with writing an article about it yourself!

If you are still low on ideas, you can start writing about topics that you know a lot of information on. If you know a lot about a specific thing then you will probably have a lot more to say about it and you can take your writing in a numerous different directions as well. If you feel that there aren't many topics you know a lot about you can always do research by reading through the Neopedia, various Neopets help pages, or just by asking other users for information. Many people say the best way to learn about something is to experience it. So for example if you want to write an article about Neopian shops, maybe you should pay a visit to a few of them before you begin writing so that you have a better understanding of your subject.

I hope this article may have cured anyone who has been suffering from writers block, or just a general lack of ideas. If all else fails, just give yourself a small break from your writing. Being overworked, tired, and stressed doesn't provide you with the best environment to be creative or to positively express yourself. People should also note that the ideas for subjects in this article are intentionally vague so that you can come up with a much more specific topic on your own. The purpose of this article was to help other writers think of ideas and hopefully it has served its purpose!