A question I get a lot is around how to generate ideas for writing topics. And I have tons of ideas for that, but one of my favorites involves this: Take a topic about which you have written a lot and know a lot and write it in the center of a piece of paper.
Around it draw a square and write “who,” “what,” “when,” and “where” at each corner. Now, bear with me on this, but jutting off from each corner, divide aspects of your center topic and extrapolate towards wider and wider definitions of it. Huh?
Okay. For example, say your center topic is “art heists” because you’re written about that a lot. Great. Next to “who” you’d probably write “art thieves” and “art collectors” and “museum curators.” Next to “where” you might write “black market,” and “vehicles that transport art”and “museums” etc. Next to “what” you will probably write “art” and so on.
Now peel it back another layer, and extrapolate again. So, next to “art thieves” you might write just “thieves” and next to “museums” you might write “anywhere art is displayed” and next to “art” you might expand that to be “creativity” or similar.
So now, because you’ve already written about/know about art heists, you’ve pulled back the edges to include commentary pieces about things like, public art, art collectors, museums, galleries, creativity and so forth. If that’s not enough to shake loose a lot more topics, take the time to plug each one into Google News and see what news hooks pop up as jumping off points.
That topic is just an example, of course, but this is one of my favorite ways to expand the field using what you already know and can speak to in order to generate more topics with just a little bit of a research stretch. Give it a whirl. Let’s write.