Generating Ideas For A Theme

One of my goals for 2021 is to enter more creative writing competitions. They really help in terms of building not only your confidence as a writer, but also your profile too if you are successful. Many will set a theme, and encourage you to be as bold and adventurous with that theme as possible. So how do you generate ideas around a theme?

The technique I find most successful is to set myself an online alarm and just let my mind go wild, coming up with as many different ideas as I can within that timeframe. They may be plots, they could just be one word. Don't discount anything at this stage, just get the words down no matter how absurd or silly they seem. I find it works best for me to have a notepad and pen, to jot down on one page - almost a spider diagram. When your time limit is up, stop and put the page/ideas away overnight. Come back to it the next day and see what has legs, and what you can get rid of. Where will you go from here? I then go on to plot my story in a three act structure (thanks Syd Field, I come back to this screenwriting technique again and again).

So here we go, I'll allow myself five minutes now and type some ideas below for the theme of - via Random Word Generator - CONFIDE

A listening ear of a friend; a secret that comes out; a friendship that turns sour; Official Secret's Act; a stranger tells a secret; agony aunt; therapist; a tweet that blows up; a dark secret that comes out; a secret that is held for a long time; a vampire tells his/her story; spies; phones a hotline and tells a secret

There's some really interesting ideas here, although five minutes is not very long. The ideas that come through most to me are secrets and telling secrets, as well as spaces/professionals where someone would talk in confidence to that person. A vampire tells his/her story - well, of course, that's been done before (very successfully!) but could it relate to another gruesome creature or character?

I'd love to know more about how you generate your ideas for themes - please do post a comment.