Story Ideas for Realistic Fiction

Fiction is narrative that covers a series of events that are not factual, but invented. It is a pure creation that stems from the writer’s imagination. For any person, regardless of how creative or inspired that person is, realistic fictional storytelling can be a daunting task, since it deals with events that although untrue, could still happen. These story ideas are realistic, because they aren't dependent on magic or imagined technologies. You can change the places, time periods, characters' genders and other details and still craft realistic fiction from this sampling of ideas.

Theme: End of Love

A young couple living in a small town somewhere in Missouri find themselves tired of their lives and the people around them. They start to forget what made their relationship so different and so exciting. They decide to move to Barcelona. The first few months are great and refreshing as they roam the streets and eat in tapas bars. It is only until the novelty of a new city wears off that they realise they are only tired of one another. As the young man falls for a young Spanish woman he meets, his partner falls into a deep, unwinding depression and they find themselves fighting for the spark they had once found in each other.

Theme: Starting Over

A mother and her 17-year-old son are living in a rundown one bedroom apartment in Queens, New York. Drunk and jobless, she finds herself struggling with the memories of her losses while witnessing her son fall into a life of crime and drugs. When one day she falls ill, her son decides to go back to school and find a part time job in a laundrette. As he winds up working and supporting his mother, he battles with the consequences that his former life left him with, while trying to make up for his mistakes.

Theme: Imitation of Life

An aging novelist living in Italy loses his wife to another man. Heartbroken, a decade passes and he cannot bring himself to be with any other woman. Because of this, he has resigned himself to a life of isolation and bitter loneliness. When he sees a young woman at a book reading, he finds something in her warmth and her smile that he has not known for over ten years. She leaves and he feels in himself a deep and painful longing. He decides to shut himself away and live the rest of his life through his final piece of work, writing as he wishes to live.

Theme: Self Discovery

Waking up alone, in a Chicago apartment, on a mattress on the floor, a small-time accountant decides to sell his home, quit his job, empty his bank account and set off on a journey of self-discovery. He travels on down to Mexico, before buying an old Volvo and driving to Argentina where he meets a beautiful woman with whom he starts a family. Family life teaches him a little bit about the kind of man he is, and the years he has wasted as a bachelor in a small Chicago flat.