History That Never Was

Home of Dawn Vogel: Writer, Historian, Geek

Organizing Ideas into a DIY Idea Deck!

| November 7, 2022

Not too long ago, I realized that I had random ideas for stories all over the place–in my email, on my phone, on my computer, and in assorted notebooks. While it’s exciting to have so many ideas, it’s really inefficient to have them all over the place. But then I thought, “hey, self! You like […]

Fun for Friday: A Tongue-in-Cheek Genre-Fiction Generator

| March 18, 2022

If you’d like to generate some story ideas while having a little fun at the same time, check out Wondermark’s Electro-Plasma Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator 2000. While it can give you a perfectly reasonable story idea, you can also pick and choose to come up with the most ridiculous possible idea if you like. Alternately, most […]

Fun for Friday: Generate an Espionage Mission

| May 4, 2018

In the course of working on a new story, I realized that I had the main character in mind, but I didn’t quite know what I wanted them to do. So I looked for a random espionage mission generator, and found an excellent one via NeverEngine. With this and the die roller on my phone, […]

Fun for Friday: Turning Drawing Prompts into Writing Prompts

| September 15, 2017

Often times when I’m looking for a random inspiration for something to write, I turn to lists that are designed for artists who want random prompts for daily drawings. It’s not that difficult to turn a drawing prompt into a writing prompt. Instead of drawing whatever is on the list, you can write a story […]

Fun for Friday: Quick Character Ideas

| July 14, 2017

I have an ELABORATE collection of Funko Pops. It started as just a handful, but I’m now to the point where I have purchased 24 of them. (23 for me. 1 for the hubbie.) The picture doesn’t show them all. I have a game that I started when my collection was much smaller. I stack […]