Five Ways to Get More Story From an Idea You Already Have

Whether you’re turning a one-shot into a full campaign, writing a sequel, creating subplots to enrich a story, or writing a spin-off for a great side-character, when you’re looking to get more story out of your world, it can be tempting to add new things to it. New locations, new lore, new history, new characters. But often, the best solutions are waiting for you in what you’ve already built.

Even a very simple idea can contain several stories once you start looking at the wider-reaching consequences and connections, and the ways in which it impacts or is viewed by different people. Nothing in your world is singular and independent.

Choose something you’vce already built, and look at what else must be true because of its existence. Look for the connections of cause and effect far beyond its original purpose.

Perhaps you’ve established that dragons regularly attack livestock. How does that impact farming, insurance, and the price of meat? Maybe resurrection magic exists in your world. How does this effect murder investigations, inheritance, or funeral rites? Or perhaps your protagonist exposed a corrupt noble in book one. Who else lost money, livelihood, or influence when that noble fell? Who is out for revenge?

When something happens, it’s not just your protagonists who are paying attention. Look to the wider society and find someone else who has a stake in it.

An ancient magical artefact may be valuable to a scholar for what they can learn, to a ruler for the legitimacy it gives them, and to a thief because someone will pay handsomely for it. A new road might be a blessing to merchants, but a curse for the innkeeper whose village it now bypasses. Or perhaps that monster your protagonists killed was vital to someone else. Perhaps they worshipped it, depended on it, or had devoted their life to being the one who destroyed it.

Go through your notes and connect two things you’ve already built. They might be nearby and related to one another, or they may be several kingdoms apart with no apparent similarities at all.

Maybe you connect a religious order to a magical ingredient, even if they’re on opposite sides of the world. Perhaps you connect a monster species with a major trade route, either through disruption or monster trafficking. Maybe a minor character from several chapters back can offer the solution your protagonist needs to succeed.

Choose something you’ve already established, and look at who wants it to stay the same and who desperately wants it to change. This is where your worldbuilding can start creating new stories through conflict.

Perhaps a religious order protects a sacred forest. But the villagers need firewood, and the king wants timber to build his armada. Maybe a town economically relies on visiting adventurers. Business owners need the money, but residents are fed up of drunken brawls destroying their town. Maybe your protagonists defeated a tyrant. While some people celebrate their freedom, others’ livelihoods depended on his regime.

Instead of looking back, push an idea forward. Take something stable in your world and introduce change. It doesn’t need to be destruction or danger, it could be progress and innovation.

Two nations may have held an uneasy peace for generations. Perhaps new leadership seeks to turn that peace into a genuine alliance. Magic may be disappearing, until someone finds a new, powerful source for it. A valuable resource may have kept a nation prosperous for centuries, until its depletion brings war to its lands. A powerful and cruel family line may have thought to have been eradicated, until an heir comes out of hiding.

More story doesn’t have to mean creating a new continent, fifty pages of new history, a whole new army, or even crowning a new king. Your existing ideas have consequences, interested parties, connections, conflicts of interests, and developments yet to be found.

Pick one thing you’ve already created and spend ten minutes looking for the stories you haven’t told about it yet.