Benable — create shareable lists of things you recommend!
E.g., products you love, local businesses, travel recs - you can add anything to a Benable list!
Things That Make Me Want to Write a Story
28
items Every story starts somewhere. As someone who writes fiction, I learned that inspiration arrives when you least expect it. Sometimes I go in search of inspiration. Sometimes it's a conversation overheard in a café or a stranger rushing through an airp...
Map
Sections
4
PEOPLE WATCHING PLACES
TOOLS I CARRY WHILE OBSERVING LIFE
Landscapes That Feel Like Story Settings
Inspiring Cultural & Historical Sites
PEOPLE WATCHING PLACES
People are endlessly fascinating. A busy street, an airport terminal, or just sitting on a park bench watching people gets my imagination going.
Airports are full of beginnings and endings. To me, every traveller is carrying a secret, a dream, or a goodbye. Sitting here, people-watching fills my notebook with story characters and ideas.
Murtala Muhammed International Airport
There's something cinematic about train stations. People arrive. People leave. People wait. A great place for the start of a novel.
Mobolaji Johnson Train Station, Lagos
The energy here is incredible. The conversations, the crowd and haggling. A thousand stories unfolding at once, if you just paid enough attention.
Balogun Market Lagos
Parks are perfect for quiet observation. I love imagining the lives behind the people walking past me.
Millennium Park
One of my favourite places to sit with a notebook. Cafés are basically people-watching places. With snacks!
ART CAFE
For me, airports are story machines.
Singapore Changi Airport
A place where artists and writers have gathered for generations. Order coffee and let your imagination run free.
Café de Flore
This place gave me an Afrofuturistic story idea.
Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove park and Gardens
One look and my brain immediately starts writing stories about lost civilizations and forgotten timelines
Petra
This place makes me wonder how much history we still don't know.
Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu
TOOLS I CARRY WHILE OBSERVING LIFE
The best ideas often arrive when I'm not actively looking for them. These are the simple tools I keep close because inspiration has terrible timing and I need to capture ait as it lands.
The fastest way to lose a brilliant idea is to assume you'll remember it later. I carry my notebook with me, always.
Pocket Size Notepads
Perfect for capturing story ideas before they disappear into the void. I have captured an entire chapter of an ongoing story with a voice recorder. It just flowed out of my head spontaneously.
Voice Recorders
Sometimes a photograph becomes a story months later. I find that images give me more story ideas at a glance.
Digital Cameras
Every writer needs a portable library. I have a library of my favourite books. Some of them also give me a spark of inspiration
Amazon Kindle Reading App
Landscapes That Feel Like Story Settings
Some landscapes take my breath away. These places make me wonder what stories unfolded here long before I arrived. Their authentic settings feel like the backdrop to an epic adventure story or a forgotten myth.
A place where elephants, ancient history, and wilderness coexist. A great setting of an adventure novel.
Yankari Game Reserve
The dense forests look like a good hideout for a fictional villain or the sanctuary of a hidden race.
Afi Mountain Wildlife Sanctuary
I love nature, and this place is just perfect for imagining fictional worlds.
Cross River National Park
This place makes me think about stories where the protagonist embarks on journeys and discoveries that begin with someone stepping off the beaten path.
Okomu National Park
There is something magical about climbing toward a waterfall. Every level feels like a chapter leading to a bigger reveal.
Erin Ijesha Waterfall
The sound alone is inspiring. If nature could tell stories, I imagine they would sound like rushing water.
Gurara Waterfalls
The scale of this place will make you feel small.
Farin Ruwa Falls
Inspiring Cultural & Historical Sites
I like reimagining history and speculative fiction; I'm drawn to places that carry the weight of memory. These sites remind me that every monument, ancient wall, and historic landmark was once part of someone's everyday life. They make me wonder abou...
Standing near these centuries-old walls makes me wonder about the lives that unfolded behind them.
Ancient Kano City Walls
Great setting for a time-travel story. Imagine a portal hidden in the caves? The atmosphere practically writes the opening scene for me.
Ogbunike Cave
The climb felt like a journey into another era. Imagine a protagonist on a treasure hunt into the hills.
Idanre Hills
Just like something pulled from a fantasy novel.
Kajuru Castle
This landscape was the site of a real story. This rock protected the Egba people during the 19th-century inter-tribal war and was a vantage point to monitor enemies.
Olumo Rock
A deeply reflective place that reminds me how important it is to preserve and understand the stories that shaped us.
Badagry Heritage Museum
Some stories must be remembered, even when they are difficult to tell. The Slave Route and Point of No Return are two of the most powerful historical sites that preserve the struggles and horrors of the slave trade.
The Bridge of No Return