I will admit here and now that I haven’t used a generator…yet.

But I was clued into these by a writer friend and as I’ve done my research it turns out a lot of writers love generators – not to give them the exact idea, mind you, but as a good jumping off point. I have to admit as I perused these lists, I got some flickers of inspiration and ended up jotting down a half-dozen story and character ideas.

So here’s a list of several character, plot and content device generators that you might find enlightening:

Seventh Sanctum is a huge resource with numerous types of generators in several genres, as well as story inspirations.

RanGen is a site with numerous character generators, including one that will randomly generate a love interest for your protagonist.

DuoLit has a really fun YA character generator (and you can definitely use these “characters” in things other than YA – after all, everyone grows up, right? I played around with it and got some really thought-provoking combos. They have a mystery/thriller generator as well.

Writing fantasy and need to develop a whole new language? Check out this fantasy generator.

Now take those seeds and fertilize the hell out of them!