Writing

The Question That Leads to Our Best Story Ideas

What’s the Mood Right Now?

For the launch of Creators Hub, Senior Platform Editor Michelle Woo shares an insight from Forge’s Newsroom.

“What’s the Mood Right Now?’

Ever since the pandemic began, we’ve led our weekly Forge editors meeting with this question. It has become our most powerful exercise for finding compelling story ideas during this strange time.

By “the mood,” we’re talking about our collective human experience. We’re starting with the premise that we’re all going through this thing that is 2020, and while each of us carries our own set of unique circumstances, we share overlapping threads that are waiting to be named, dissected, and explored.

In our meetings, we each tap into the mood in different ways: One editor might point to an interesting conversation on burnout happening on Twitter, while another might bring up a sentiment about gender roles and invisible labor that has repeatedly emerged in their Instagram feed.

Most often, we look to our own lives. Many of the best stories start out as casual observations uttered aloud: “A friend and I were complaining about… ” or “I’ve been doing this weird thing where… ” or “I’m not sure if anyone else has been feeling this way, but…” If others in the group start responding “yes,” “same,” or “too real,” and we feel some energy building, we know we’ve found something good.

This exercise has allowed us to follow sparks of ideas, turning some of them into stories. Over the past several months, Forge writers have captured many facets of this ride we’re on — like how we’re rediscovering what phones are for, feeling like teenagers again, going through our own hell zones of quarantine, and struggling to get out of survival mode. It’s been a practice in self-reflection and vulnerability.

What conversations are happening in your life? What feelings feel new? What are some things you’ve heard or seen that you can’t stop thinking about? If you can detect the mood and write about it with specificity, you’ll be able to give your readers that magical experience of sitting with your words and thinking, “Yes. That’s exactly it.”