ABSTRACT
One skill that every freelance must have is the ability to generate a constant stream of ideas to keep the work coming in. A good story makes you stop in your tracks because it is shocking, surprising, answers an important question or is simply interesting. It needs to elicit some kind of emotion from the reader, be it shock, anger, sadness, elation, despair or empathy. As the sheer number of column inches written about vaccine scares over the past two decades can attest, any issue where two sides can be pitted against each other is fertile ground for a good feature or news story. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and LinkedIn can be a great source of ideas for the simple reason that those are the places people are having conversations and documenting what is happening in their lives.
