In one of our previous Tips & Tricks posts we mentioned Gianni Rodari’s tactic of breaking down a well-known fairy tale to its most basic elements and “recasting” it with your own details.
Now, take a story that you are very familiar with—maybe even one of your favorites—and “recast” it using this trick. Try doing it more than once if you have the time: write one story that has very visible elements of its original format, and then try using the same tactic while making the details much more vague with how they connect to the original material. In fact, you could even aim to make the new story as outlandishly far from the original as you can while still maintaining that initial thread of inspiration.