Where do you get your ideas?

lilyWhite said:

And one particular race ended up coming into existence because someone here on AW posted something that included a word that I figured would be perfect for one of the races in my story.

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Ooh, I've had that one, too! Probably a different word, but, yes, ideas are everywhere, even if they're snippets of other people's ideas that trigger your own ideas.

Layla Nahar said:

Hate to be that guy* but - where don't I get my ideas? But - ideas are easy! The hard part for me is getting a story out of them...

(I'm a lady, akshully)

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Yes, it's the story, and writing down the story, that's the tricky bit.

morngnstar said:

My most recent idea came from a "what if". I went out drinking and escorted home a female friend who had too much to drink. My what if was, "What if I were the Lyft driver?" How would I know someone wasn't taking advantage of a drunk woman? And what would I do about it?

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Or, what if the Lyft driver was the last guy to see the woman alive, and in the company of a guy only he could identify?

Hublocker said:

I have extensive notes and diary entries from the small coastal fishing village I lived in and the small logging town I grew up in too.

Some similarites exist though I viewed one as a child and the other as a teenager and adult.

There were some great real events that happened but too embarrassing, revealing, intimate or depressing to reveal the actual people they happened to. Many of those people are still alive too, or still friends (so far) so it's hard to even "fictionalize" them. I'm tempted though, with a shooting, numerous suicides, philandering, casual sex, unrecognized children from affairs, drugs, booze and a host of other stories that could be woven together.

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But that sounds good! An unusual setting, interesting goings-on and a range of characters. I wouldn't try for a roman a clef, trying to use the actual people, etc. I'd use that as a jumping off point.
Make use of the stuff you remember about a small, isolated town; decide which incidents would make the most interesting story, and make up the characters from the general range of character types. 'A Logger', a composite of various loggers you may remember, and his buddy, made of bits of other loggers, etc.
Also, if you don't use real people, you aren't constrained by 'he really didn't/wouldn't/couldn't do this, that or the other'.

Random conversations. "What If" questions. Vivid dreams. My current WIP is loosely based off of a strange, fanciful dream that I had nearly ten years ago.

Carrie in PA said:

This. For me, it's just a matter of being tuned in to the world and noticing things. It could be a comment I overhear in a store, or something I see. One of my favorites was when I saw a lone pink child's flip flop laying in the parking lot of my office. My head spun an immediate tale of an abused mother frantically carrying her child away in the night to escape.

It's something that definitely develops with use.

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ABSOLUTELY!!! Walk around with your mind tuned into the cosmos!! ........and if that doesn't work, a trip to a museum -- ANY museum -- is highly recommended. The Field Museum in Chicago is amazing for this, if you happen to live there. But watch out - you could end up with too many ideas... which is, I guess, a pretty good problem to have.

Snippets of real life and daydreaming. Sometimes politics. For example, a few years back my state legalized gay marriage and three days later, took it away again. I knew it'd become legal nationwide before too terribly long but it started a sequence of events in my mind. Then one day I was standing barefoot in the grass at a local wetlands, looking at the trees, wondering what was hidden in there, and thought "Hmm." Now I have a story that's not about gay marriage, but was born of the chain of events started by that third day and things my friends went through because of it, combined with the bare feet in grass and the trees.

Hublocker said:

Is there a store where you can get them?

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Actually...

Basically, I do a lot of flash fiction. Sometimes I find prompts on websites, sometimes I pick them up from reading other writers'/bloggers' posts. Based on whatever prompt I get, whether it's a picture, a word, a concept, a character... I write a flash fiction. Sometimes those flash fictions develop into larger ideas, or I want to change or expand on them.

Other times, an idea will just hit me. Maybe I'll be listening to a song, hear a lyric, and think 'yeah, I could use that'. Or I'll hear about an event and immediately envisage a character in it. One morning, whilst getting ready for the day job, I randomly thought "I need to write a story about a character called Sanjay" and then this whole plot popped into my head. I worked on it during the walk to work, then wrote it all down in a notebook once I got there. Later, when I want to work on it more, I'll start typing it out and playing around with it, but for now, I have a good, nine-paragraph outline of the whole thing. Though I still haven't decided whether I want to set it in a dystopian future India or America.

Dreams are also a good source of creativity for me. If I remember my dream (I usually do) and if it's not about me being chased by some monster or badguy (it usually is) I can often find a nugget of something to be used. I had this one dream, in which a guy who works in my local music shop turned out to be a vampire, but I really don't fancy writing vampire stories at the moment. Or probably ever. But never say never!

Maybe you have your setting, and are thinking too hard about the characters and the plot. Try closing your eyes, listening to some white noise, and just see what your imagination comes up with.

There are eight million stories in the naked city...

Go sit at the counter in your local mom and pop diner. You'll have a dozen plots by the time you finish your meatloaf.

Jeff

Jim Butcher likes to say he doesn't have a muse, he has a mortgage.

I found inspiration in that since I would rather write for a living. Now, every day I write down 10 ideas, they aren't necessarily story ideas, but it puts me in a creative space where I'm exercising my imagination, pushing my mind to think of things I've never thought before. Every now and again the magic happens and a story comes out of one of these ideas. One of my current WIPs came from the list of 10 ideas to pay off my student loans faster. Got me thinking about how fortunate I am that I can pay them, and I wondered how kids just graduating in this awful job market we have where I live are doing it, lots of areas for conflict in this situation. Conflict = plot, here we go story time.

I always FIRST come up with a title. Then I swirl it around in my mouth for a piece. Then I leap off the edge of it and write.

Everywhere really. Input = output. People around me say I notice things way more than anyone else. I don't know about that, but I've always been a watcher of people, the world, whatever goes by. The stuff flying in through my senses mucks about in my thankfully creative mind and ideas accumulate quickly. Wish I could turn it off for a bit sometimes.

I always FIRST come up with a title.

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Ooh, that's the hardest part for me!

Snippets of real life and daydreaming. Sometimes politics. For example, a few years back my state legalized gay marriage and three days later, took it away again. I knew it'd become legal nationwide before too terribly long but it started a sequence of events in my mind. Then one day I was standing barefoot in the grass at a local wetlands, looking at the trees, wondering what was hidden in there, and thought "Hmm." Now I have a story that's not about gay marriage, but was born of the chain of events started by that third day and things my friends went through because of it, combined with the bare feet in grass and the trees.

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When I write sci-fi, all I have to do is troll the newspaper, because it's like a free list of prompts of bad decisions and innovations for dubious purposes waiting to be explored. (I'm a little burned out on that approach at the moment, which is why I think I went back to fantasy.)

I'm going to side a bit with Motley here. Everywhere. I sort of constantly disect/analyze what happens around me. The "what if" is one thing, but daydreaming is especially important to me. I may come up a character or three in a certain setting or situation. If I like it (or if my brain decides for me), I'll daydream about it, more specificly I'll run through the setting/scene, adjust and change something, a dialog, a personality trait, actions, what lead up to their curent situation etc. I play around with the characters, maybe adding, removing or merging some. By the end of a day, I may have reworked so much of something that if I had written it down in the morning, I'd have to toss it in the evening. Atleast that's while I work on the idea. When I'm happy with it, I sort of "file it away" within my current WIP, and keep working on some other part of the story. But just like Motley complained, some times it'd been nice if that pesky brain of mine did not constantly work like this.
I've had situations where I for instance come down to the platform at the subway, and allmost like in a movie, an alternqte reality flashes before my eyes, from a world/setting I'm working on, where I see the people and animals there dressed and behaving like they would in "my" world. I'll sit on the tube, or train, or bus or just walk into a store, hear pieces of a conversation, and since I didn't get the start of the conversation, I refit the dialog to a completely different setting.

Getting an idea is one thing, working with it, and being able to use it is something else entirely. I findnthat the more I know of something, a certain area of interest, settings where my knowledge aplies comes much easier than in areas I don't know much. Granted, knowledge can also limit your developement of an idea because you know how things actualy work, and the natural limitations. That can be a boon or a curse. I've decided to stick to realism on my curent WIP. It being an alternate history to sci-fi means reading up on details pertaining to technology, psychology, material science etc. Maybe as little as a goodle search, or like yesterday, order a dozen books on amazon (I originaly wanted just one). I've had initial ideas just crumble on me as useless crap, only to form the basis of a single character, or sparking a new scene or plot idea that turns into something usefull.

So I say, don't be afraid of reworking that idea you got this morning. Just because somethings odd with it doesn't mean it can't be used, or won't spurr you on. Last summer, I spent a few months musing over, reworking, philosophising and daydreaming over a limited subject in a specific setting. While in our curent society, it'd be a taboo, in that setting it wasn't. I didn't end up with anything usefull per se, but, it allowed me to sort out a bunch of other issues with certain aspects of that world, and thus rescuing a previously ditched idea.

I’d say I get most of my ideas from my own embarrassing childhood lol

Ideas are like landing your first job/career position. You may have a pretty degree on the wall, fresh out of school, but you don't have experience. Experience facilitates creativity/ideation. I think I read people are most creative between 40-50 (age). Someone in his 40s certainly has more experience than someone in their teens or 20s. People can draw on their experiences to do fun things with them.

I use all, available methods of learning (seeing things) when I ideate material. I often put lists into visual presentations to see things in a different perspective. This gives me ideas I could not generate just staring at a list of items. I use numerous resources, from many disciplines/fields. It helps being a generalist rather than a specialist in creative writing. In general, I have a broad spectrum of interests. For example, I like many forms of music, art, hobbies, and so forth.

Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue said it best in a YouTube video he did with Slash this past December. He noted when he wrote songs and music, he borrowed from everything that gave him inspiration. As long as he put a significant enough spin on his own work, it was his own. This is another way of generating ideas.

Raindrop said:

Where do I get my ideas? In the shower.
Or while walking in the woods, or commuting on a double-decker (top floor only; ground floor doesn't work as well), or while washing the dishes. Or when I'm asleep, often.

What often happens is, I get an idea for a scene. I see it, in a way. When I get attached to the characters and keep seeing the scene (or other key moments linked to those characters), I know it's a story I want to write. Then I develop it, usually by questioning the elements of the scene. Mainly: who? why? what next? One of my current plot bunnies could be summed up as: "Why did she buy a goldfish instead of the blue dress she wanted?". And, yes, she's got a good reason to buy an ornamental fish.

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It's funny you'd say that about the double-decker. I'm similar - I think for my novels best while commuting. Such that I took a summer class last year in part so I'd have bus rides each week to think for my novel. It wouldn't work if I just sat down and decided to think... I wish! And only on some buses. It's so funny how the mind works.

I've noticed farming ideas has gotten a lot easier with practice. Over time my brain has come to just automatically go over things whenever I'm not thinking about something else. So in the shower, in the car, etc. Though I've had to train myself not to do it in bed (I lost sleep for a long time over that habit). What helped me get to this point, I think, was setting aside a specific time every day (or every day I could manage) and only use that moment for brainstorming and processing book things. Over time I learned more and more tricks to make use of that time and it started to come naturally to me and become second nature. I also learned to take inspiration from everything - music, TV, my own experiences, people walking down the street, daily occurrences. It all helps.

But I am also a very vivid dreamer, and I remember my dreams clearly. They are usually what give me the idea to start a book in the first place, and often fill in major plot points and endings.

Magic.

That's kind of a joke but also not.

I like magic. I like making magical systems. When I daydream, I think up cool magical powers, and then I think "where would this come from?" or "how would this affect the people that used it?" Which usually leads to a set of powers-that-be, and then the powers make a world, and then well how do they populate that world (and/or why?), and before I know it I'm sketching out an entire world with no real purpose other than because I can. And every once in a while, one of those worlds stands out, like it's got something more to say, some greater stake within itself that I haven't fleshed out yet. So I go after it and it sort of organically starts turning into a story.

And then sometimes it just hits me. While mowing lawns for some sweet summer cash as a teen, I rewrote an Evanescence song to be from the perspective of these five gods singing to their champion, and it sparked my first story (though I often refuse to acknowledge it and vow that I would surely set fire to any rogue copy that was presented me). Some years later, I set fire to an old play map and had this mental image of some dude doing exactly that, as a message to the ruler of some city, and it sparked another novel.

I've also got a project that I started writing after listening to some spooky music.

My muse is kind of a tool like that.

Caulder Melhaire said:

I set fire to an old play map

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I never realized this was something I wanted to do until just now, hahah.

Devan Isra said:

I've noticed farming ideas has gotten a lot easier with practice.

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Did you mean framing or farming?

Enlightened said:

Did you mean framing or farming?

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Farming. Growing ideas like a crop.

I guess the ideas evolve out of every book, tv show, game or movie I've consumed though out my life.

Devan Isra said:

Farming. Growing ideas like a crop.

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Awesome. Cheers.

Randomly.

I've learned the hard way that I can't chase good ideas – they have to come to me. It's a real pain, actually, because the wee rascals rarely appear.

There have been a lot of answers to this question over the years, some funny, some serious, some pithier than others.

I think it was in On Writing that Stephen King talked about the muse. And I think he suggested going to work during the same hours every day. That way the muse will know when and where to find you when it's ready. I sort of like that idea.

Idea-Mart, definitely. Don’t use the Dollar Snore, their plot lines are boring.

Ideas come from everywhere. They come from nowhere. They come from random thoughts, or maybe an occupation you've always found interesting. Writers are more or less looking for stories, so it shouldn't be too hard for us to find a story in the most mundane thing. I remember at my old job I saw somebody that was the spit image of Danny Bonaduce and I thought, I'd like to write a novel about a washed-up child star. A few weeks later, I had an idea about a traditional gothic vampire novel. Bam! Two ideas that I could blend together to create something unique. It ended up becoming my second novel.

Some things just jump out at you. Sometimes they take more digging than others, but the majority of them come to me when I see something---whether it's on TV or in real life---and I wonder, What would happen if...? Sometimes they become stories in their own time, sometimes they become nothing. Depends on the idea and where your imagination takes you.