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I would come up with a story either by imagination or something that happened in my life such as an experience, romance, or it could've been a dream or even a nightmare, maybe I can even add something to it to spice it up.

My main characters (I write YA) are usually suffering psychological (anxiety, depression etc) that is the result of an earlier trauma that was not fully realized by the character. Feelings that were too frightening to make sense out of were locked away or suppressed. Whether my story will involve the character revisiting the past trauma in order to come away with a new understanding, or involve the character learning to deal with their psychological damage, my first step in writing a story is to come up with a few interesting characters and throw them into some downward spiraling adventure. Once I have the adventure in mind, I ask myself: what could have happened to my character in the past to make this adventure impossible for them to carry out? So plot and group of characters first, then I BREAK the characters psychologically, in a way that will require growth.

As unusual a this sounds, most of my ideas just come to me. Sometimes, they appear during a dream, or even when I'm just doing a normal activity like cooking dinner. My advice? Always carry pen and paper, because those ideas will just be forgotten if you don't write them down. Let's be real here: not all of them will be good. About half of them will be just terrible, some will be so-so, and a few might be quite good. One out of twenty will be great. But keep in mind that certain ideas work well in some books, but not in others. Keep them all handy, just in case.

I hate to be like Stephen King but most of my good ones come from dreams.

I go to a curio shop that's on 33rd street in Schenectady, New York. They have some great plots but their prices are really high.

Honestly, I seem to do better with nonfiction. It comes easier to me. As far as fiction is concerned, other people generally give me ideas!

I find that creating characters and the building the world and story around them is a good place to start. I like to think of it as listening to my characters. Basically having then tell me what their story is rather than me telling them what their story is. I find it helps. It's also a recommend technique by several authors.

The ideas come at random moments. I find that when I try to look for an idea, the ones I end up coming up with aren't that good.

I come up with ideas from personal life experiences. The idea is further developed into a plot during boring school classes. I also learned some other ways to come up with ideas by reading the many replies to this thread.

I have so many ideas running in my brain all the time. At first, it's just a starter: sometimes about a theme, sometimes about a character. I choose the idea that appeals me the most, the idea I'm comfortable writing about.

If I don't find any ideas when I want to write about something, I look for writing prompts or watch movies from different genres. Prompts help me a lot. I take several prompts and try to come with a story and all of a sudden I'm stung by a wonderful idea. Then I start creating different scenarios. Who are the people in the story? What are they like? What do they want?

Soon, it turns out in a concrete base for my outline, I keep working on it (I hardly write any ideas down) in my brain. When I think I would love to finish this story, I start drafting.

Ideas for stories come to me in a variety of ways. Newspaper articles, or the Ann Landers type of columns, a song, other peoples conversations, book summaries. Movies, too. They literally come from everywhere, on the rare occasion I even have dreams like stories.

Normally, A small idea or plot will spark with a movie, book, experience or anything really, like someone has stated above I too carry around my notebook that I scribble all of my ideas in. If they grow into something great, if not I'll always have it. ?

There is a part of my brain that nearly always seems to be busy writing, questioning my words, making up plots, practicing different styles, and is always hungry for more subject matter to digest. I guess it's like a game for me, a challenge of sorts.

Any number of ways, as many have mentioned above, are useful for creating ideas, but I seem to be drawn most recently to this idea of being free, letting my mind wander to whatever weird conclusion a thought may have.

For example, I had a thought about fingers or hands one day and decided that I'd write a story about a scientist whose hand is cut off and comes to life because of chemical radiation. It's absolutely strange, but those ideas come all too often.

Dreams! I always have crazy dreams that turn into short stories.