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Quite a bit of my ideas come to me when I'm sleeping. During the night; or should I say sometime after I wake from a noise, I will toss and turn, constantly thinking. Before long, instead of counting sheep, I'll come up with a story. As the story develops, I'll try to create characters that are creative thinkers. Then when I wake in the morning, I'll write them down in my "Idea Book."

My mind goes to some weird places for no reason at all. I have a whole big world in there, and it's...interesting. Some of my ideas come from there. Others just kind of come there. It can be a vague idea, or a situation or a scene or a line or something else like that. The only problem is that it can be hard getting to the point that I picture in my head, and even harder continuing passed that point. The result is a lot of unfinished stories and only a few that I actually manage to finish.

I usually start with a character. I see this person in my mind's eye and "follow" their day. I know it sounds a bit crazy but it works for me.

My ideas start out as fan fiction. I read books and there will be something I don't like. I will change it just for fun. Normally I like the idea of expand it change the setting, tweek the characters, and in the end I have an "original" idea.

I base my stories off real life things. Not necessarily things that happened to me. Take for example; my first set of books were based on someone who was depressed due to circumstances in her life. I did not have the same happen to me in life. I, however, seen movies that dealt with similar situations but never took it in the same direction. My other ones are about witches and faeries. Not so much real life stuff, but as a Wiccan myself, I thought to dabble a little in the spirit worlds. But the rest are mostly teen fiction. I like to think if teens would read it that it will help them find answers in the fiction world for their real life issues.

I usually come up with ideas from something I've watched or read. Back in third grade I was writing short stories and fan fictions of cartoons, Transformers, Super Mario Bros. and Sonic The Hedgehog. I would create new characters and have them jump from one Universe to the next.

"The key to writing... is writing." - William Forrester

For me, the main jist that I could be working off of could be something personal like an intense dream. Starting it from there makes it feel more like a fresh canvas, so I pretend it's some sort of prophecy. From there, I take snippets from memorable things I hear others say. Or I'll try to find something(like an advertisement) that has a certain phrase that has no context. I tend to gravitate towards odd sentences that can be misenterpreted easily. Something with a social edge. That could be the main premise, or I could work around some random object to be, or both. Sometimes I'll even look at abstract designs and try to see pictures or people in the design. And I think of the qualities it might have if it were real.
I think most people write from experience. It's just a matter of how well you can distort something to deliver it as an original piece of fiction.

The novel I'm working on is the result of years of escapist fantasy and obsession.

So, since writing it down has killed a lot of my obsession for the idea, it's freed up brain space for new thoughts, but I don't really have a sense of how to use that yet.

One thing I've started trying is using tarot cards to build "skeleton" of a character, and then seeing if they fit into any of the worlds I'm writing now (and if not, I'll start asking questions like, "would my protagonist like this character? What would they say to them?")

I think that might work out well for me, for character-driven pieces, and to populate crowds.

If you're not familiar with tarot, the basic idea (from the point of view of somebody who doesn't believe in it as a spiritual practice) is that each card is laden with an enormous amount of symbolism--a specific card in a specific place in the "spread" has 4 or 5 different layers of symbolism, before you start factoring in how they interact with each other. So, it's fundamentally a Rorschach test. There's something to go off of, but different people will find different patterns according to what makes sense to them.

So, recently what I've been doing is using 7 cards to represent, 1. The major life stage the character is in. 2. Their long term past. 3. Recent events. 4. Current mindset. 5. Major influence. 6. Goals and 7. Needs.

Sometimes I come up with something incoherent, but the element of randomness breaks me out of my old habits and gives me something better to build on than a blank sheet of paper.

Thankfully, I generate ideas just by living: videogames, conversations, events that occur to people, my own experiences and plenty of other things.

I get ideas for movies from everything around me. I get ideas from tv shows, movies, my students, other books, people and my own experiences.

Gah I can come up with some ideas and thoughts and concepts but just cannot put them into a story. I can never think of an ending or a direction for it to go. It's driving me mad, I used to be much more imaginative when I was younger... Sigh.

Usually I come up with stories in the downtime moments that I have during the day. It might be on the way to work that I think about a story of a drifter and someone picking them up and what the conversation might be in the car on the way. Or I could be eating lunch and browsing websites or emails when I think of ideas for a contest topic. Most often the ideas I have are ways to look at ordinary things in a different light, or ways to pull the reader out of their own world and get them to look at it differently after they're done reading my work. Sometimes I think it could be fun to think of writing stories like hilarious YouTube videos. What would you want to see next? That's the type of mindset I have.

I write stories based on people I meet, the things they say, things I see and places I go. I also use past and present experiences good and bad.

with games I play, movies i watch, books I read, I get flickers of ideas. I let them grow in my mind and finally some of them takes a good shape which can be put on to a paper. then I write it and finish off

I do not have a stable method to do it. And I don't even plan. I may have ideas from watching movies, TV shows, from reading books, witnessing events. Etc