Getting Ideas

Usually I get an idea from something that happens and makes me think. One night a friend and I were walking around town at night (we live in a tiny town) and this one building, a really old bank filled with junk, creeped me out 'cause I could've sworn the thing in the attic moved and looked right at us. My friend asked what it would be like if we really did live in a haunted town and as soon as I got home I started writing. I got 'The Dead Town' out of that.

So really just little things like that.

I get ideas from anything: pictures, music, other people, they're influenced by other books and movies etc. Sometimes ideas just randomly pop into my head.

I get ideas from talking to myself, random lines that come out.

Poetry, I usually just spout it out, a phrase that pops into my head or whatever and I follow it and it kind of comes on its own. And I have to write it down fast before I forget.

Prose ... I get my story ideas from a lot of places. Like...a song, imagining where the song came from. That's how I got The Pedestrian. Got up in the middle of the night to write it, too. :con: Or...imagining how a story I've read could have been handled this way or that way. I was telling Max how much more awesome her first Frerard could have been if it was like this or that and I got the idea for the best Waycest ever.

Pictures are a really good place to get started. Like, interesting pictures with or without people in them. You can just look at them, and words will enter your head, or make up conversations between people in them.

Board Games was inspired by many long game nights with my sister, her fiancee, and my parents. Scrabble was a huge thing for that story.

Not a Barbie Doll was partially inspired by lurking the 'Things You Hate To See In Stories' thread stumbling upon a discusion about how people hate it when people are too skinny. And I'm not skinny in the slightest and I decided to incorperate that into a plot line. The title was inspired by Not a Barbie Doll by Kerli, an artist whom I discovered completely by watching the Scream Awards after Halloween just to see Gerard.

But random ideas are constantly jumping into my head, and my characters are literally developed through themselves, and sometimes without my help at all.

I knew I'd seen this thread before, but for some reason couldn't find it when i searched, thought I was imagining things and made another. I apologise for the double.

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The Vampician all started when my English teacher said that the easiest way to get an idea for a story was to mix something normal with something strange. So I did. A helluva lot has happened to the story since, to the point where the original idea no longer exists, but that's how it all started.

Most of my stories are inspired by life and some of the taboo's in society. Apart from interest me, i think they need to be brought to peoples attention and thought about such as: homosexuality in islam, teenage illness, domestic violence etc.

Two of my stories that I'm working on right now were originally gonna' be entries for one-shot contests, but I liked the ideas so much that I just made them into full blown projects. :XD

Hey, Window Boy (unposted) was actually inspired by two things: a story we read in our English books last year about the Kennedy assassination, and the book So B. It where I got the list-making ideas.

Others have come from one completely unrelated scene in a book or a movie. :roll:

My brain works in odd ways sometimes....

Sometimes, I have dreams that I liked, so I just stretch the dream more and more and write it.

Other times, I just write down a random word, branch things off of there, and it gives me a good idea.

And, other times, I just start with something that happened in my life, then stretch it to make it more... exciting.

I get most of my ideas from movies, songs, pictures, and people I know.

Like, I was watching Titanic and there's this one song called The Portrait, and it's a nice piano song. I began thinking who wrote it, how they came up with it, and then I wondered, what if this person was blind? How would they be able to see what they're doing? How did they become blind? How did they go about their life without seeing? So, there's Jamie from My Symphony. I branch off greatly from a simple object or scene.

Other times, I just try to pull a random idea and see how it goes.

That's my inspiration.

Well, I was watching Titanic last night and for some reason Jack gave me all these random ideas. :XD
A romance (het) on a ship that ends tragically ends up being an influence for a slash set in the city betweent two apartment buildings. :roll:

I get ideas in the weirdest places and weirdest times. Mostly I'll get ideas because I'll be listening to my ipod and a line will come in some song and it'll make me think of this whole scenario for that line.

I get ideas from music always. Either that or horror movies plots that I read on Wikipedia.

Usually from other books or movie adaptations of books. For example, I like the idea of a secret garden and I love the moors in Yorkshire, but I’d never use all of that in my stories; I often take concepts behind some of it and put it into my own work. Hard to explain really.

Otherwise just whatever thought occurs to me that I build up and find as another story idea.

Sometimes, I just take a shower and imagine myself in a fanfiction :tehe: then I just keep fixing details and plot.... Now I'm writing a story in which a girl killed her (Can't reveal) in orther to keep her secret and secret. :XD It sucks though.

I got a bunch of ideas from watching the Travel channel today. :XD It's really easy for me to come up with ideas if they're set in a super-cool place.

I get ideas just by day dreaming. I play with a few things in my mind and think 'hey, that could make a good story'.
But sometimes if I read a book or watch TV, I get ideas from there, too. I don't copy what I've seen or read. I try to make it my own.

Mostly music.
But sometimes I see a movie and get those basic ideas.
Boy meets girl, they fall in love, break up and fall back in love.
Stuff like that.
But I like to mix it up at times.
:D

Most of my ideas come from the news, nightmares, and superstitions I often read about.
Sometimes I listen in on another person's conversation or just glance up and see somebody and wonder what their life is like.

I'm the kind of person that simply blends in with a crowd, so no one really ever notices me if I end up staring at them for five minutes.

Sounds like the words of a stalker, but uh....I will not waste time trying justify my tactics. :shifty

The either come from dreaming or daydreaming. Or when I'm in the car, one small happens on the street and mind will start going balistic with ideas. My head starts hurting with ideas afterwards, though. :shifty:

Lately my ideas are inspired by books I've read or movies I've watched. Then sometimes I'll take a composite of ideas and fit them into the one story.