Young Writers Society

Dreams. Conversations. Science (Biology in particular provides a dearth of story ideas). Random ideas that shove their way into my brain uninvited (and usually in the middle of class).

Don't just sit around and wait for inspiration to come. Just as with everything else, there is work involved in finding inspiration. :P

Anywhere you look, there are ideas. It's just a matter of collecting them, playing with them, and combining them with other ideas to come up with a larger story. A phrase here and there might not seem much, but when you combine them with other phrases and images and interesting ideas, they become something more, and the more you play with them, the more coherent they become until, before you know it, voila! There's a plot idea, or a fully-formed character, or an interesting setting, or even a combination of all the above.

So pick up some ideas. Play with them. See what develops. You may be pleasantly surprised.

Inspiration can come from anything.

A movie, a book, a person, a relationship, a dog, a boat, a crayon or your younger sister's marker drawing of a crab.
But as Kyll mentioned, it is something you need to put your mind into. You can get a spark from these objects or feelings but to ignite its full potential, you're going to have to use some brain power too. Think about scenarios or play with made up characters on the spot. Think of anything at anytime and see what you could come up with. Don't be afraid to experiment. If it drowns, it drowns but you'll never know unless you jump into the water. =D

Good luck,

-Shear

I get my ideas from dreams, history class ( I LOVE HISTORY!! ), a fork, a spoon, a spork! ... books, movies, games, and mostly anime.

I get most of my ideas from dreams, whether it's a funny, weird, crazy, or a very scary dream. Anime is the one main source of ideas for me since... it's very colorful. I love colors ._.
Games are also one of my favorite things to get ideas. I love fantasy and most games are fantasy and most of the time crazy and unrealistic so me and the game match each other very well xD

My dreams rarely make sense. I envy you guys.

The vast, overwhelming majority of my ideas come from music. Not music lyrics, no - most music I listen to does not have lyrics - the sounds themselves. My imagination cannot keep still, so it starts making up images when I listen to music and do nothing else. These images are the most beautiful things I ever see, so I consider it my solemn duty to turn them into prose.

It might just be the kind of music I listen to. It ranges from slow, deep things like these, to crack-addict-insane things like these. Try 'em, maybe they'll help. Best of luck overcoming your block.

My dreams rarely make sense. I envy you guys.

Psh. I make them make sense, or just take things that were pretty cool and toss them into a story or three. :P

And that second vid you linked was awesome.

If you want quick inspiration, try this: http://creativewritingprompts.com/

Everything! Think in terms of what if's. For example, I live in Maryland and we recently had our elections for governor(you can Google these). One of the items in the news was about how Ehrlich went up against O'Malley. The item had a line that went something like "O'Malley's landslide victory makes Ehrlich's 2002 term look more and more like a fluke" So, I thought what if it was actually a fluke? What if the votes actually got miscounted and O'Malley was the winner in 2002? What would happen? I spent a good couple of minutes imagining it. I didn't write a story based on it, but it got the creative juices flowing. So every time you see something interesting in the news or anywhere else, think "What if......"

concepts is what does it for me. and characters. characters are a good source of inspiration because interseting ones really color your story. think of a drill sergeant, or a really outgoing social man, or a innocent looking girl who is actually a trained assasin! then once you think of them, build around them. in concert with this, I also get ideas from concepts. for instance, I wrote a story were I developed two characters on opposite sides of a war, so you really didn't know which side to root for because you didn't want either of them to die. it was based on the concept that war is hell, and that you can't dehumanize the enemy. concepts like this are everywhere, just waiting to be tapped. what inspires you? a character overcoming fear or adversity? a villan making a last minute change and becoming a hero? a tradgedy? true love? think about what concept you are most interested in and write about it. hope I was some help,
---Psudiname

Music, books, experiences, I often look up random images in Google images. I love doing that.

Psh... just decide on a genre and write. 'Ideas' are just gimmicks. Percy Jackson is just a fantasy book about the gods... but wait! Gimmick! It's in the moder world?! Get it? Not that we're cheapskates or any less true, but to think of inspiration as something ethereal... nah.

The ideas I get either come from personal experiences, books, or music. Sometimes they're just as random as hell and just appear out of nowhere. If you want to find inspiration, one of the best things to do is go out and look for it. I know this sounds weird but try to walk around more, read more, hang out with more people. You could be doing something and then- BAM! Idea.

That's how a lot of my story ideas work.

Don't forget anime and manga. The Japanese have such a unique way of telling a story that it constantly inspires me to try to compete.

Most of the time I get my inspiration from music, video games, art, surfing the web, and of course books! Also, I have to note that stuff like legends, history and world mythology inspires me greatly too. ^^

I get a lot of my inspiration from the subway. Or, maybe better said, the people on the subway. The people in NYC are all so different and what I love doing is sitting on the train and making up little stories about the people I see. You can walk around where you live and do the same.