Most of my ideas are generated by the media in one way or another--a movie, an article, a news broadcast. Because I write for a specific faith-based market, I can then work these ideas into the lifestyle I write for. I don't think I'd be a writer without other artists and writers.

how about the rest of you, where do your ideas come from?

Good question! Really. I'm not sure where I get my ideas. I do think that past experiences combine with media influence to create a lot of my premises. Since I write suspense, often from a government perspective, I occasionally pick up my local newspaper (The Washington Post) and flip through there if I need to come up with something bad to happen to my characters. Even when it's good news, I usually find something I can use.

The one thing I have found consistently true is that when I base anything, even loosely, on real life, my editors say it isn't believable. Truth really is stranger than fiction!

A lot of places. Often things like TV, movies, the news but also from eavesdropping on people in public. I've found that you hear the most interesting things in public bathrooms, through the shelves at grocery stores and in line at the movies.

I think I just have an overactive imagination. The ideas come from everywhere.

I get a lot of ideas from bad writing--TV, movies, books. When I think something really stinks, I try to figure out how I would make it work, make it better.

That and dreams. I dream a lot of my ideas.

Or if I'm wasting time at the mall, I'll make up stories about the people that walk by. Sometimes that leads to a good idea.

Or the newspaper. That's also a gold mine. Take someone's real story and twist it. I've got a great one that started with a local senator who...hmmm, where is that outline anyway?

The current (and first real) project I"m working on stems from a game I used to play with my brother when we were kids. :D

Ideas come from everywhere. A fish swimming about in its bowl. The wind whistling through a needle-thick wall of trees. An accidental cut about the left thumb. Ideas are like blood. They become a part of you. Then, you succumb.