Boh, I don't know actually they just seem to pop up every now and then and when they do I develop them in my head to a degree where I won't forget it, but I still write down the basic idea. Sometimes I put it aside and think about the work Im doing and then suddenly something , a song, a phrase, something I hear or see, makes me remember that old idea and make me add something to it. This goes on until it is time to start writing it down. I am not one of those who's head seem to explode with ideas, but the ones I do get turns into novels in time. Right now I have two WIP and two still to be written so I think it's about enough to handle. I try and write down the specific details about them when they come to me otherwise they will fade away.
At one point, I was pinning post-it notes to a bulletin board. Mostly they were arts and craft ideas that came to me while I was surfing the web. For the story ideas, I mostly address them immediately or hold them in my head. I really should start carrying my notebook.
I'm exactly the same way, I always have a notebook near me so I quickly jot it down, when I come to writing it on the computer, I normal come up with more ideas to add. Sometimes when I'm sleeping, wake up, thinking that would be a good story, I jot it down so that I won't forget it. But sometimes ideas just come to me, have no idea where they come from, but again quickly write them down before I forget it.
I dream, thats where all my inspiration for things comes from. I have some very wierd dreams, they'd scare most people, but they inspire me. ^.^
I write or type it down then send it or carry it to my computer at home and add it to "MS onenote". The trapper keeper of computers. I have a colomn for characters, one for towns/cities, one for stories, one for history and specifications of the monster encounters. "The Mountain unicorn is the draft horse of the unicorn, if the unicorn forsakes its good, the unicorn loses many abilities. like all unicorns, the unicorn can heal with its horn, if it heals one that is not pure, it will become very ill, healing an evil being can kill a unicorn." Most of the colomns are really full. I can make references to link like items, like if two towns are used in a story, I reference it and tell how they are linked. I also can note characters relations: Delphi friends: Talgo, Elizabet family: Danda, the Late Dragorider Lord Enalpheron. Campawn and Banesville are used in story.... and they are .....apart, campspawn is northeast of Baneville.(don't have it all memorized, so this might not be accurate to my stories.) It took some getting use to, but I love onenote now.
I'm not that organised I just write. When i come up with a block I look around for a solution. I ask questions etc
I usually lie in bed at night when I can't sleep and type the ideas into the notepad on my iphone. The next day I'll copy them out onto my PC. I bought a dictaphone for ideas when I'm driving but its a bit crappy and just picks up the car noise and my voice is too muffled.
Most of my ideas come to me in the shower, so I have to jump out and write it in the fog on the mirror. There's gotta be a better way.
I use a pocket notebook. Not just any pocket notebook, but one of those Moleskine notebooks like Indiana Jones uses in the movies, with the elastic band to hold it closed. I think it's a cool notebook, and its presence and coolness makes me want to use it. So I'm always pulling it out and writing things in it, snapping it closed Indiana Jones fashion with the elastic band, feeling cool ... It makes taking notes fun, and inspires me to think of notes to take. If I'm thinking of notes to take, I'm thinking of stories to write.
Where does one put a notebook? For the more mature, civilised (male) writer a jacket pocket will do the trick, but what of those dashing younger writers who don't wear jackets and don't wish to spoil their sleek, trousered lines with a notebook bulge?
There is only solution I can see to this problem a massive great big man bag - bright pink with sequins You can carry a whole pile of pads and won't ruin the back view.
(no relation to previous few posts about the notebook ) I gather my ideas from music and generally carry a small notebook in my handbag, either that or I have loose paper in my folder that I can quickly jot ideas on. Sometimes I'll get a picture in my head and I have to draw it and just newly, I've been taking photos of interesting things that give me ideas (like paper foldings that look like Temples or strange shapes in the clouds)
what with it being the 21st century and all I keep notes on my phone. I'm really disorganised and if I write things down I generally lose them, forget where I wrote them or write them in a strange language that I am later unable to understand. For that reason I carry a dictaphone and talk into it anytime I have an idea. It can be a little embarrassing when you're on the train though. As for getting ideas my day day to day job requires that I come up with a great many scripts daily so I've refined a few techniques to help me along. 1. People-watching. Pick someone interesting and try and guess where they're going and what they're doing when they get there. 2. What if? What if clothes were edible? What if women took over the world and men were confined to prisons to do endless piles of ironing? What if Jesus had been born in the 20th century? 3. What are they saying? Take a photo from the internet of a couple or group of people talking and try and decide what they are saying. Then add in the next scene and so on. 4. Five minute sprint. Get a pen and a pad of paper and just start writing. Don't think about it just go for it with no breaks for five minutes and see what comes out. Most of it will be nonsense but at least you'll be writing and getting the blood flowing to the "write" areas. These are the methods that work best for me but there are milions of others. My best advice is to stay observant at all times because you just never know when the muse will descend.
There are pencils made for writing on glass. If you have a glass door or ceramic surround, you can write things that are hopefully high enough to not get washed away before you're done with your shower. A good scrubb with the paper towel will get it off again.
ROFL! Oh yes, I can definitely see this You must be VERY secure in your masculinity to pull this one off
Won't quite do. I lack the Bruce Willisness to carry that off. In addition, I am not (quite enough of ) a ****. But I do thank you for the suggestion
I'll carry an idea in the back of my mind for a while and dwell on it while commuting or driving. My theory is that if I forget it, it wasn't very promising to begin with. If it persists, then I begin to think about characters and what they might be like, what they might do, etc. If a story line seems like it might be forming, then I might jot down some notes, just to see what it looks like on paper. By this time, it's usually taken hold of me and so the next step is to sit down and just write. If I'm writing and I get stuck, long walks are a good way for me to sort things out.
I have a huge internal file of ideas. Sometimes it's not so much one big concept as it is a minor idea that would fit within the context of that concept. For example, I might have an idea for a futuristic piece of technology. That idea isn't enough for a story alone, but in a story about a spaceship manned by privateers, that idea could be sewn into the background or the plot.
Real quick I just wanted to post that I thought I was still on the Google homepage when I saw your icon, because--I kid you not--I was literally looking for pictures of ASMZ and came across that exact pic. Good call, though, GREAT band(s--Godspeed is also amazing, obviously!).
Ideas jump at me at the most random moments. Sometimes I have a notepad or my laptop at hand, and sometimes I don't. When the moments in which I have neither come, I find the most random things to jot my ideas on. I've written ideas on a paper napkin, a brown lunch sack, my hand and any other objects I could find at the moment. I always search for something to jot my ideas down on, because if I had nothing, the fear of losing or forgetting that idea would haunt me forever as a writer.
I carry a little notebook around with me at all times, so if that idea comes floating out of the unknown i can sketch it down! It doubles as a journal, so i can draw on aspects of my life in my stories through that too!
Couldn't you write it down as a textmessage on the cellphone? And then you just save it as a "draft" or whatever they're called when it comes to cellphones. I do that if I can't find anything else to write it on, because the cellphone I almost always have with me and it won't go away.
That's what I do. I have almost two dozen drafts right now, and all of them are either ideas that I came up with out of the blue, or snippets of conversation I heard that I can see one of my characters saying.
