I needed an idea for a plot recently, so I pulled one out of something I had developed for a different project, to save me having to brainstorm again. I've got a few of those saved up, which sit alongside abandoned plot fragments which I can fully develop if I need to. How many of you do that?
Plot bits, settings, themes. I throw them all in Google Doc so they don't distract me from my current work.
I have something called "The Filter" and its basically a file of plot ideas, concepts, scenes, etc. I forget why i called it "The Filter". I came up with it in college. I even have a notebook thats my Mini Filter. I look through it when im stuck or want aomething to write. Sometimes if im stuck on a WIP, ill look through the scenes in the Filter to see if any of them would fit.
Since most of my writing is set in the same universe, I have several different files where I keep small bits and pieces. My phone has a file with ideas, scenes, concepts, names, and such. Then I have one on my writing computer. It's all somewhat disorganised. Most of the stuff I still keep in my head and hope to remember.
I have scraps and cross sections of stories I keep in an ideas folder, but most of them are pretty specific to a story concept. I couldn't use many of them elsewhere, but it has happened. I rewrote a conversation into my most recent book that started life as the intro to an entirely different book that was going nowhere. In my job, I come across hundreds of people's names every day, and I keep a list of interesting ones I might want to use later, usually mixed and matched. I have about a third of an outline that started with nothing but the name Ekta Sepulveda (someone's first name and the name of a street somewhere in California that I looked up and is a real surname.) I got stuck on the outline, though, so it remains in the ideas folder.
I do, in a rather haphazard way. Some snippets of ideas are on my computer, others in various notebooks on various shelves, some are in my phone, and others are on Post-It notes in random places. I should probably organize them a bit better The fun/interesting/semi-embarrassing thing is that when I go back through some of them, I often wonder what the hell I was thinking at the time, or how amateur and silly most of them are. But that doesn't mean they're useless, I suppose. Might be able to do something with some of them, some day.
I have a list of ideas for future books, but I don't have time to write them all. So, here and there I sprinkle the stuff into my current wip just to add some texture to the thing/
I don't really mix plots, but I have a "projects folder" I carry pretty much everywhere with loose paper and a stack of story ideas. I'll get to them eventually.
I'm a bit late to the party here, but I always keep text files (openable in Notepad, to save time) full of random things: plot ideas, random lines, metaphors, similes, fun ideas, bits of dialogue etc. Brainstorming still works best, though. A random idea from five years ago might not (and probably won't) work with my current WIP. I try it out, and if it doesn't work, I put it back. No harm done.
