"Where do you get your ideas? (non serious thread)”

Same socks day and night for two weeks.

Breathing through them gives some ideas.

 

I had a private student (I teach Latin) september last. As a first lesson, I decided to do something different, and I came up with an introduction of my own (for the first four or five lessons, actually). In the very first, I presented some Roman authors. As I made the list, I realized that I'd like to study their biographies. Then I started. As I was studying these Roman authors' biographies, I thought with myself that I'd like to review the list of emperors, in order to get a notion of the chronology (of the imperial days, at least), so I started to study the emperors. Paralel to this, I decided also to study the Roman provinces, one by one, in order to get to know them properly. This came to give me the idea of making a diary of my studies (I make diaries for every little thing in my life...). I named the diary Travels around the Empire. Naturally, I though "well, instead of having myself travelling around the empire, I'll put characters doing so..." And that's how my current project came to be.

I love creating characters, giving names to imaginary people. Then, I began creating a few for this project.

 

I use letters from car number plates and create sentences from them. The traffic writes novels I just reproduce them for others to read.

 

Every week or so, an old man comes into town. Nobody really knows who he is or where he came from, but according to urban legend, if you bring him a sandwich and buy him a beer, he'll tell you the secrets of the universe. Well, I've been buying him beer and sandwiches for years, and all I've got to show for it is a bottomless pit of ideas.
The legend didn't specify if it was THIS universe, did it?

 

Many of my ideas in science fiction come from technology I see at work, and most specifically their limitations. I try to come up with ways to solve these, and expand upon their ability to change processes in the future.

For poetry, most my ideas are reflections of dark areas of life and society. I find myself attaching to evil characters, or at least the more unsavory aspects of the world.

Never from dreams.

Most ideas overall come from characters I would like to see. I design a character, and build many intricacies into their lives. During these builds, settings appear and plot develops out of struggles while creating their histories. I attach myself to new characters, and in turn they return stories.

Just my take on things pertaining to the thread.

 

I suspect two violations of this first rule... @meisenimverbis and @EFMingo... Are you sure your stories are not true?

My current version:

I bought Narratikita Biocutter Law & Lawn Mover 3 years ago. It was expensive but worth every slave I had to pay.

Every time I cut lawn, lawyers or snow with it, it leaves ideas in the ground, written in neat, well cut pieces to the ground.

 

(Oh... Now that I see this with greater attention I see I did violate the rules...) Sorry...

 

One day, while walking on the sidewalk, a Delorean suddenly materialized from thin air. Some really handsome guy that looked exactly like me stepped out, and handed me a book labeled, 'your ideas 10 years later'.

I was pretty grateful, and have begun working off the only idea that was on that list.

Good times.

 

Once upon a time, there was a house infested with spiders. Horrible creatures, they don't deserve to exist, but as I sprayed them down with poison, I watched their bodies disintegrate and reintegrate into a long sheet of dark paper with dark writing, covered in words. I'm still translating, but there are many ideas. Dark ink on dark paper is hard to read

 

There are hidden messages in nonverbal expressions of Ramones.

If you can read them, you can get free ideas.

This is about... Not gonna tell! See it yourself if you can!



And my current work is from this! Nonverbalics tells it all!

 

Would that make your ideas "AssAssIn"s, or would they be the even more complex "PolyAssIn"s?

 

Asseptual. Assasymetrical. Assynonomous. Assomogeneous. Asspheric. HomoAssinuous. HeteroAsstification. Asstoundonishment. It's DisAssterrificated!

 

It's rather AssAsstonishing that with all the words you AssAssembled you were able to only come up with single AssAsstonding words, may I AssAss-U-Me that you wish to be the king of the single malt AssAssinine words where I'm to handle the blended AssAssignments?

 

If I need a sad idea, I take a white sheet of paper. Then comes the tricky part: I need to get some of my tears onto the sheet. Onion-tears won‘t work, but tears because of a sad movie, book or some music are perfectly fine. When the tears have dried, the ideas are clearly readable. I don‘t use this method often, because I hate it when my eyes get all swollen and red, especially when the ideas are more complex and therfore longer. And I still have to try if it also works with tears of laughter for funny stories.

 

Do tears of joy work for happy stories?

 

Spoiler

 

In Finland we sometimes cool ourselves between sauna sessions by rolling in snow. (Usually at winter time, very rarely at summer time.)

Rolling in snow leaves marks in the snow. We can read them.

Our friends don't let us back to sauna before we have read something creative from snow.

Those who stay alive, are very creative. They can read messages from snow no matter are there any or not.

 

I hope so.

 

On ATM machines when withdrawing cash, usually US Bank, I click on the gear symbol. On the drop down menu, I select from the ideas page. This helps most times.

Or at most stores, instead of cash back, I get a few ideas since I’m there. Today I got ideas where I show receipt exiting Wal-Mart.

Give it a try.

 

There is a cursed book you can buy at any bookstore. I bought it to give to my brother. It is supposed to belittle the reader at any opportunity, Tom Riddle's diary style, but mine is broken. Instead, it lists out its thought process for making insults. Take the first letter of each paragraph and run it through a Rot 13 decoder, and it tells you ideas.

 

Blackcurrants are ripening. That is a good thing.

We have few bushes of Nordic Saga's and two Storytell Omnipotent's.

Make juice and drink. Freeze and eat in winter time. Eat straight from the bush... No matter. Those berries help you invent stories.

 

Possibly the United Nations would make an air-drop? And interpretation of your predicament is on-going. Good luck my frozen berry.

 

Play Black Sabbath backwards

 

Spiders in the nearby bridge threaten me, but tell me stories too... I call the bridge Spider Bridge, which in the local Elvish is Rakklâr Ravu, or Rakklâr Vu. (Some call it Rakkle Ravu/Vu, with spider in the singular form.)

 

Aside from my aforementioned method of getting ideas I have a secondary (and less comfortable) method of gaining ideas. You see, here in Florida, USA we have a variety of mosquitos and some of them along with causing itching, inject ideas that can reach the brain and cross the blood-brain barrier. These ideas, if left unused, can fester providing a feeding ground for parasites that will snack on the neurons within the brain making you 'not home' upstairs. To top it off I believe that someone has slipped me something causing my muscle weakness because he knew that I would end up in a place like I'm in and he was hoping that I would be mistaken for a victim of those mosquitos in the deal. Little did he know but I have already become immune to the parasites (empty head already) and I could use the situation to turn some of those ideas into stories. Who knows, he may have really screwed up and forced me to become famous.