Coming Up With Ideas

[Unearthlybrutal]

Good books are always good ... and some songs are also great inspiration to me too.
I use my imagination the most.

[palistov]

Step-by-step process of how I get a idea...

1) I take 20 ideas from other people and mash them together into one.

2) While in the process of mashing the ideas together, my mind wanders adding an additional 40 while forgetting half of my original 20.

3) Of the additional 40 and 10 I kept together. Only 10 are useable after a long thought proccess.

4) Thinking of how to use them, I forgot 50% of the previous 10 ideas.

5) Trying to remember the ones I forgot makes my head swirl. Losing a additional 50% of the current ideas.

6) Telling myself it was a stupid idea after another long thought process, I remember faintly the original idea I had at the start and go with it. Deciding later that it was also a flawed idea somewhere in the middle of production.

TLDR Make some idea soup!

[BlueFury]

What i do is watch Cry or Morfar get scared in games and take those elements out of it, but i cancelled my custom story.

[JenniferOrange]

In my opinion the easiest way to come up with ideas is to work backwards. Think of how you want it to end, then create events that will lead up to the finale. (Ex: Ends with a wall exploding and the Player finds a hidden, ancient room. Let's say, before that he created an explosive, and before that he found the secret laboratory, and before that he discovered an abandoned castle.)
I also like to just Wikipedia certain centuries, like the 14th, and read about events that happened. They both help.

[failedALIAS]

Well many people don't encounter many serious problems with story, at least in their eyes. Anybody can come up with a cheap "Amnesia/Sinister Story" cause those same people have all the skills required to make a custom story (the bare minimums). Because they're stupid (at least most) they are vastly unaware at their own shitty imagination. We see the results of this everyday -- from cheap scares to bland stories. This is also probably why stand alone writers aren't taken very seriously; others aren't aware of their own idiocy, or the writer is the creatively insufferable individual. For me personally, I'm quite good at summoning up good narrative -- though usually just for custom stories. Since I have the simple but difficult Hyperactive Attentional Disorder anything like novels or even short stories are impossible for me. The interaction of games allows for more breathing room, coupled with the intuitive freedom for creation. The way I find it easier to create a story and events is to create a scenario in my head (which I do quite easily), in which I am the monster, or the stopping force towards the protagonists efforts. This brings randomitity (it's a word now), a very fundamental characteristic highlighting fear.
But what do I know? I'm just an asshole.

[Kreekakon]

I watch movies, read books, play video games, and I draw inspiration from them. Then I mesh it into my own unique idea.

In my belief, good creativity is merely "extended thought/inspiration"

[Traggey]

I'm just awesome, outside of the box thinking and a creative mind. BAM, gold.

-Traggey slowly walks off rubbing himself-

[Juby]

Inspiration is not a problem for me, it's motivation.

My inspiration either comes from my short stories, dreams, observations, or experiences.

[Prelauncher]

I usually draw inspiration from horror movies. I'm a hard person to frighten so I ask myself: "What would scare me?" and then I work on somethin from there.

[WALP]

take a walk(or bicycle) for 1-3 hours, gets the head thinking.