inspiration and ideas

Hello and good morning! I'm Jenna Jones and I'm your host for the blog today.

Let's talk about inspiration. Every writer gets asked, "Where do you get your ideas?" at some point. I know that for me the question is hard to answer because there is no one answer. Below is just a partial list of things that have led to stories for me.

• Song lyrics. I've got a vast music collection and enjoy the challenge of taking a song and letting its mood or subject inspire me. There's a meme I like to play of asking my friends list to name 2 to 9 actors, and then I use the next song to come up on shuffle to give me a plot. I've created over half a dozen plots that way that will eventually, knock wood, be screenplays or books.
• Tarot cards. Aside from my three contributions to Torquere's Arcana line, I've also used plotting methods from Tarot For Writers to help me develop plots and characters. Sometimes I start completely from scratch; sometimes I use them to help me give existing ideas shape and structure.
• Prompts. On Livejournal there are many communities where you can request a "bingo" card to give you ideas. Most of these are geared toward fanfic, but there's at least one geared toward original fiction, and you can request a card of all romance prompts or one with romance mixed with other subjects. While I've yet to complete a card (too many ideas, not enough time) my original-fic bingo card inspired an idea that I hope to complete later this year, on a subject that scares me a little to tackle: homelessness. We'll see if I can pull it off.
• Names. I like to go through my name books and write lists of the names I like, and sometimes two names beside each other are enough to make me think, Hm, that looks like a couple. I wonder what their story is...
• Pictures. The idea for The King's Diamond was born from two sources: the traditional meaning of the diamond birthstone, and the final page of my Treasures of Ancient Egypt calendar that hung in my kitchen that year: King Tutankhamen death mask. Ever since I was small I've found the story of King Tut to be very moving and sad, and while I was brainstorming for a plot I thought, What if I had a young king in a similiar situation, only this time he had something to protect himself with? What if that something wasn't an object, but a person? The theory of King Tut's murder has since been disproven, but I'm still pretty happy with the story it inspired.
• Characters. Sometimes characters just sneak in and demand their story be told. Something Beautiful came about because while I was editing Chiaroscuro for submission I realized I wanted to tell Micah's story, and he would need someone for himself: thus Dune (a name I'd had for a character for years with no idea who he was or what story could be told about him) was worked into the plot.

There's really no one way a single story comes together, though with many of mine I can say what the main building point was. My story that comes out tomorrow, Ebony Angel, was born of several things. The names of the main couple, Jude and Austin, I'd had written down for a long time without any idea of who they were or what story they had to tell. I've had a print of an angel with dark wings on a deserted road hanging in my living room for a few years. There's a scene inspired by a dive bar I often drive past; there's another that came from a nightmare I had once. 

(And sometimes you just start writing, and the ideas come because your mind is open to them. That happens, too.)

Writers, where do you get your ideas? Readers, are there ideas you'd like to see developed or want to know more about?