Where do you get your short story ideas?

Generally, good short stories should portray the most important event/decision/happening in a character's existence. So, take a given character in a given setting and figure out what that moment will be and what will drive them to that point.

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A stray thought that passes through my head. ;o

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I am and have been a part of a various groups that give out weekly prompts, so that's usually what my writings are based off of. Otherwise, I go by songs or just things I've been thinking about a lot

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Keep a note book handy. When inspiration strikes, make a few notes.

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Well, I listen to different songs on youtube that my friends like and then I let them give me ideas. Like my short story: Perfectly Flawed. Came from the song: Perfectly Flawed by Otep

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Inspiration usually just jumps out and kicks me on the head... but most of the time, it leaves me dry for nothing. I'm not the person who gets easily inspired I guess

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Sometimes I look at what's trending if i get stuck. Usually I' get ideas from things people say to me, and they morph into something else.

Though I don't usually write short stories....

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Short Story plot idea sources? I usually get them from my friends' true-to-life experiences, songs and dreams.

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They mostly come in flashes, sometimes sticking long enough for me to write them down, sometimes coming and going so quickly I'm not even sure I had the idea at all

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I often look through writing prompts if I'm struggling to find inspiration, though that doesn't necessarily help all the time. When I fail to find inspiration through writing prompts, I'll look through Desktop Nexus and hope that one of the images on that site will spark an idea for me. Or, I just think up something I would very much like to actually happen that seems almost impossible, and that will turn into an idea bit by bit.

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The voices... they know all..... nah actually anime/manga, i read/watch and then mix their concepts together until a brand new concept is created... its still similar to those that i took but if i pull like 20 animes together to make a concept, its gonna be very different

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Mine usually come from dreams that I've had. I usually wake up from the dreams inspired, and depending on the hour, I either jot out a quick outline, or I write away.

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MUSIC. Just like my story, The Girl with the Red Shoes. I got the idea from Boys like Girls' Someone Like You and Joshua Radin's When you find me.

And from what I see everyday. :)

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Didn't have time to read all posts, so I don't know if someone already put this down.

Your everyday life can seriously spark the start of a story. I prefer to just pick small things from my life, so it doesn't add too many people you know or follow your whole life. Maybe make someone have this incredibly unique feature, something that someone you know might have.

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I don't fall asleep very easily, so I usually end up with an hour or two of laying in bed and thinking. I get a lot of my ideas from that imagination time. I never really have a plot to start with, but I start writing and it eventually falls into place. Usually. Sometimes I get a doozie of a mistake.

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@GValeriu everyday life.

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My short story ideas usually form from novel ideas that just aren't built well enough for me to take to a big scale project. So I write a short story of the idea to satisfy myself.

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I usually go to Tumblr or WeHeartIt and choose a random image that strikes my fancy. I save it and try to think of a story to go along with it. It's a game that I play when I'm bored, so there isn't any pressure of when you have to post it!

@GValeriu

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I try to write a story that will reflect and emotion im feeling. I wont talk about a certain event but have the entire story lead up so the reader feels my exact emotion

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I think that you have to wonder a lot about the world. Ask what if a lot.

I used to want to be deep. Prose poetry like Jeanette Winterson, and I spent years trying to emulate the power of language in something like Sexing the Cherry, before realizing that it was the strength of her ideas that really grabbed me.

So now I write about stuff I find interesting.

For instance, I'm fascinated by religious people. Not religious myself, far from it, but religious people seem so willing to put up with misery on earth in return for a mystical promise of winder later, and I find it genuinely baffling.

I've known a couple of women in my life who used to get beaten up by their husbands, and we tried to help them, repeatedly, kept getting them out, but they kept going back into to these awful relationships, so I wrote about that.

Lately too, I keep hearing a lot about parallel universes, which I think are a wonderful device, looking at the different lives we could have lived. I've written a couple of stories, well one and a half (one almost finished and one that I'm working on) and I'm fascinated by possibilities that the idea presents.

It's a concept that is almost religious in it's total craziness and lack of evidence, and without more evidence I'm not sure that I entirely believe in the idea that there are multiple me's living on a success spectrum ranging from president/rock-star through to tramp/bum, but it's a wonderful philosophical device.

Haven't published those stories on here yet though; need to get round to doing covers...

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@totalwar235 I used to try to do that, but I don't think that I'm a good enough writer to pull it off. It's incredibly difficult I think. Envious of those who can.

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@kodius Writing a novel is very daunting. I wonder where people find all the words. Short stories are wonderful.

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My inspiration comes from my life. Which includes my past, my pets, what I watch, etc..

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I was passing the national theatre here in Prague a while back and they were advertising two plays - Maly Pan Freidman (little mister Freidman) and Hitchcock's Psycho. The names were close together - Maly Pan Freidman, Psycho. I liked the juxtaposition, that this little old man was also perhaps a closet nutter. Thus, Old Mister Bitterman: Criminally Insane was born. Or, I should say conceived. He was born much later. Inspiration can come from anywhere. Learn to recognise it when it does.

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Honestly, I get my ideas from geography and history, or from dreams

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