coming up with a story idea

Book ideas.

How to get your creativity flowing.

Use your imagination to form ideas for great stories.  Keep a dream journal.  Your dreams are your imagination hard at work and you never know when something from your nocturnal world will bring forth an amazing idea for a story.  This is where you can take a normal, recently widowed woman and have her try to drown herself only to find an impossible alternate world as in the wonderful story, "Sea Changes" by Gail Graham.  Some of the best authors use their imaginations to write amazing stories like J.K Rowling and her "Harry Potter" series or Collins and "The hunger games." 

Use reality as your muse for a wonderful story.  Use ideas from your own life or watch the news. scan the net, or read the paper for great story ideas.  Watch the people around you. listen to the "old timer's" stories (which can be terrific stories) they have so much to say and have seen a lot more.  Some of J.K Rowling's writing is from reality as well.  Look at her "Harry Potter" series for instance, Rowling was a teacher, so she added a school and therefore already new a bit about schools, how they're run as well as a teachers roll in the educational system then she put a huge spin on it.  All you need is a small spark to ignite an entire idea.

Although you may NEVER use exact text from other people, you may still come up with a great idea from something you've read.  I have received inspiration from novels.  Some writers will even mention other authors characters in their own stories.  Of course, you should ALWAYS receive permission prior to doing this.

I've even picked up ideas from the Thesaurus.  Yes, you can come up with great ideas from a mere word.  Those words have complete definitions behind them and those definitions can go a long way toward helping a writer.  After all, great writing first starts with words.  You can't have a story without them.