If you want to write a story, how do you come up with your characters, plot twists, or even just the general basis of the story? Every writer has a different way of coming up with inspiration, which is why, out of general curiousity, I decided to start this thread. So, as the first poster, I guess I should answer this question first:

-Listening to music. If I find a song that could be about multiple things, I listen to it over and over and analyse it, and then come up with the story behind it. Or at least try to.
-Playing on TS2 or TS3. That mostly helps with characters, particularly the traits used in TS3 and suchlike. Sometimes, by leaving characters on freewill, I do find the occasional piece of inspiration to help with the plot, but I usually cave and take freewill off before that happens.
-Reading stories, books and poems by other people. Not to copy their ideas, but sometimes just to try and figure out how on Earth they managed to come up with that particular idea and then maybe trying to come up with an idea the same way, or just getting inspiration from it. If that makes sense.

And you?

Mine:
+ Listening to music. Songs that have meaningful lyrics (usually death metal/power metal/symphonic death metal for me, songs that are about more than love) usually drive me to write.
+ Experiences. Life experiences are really, really important to humans, and even though we may forget something that happened when we were young, it will stay in our subconscious and "speak" to us, somehow, I believe. They help us understand how one may feel, especially a character in a book.
+ Dreams. Dreams are our subconscious speaking to us (now I sound like a psycho babbler) and can give us ideas by idly hinting them to us. Even if you forget a dream, some say that there is proof that we still can somehow unconsciously remember it.
+ Traveling. It allows to see new places, new settings, and overall it inspires us as humans.
+ Emotions (mostly, love). I'll just show this lyrics from "Nothing Ever Dies" by Kamelot from the album "The Black Halo:
Love is the only truth
Pure as the well of youth
Until it breaks your heart.

I mainly get my inspiration from what I see around me. If I'm sitting in a coffee shop and the people at the next table are having an interesting conversation, I might pick up ideas from what they're saying. Other times it's simply life experiences that inspire me, but most often I think of a single line and create a story around it. It could be a piece of dialogue one of my characters is saying or it could be a description of a setting. I'll work on processing that line and giving it as much meaning as possible, and then create a story behind/around it.

well, I get a lot of my inspiration for characters from people around me. I will pull a trait from this person, add in a few traits from them and whammo, you've got yourself a character. My plots come from whatever I may think of. I daydream half the time, so I come up with a lot of plots. They're not all good, but half of them are good. I get a lot of inspiration for books from my dreams also (if I can remember them) I'm actually trying to writ a book about life being a dream :D. I do a lot of surreal books though... *fantasy dork*

A lot of my inspiration comes from..
Listening to music. I can't even write anything anymore without blasting death metal or industrial music.
Reading others' work. It helps me kind of realize what I can do better in my writing, and when reading a really out there story, makes me think outside the box, too.
Just kind of watching the world. Sometimes really simple and random little things give me inspiration to write a whole book.
Anddd... my life experiences. It's so much easier to write a book when you know every detail about what you're describing =)

Umm , for me its my ((Alter ego)) that keeps me Write for the lead , or my family .
But Sometimes its all in my head , and the stories mostly are fantasy or what feels like a hallucination .
Also Music might help ((The few artist i listen to )).
AND I am writing a Fantasy / Comedy novel .
But where i get my Inspiration from Boredom and the Melancholy i Used live in -_-

I truly think that the best way to become a great writer is to nurture a life as an avid reader. I feel like I wouldn't be half the writer that I am if not for a torrid lifelong love affair with the most eloquently polished, thoughtful, stylistically graceful, Proust-esque literature that I can find. Reading teaches me new words to better communicate what I want to communicate, it helps me better recognize the faults in what I've created thus far, and arguably most significantly, helps me recognize and appreciate the successes. I don't get plot ideas from books, but I certainly get technical pointers.

Otherwise, photojournalism really inspires me. It's fun to find a great photo and take a stab at writing the story behind it. Poignant television and films give me great inspiration, as well; they move me to the same poignant affectations to which I want to move my readers. For me, plot is always the problem; I have no trouble weaving pages upon pages of eloquent emotional epiphany, but creating a sequence of events to get the character to the point necessary to induce epiphany is always the problem. I'm not a writer of action, I'm a writer of thought and raw emotion and incredibly literary fiction above all else, which is a turn-off, to most people. I try to tell an emotional progression, not a story, and as such, it's hard for me to get inspired in such a way that lends itself to crafting a good plot. I'm still looking for some way to get there.

^ I completely agree (about the reading part, I've never done photojournalism before)

I find inspiration from what I wish was reality, and bend and twist until it becomes something totally different.
Also, I ask my brother. He is a very good writer, so I'll ask him for a single word-a word I could use to create my plot-and after he says it I come up with variations of different ideas that are related to that word.
Another way of coming up with ideas is listening to music. I don't pull ideas from the music, the music helps me concentrate so I can come up with ideas.
And the last-and most useful way of finding inspiration is by watching my surroundings. I can look at a tree and find so many ways to create a plot around that. Or an island (my favorite), coconut, god, i can even do that with a bar of soap.

It's funny (kinda), I can only remember my worst nightmares. Things I could've never imagined by myself, things that are so unreal that it makes me feel like someone is shoving these dreams into my head.
Most of my dreams are about me or someone close to me being chased or killed. And then there are the other ones, which I don't like to talk about, and never have talked about.

I've never actually based my writing pieces on any of my dreams, I wonder why.

I'm inspired by music and random things I see in everyday life. Nature is a big inspiration, and sunny days just put me in a great mood, so I love the feeling. Usually my best ideas come to me when I'm trying to fall asleep at night, lol.

My best ideas come to me in the shower. But then I forget them because I can't write them down.

I forget a lot of ideas I get too because of similar situations where I can't write them down.

Yeah, I always find awesome ideas at the most horrible times. (To an extent where I cannot write them down)

I've come up with a really good idea in the middle of an unexpected traffic jam before now. I did manage to write it down on a tissue, but some fool threw it away (probably me actually) and I still can't remember it.

God, I actually laughed for the first time today after seeing that!

they just come to me

I think a writer can only explain his surroundings and his life too.A story reflect the glimpse of writer's life and story and observations,I might be wrong but generally i get the same results from the many stories of many writers,even from well known writers.
fence for dogs

It varies, with me. I don't write as much as I used to, and I do feel less creative about it. But then I realized, I do still get ideas to stories wherever I go. I just... don't write the actual stories, I do other things instead. Use them in a fanfic (that I keep to myself, at least for now), use them in TS3, store them somewhere in my head. To an extent, it can change the way I think.

But sometimes, I write. I just started writing again, in my own language, not in English, which I haven't done in a looooong time. The idea for this story? I have no idea how I got it. It must be a combination of things, but I'm pretty sure that it happened in one of those settings: 1. I was sleeping, and woke up with the idea, 2. I was travelling or 3. I was working. For some reason, I seem to get a lot of ideas when I'm working and can't write them down, or when I'm travelling. People is the biggest source of inspiration for me, the wonder of every human life. When I was younger, I loved going to graveyards. I liked making up stories about the people there, and I would notice things my parents didn't. They only minded the graves they were there to see. I was the one to analyze: this person died as a child, this person was rich, this person was probably murdered based on the inscription, and so forth. I still do, sometimes, when I'm at graveyards. But no matter how fascinating dead people can be, people who are actually alive is the biggest source of inspiration.

And, like the rest of you, probably, even if I write about events completely unrelated to things I've experienced, or unrelated to people I know, I still put a part of myself into every story. I think that is why most writers feel vulnerable about other people reading our work. Sometimes I use situations from my own life, random memories. And emotions is a powerful inspiration. Love, loss, grief, anger, all those important feelings we all feel through our lives. It unites humanity, regardless of race, culture, religion, age, gender... and so forth.

And I agree that reading other people's stories is truly inspiring too.

People have already said this, but I am a firm believer in the idea that great writing inspires more great writing. Reading is the best way to nurture one's own ideas. Of course, different novels will inspire different things. If I sit down and start reading a Charles Dickens, for example, I will often look at the way he words things and the way his novels flow. When I first read A Clockwork Orange, on the other hand, I immediately sat down and came up with the most twisted plot I've ever thought about. I suppose I'm often inspired by other people's stories, but I don't actually get many ideas from them. They just motivate me to sit down and write a good chunk of whatever was floating around in my head.
I often look at something and it creates a mood or a feeling in me that sort of begs to be expressed. From there, I sort of get into a theme, then the plot. I don't usually get my ideas for plots from anywhere but my own head. Things just seem to come. I probably subconsciously take ideas from elsewhere but I have no idea where my plots come from most of the time. Characters on the other hand....I almost always have to have a person or a thing that it's based on. I often base my characters somewhat loosely on my friends. Particularly one of them is very interesting. She gets creeped out whenever I say something like that, but she's really fun to base a character sketch on. I also use a lot of drawing and sketching to try and demonstrate what I want things to look like or even feel like. I find that just picking up a pencil and doodling a portrait helps shape some great characters. Also, everybody has already said this, but writing to music is absolutely fantastic. Oh, and i totally do the same thing with the graveyards. hehe.

Ideas just come to my mind while writing. However, weather influences me a lot. If it's sunny, I'm not really all that full of ideas, while in a rainy day, I spend hours writing. I like how I become one of the characters, I just forget that I'm in front of a computer, I don't even see the keyboard and letters anymore, I'm just there, right in there, feeling what the protagonist does, seeing through her eyes, judging the other characters and events from her own point of view, being, altogether, one with her.