How Writers Find Inspiration, Plots and ideas
I’m been thinking about dreams. Yes, the kind when you are asleep. Dreams are one of the places where your subconscious can have full reign to wander the landscape of your mind. I’m often asked where I get inspiration, plots and ideas. I can only answer that writers dream when they are awake. Everyday life events often form the foundation of a story. Then these ideas need to explain how what we see becomes the plot. A little girl with pigtails waiting with her father may become a character in a book (Katrina: Too Far From Home). A southwestern desert may become the setting for another book. This setting inspired a novel about two young teachers who fall in love while teaching at a boarding school (Runaway Hearts).
As I drive my granddaughters to ballet class, we pass a cozy house where an older woman is sweeping her porch and I wonder if she has a granddaughter. If so, where is she and what does she do? Perhaps they even share the house. (Made for Each Other).
A trip to a garden center to buy spring flowers to plant may take a twisted path to the rich soil of Georgia and the alligator swamps, the result can be closer to a nightmare (The Flower Girl).
From this article excerpt we learn that C.S. Lewis had this inspiration when
“a little girl visiting Lewis’s home asked him if there was anything behind the wardrobe he still kept there. Perhaps there was, Lewis thought. What if other worlds really did exist and you could get to them by stepping into a wardrobe? Lewis let his imagination soar. ”
tp://www1.cbn.com/inspirationalteaching/inspiration-imagination-and-adventure
I think writers have that kind of “what if” imagination. It’s probably what makes us daydreamers at school and people watchers at the mall. We get ideas from life and turn them into cohesive dreams.
How writers find plot 
Inspiration and ideas 
Authors get ideas
Have you ever witnessed a scene that sparked your imagination? Perhaps you saw a family at a restaurant or an elderly woman at the mall. Or, maybe you saw a cozy house and wondered about the family inside. Did your speculation allow you to spin a story? If so, you know one common way authors get ideas.
Do you have a story to tell?