Oy, that's a toughy. For starters, I could probably make a career out of daydreaming (oh, wait, I am!) I'm always thinking up stories. Now that I'm into fanfiction, between thinking up original stuff, when in need of something to think of, I turn to fanfic plots.
My "good" ideas, however - and I define good ideas by how much I enjoyed writing the story and how easy it was to plot and write - usually have a source. Hound of Hell You Cry, for example, was inspired by a computer game - Clive Barker's Undying, which is the creepiest Game I've ever played. My current story, Castles in the Sky, was born from a desire to write a slave fic. Most slave fics tend to be slash, and I wanted to do a gen one. But I didn't want to do a typical slave fic. In the end, it became more of a character study than slave story (the healing part is longer than the slave part.)
There also has to be a concept involved. For example, Wrong End of a Leash, my first SGA story, started as a concept - a human made into an alien's pet. The thing is, that story easily could have ended up in the Battle Star Galactica or Andromeda fandom. I needed a sci-fi fandom for the idea, but had only just started watching Atlantis. So I thought "what the heck" and used the idea for an SGA fic. So it's because of a story idea that I'm now a rabid SGA/Joe F fan ;).
A lot of my ideas also come from things I do in my original works, or concepts I can't make or fit into an original work, so use it in fandom instead in order to get the idea to stop bugging me.
So, for me, ideas can come from anywhere at any time (I once got an idea for a scene in an original story just from walking into a hardware store). What it all comes down to is whether or not the idea grabs me and hangs on. I've come up with ideas that I'll toy around with for a while, only to have them drift away when I lose interest (or the idea makes me uncomfortable in some way). Other ideas will have me salivating to write it, but the very next day, the frenzy wears off, taking the desire to write it with it.
Anyways... yeah, that's it in a rather long-winded and large nutshell. Aplogies for the rambling.
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Oy, that's a toughy. For starters, I could probably make a career out of daydreaming (oh, wait, I am!) I'm always thinking up stories. Now that I'm into fanfiction, between thinking up original stuff, when in need of something to think of, I turn to fanfic plots.
My "good" ideas, however - and I define good ideas by how much I enjoyed writing the story and how easy it was to plot and write - usually have a source. Hound of Hell You Cry, for example, was inspired by a computer game - Clive Barker's Undying, which is the creepiest Game I've ever played. My current story, Castles in the Sky, was born from a desire to write a slave fic. Most slave fics tend to be slash, and I wanted to do a gen one. But I didn't want to do a typical slave fic. In the end, it became more of a character study than slave story (the healing part is longer than the slave part.)
There also has to be a concept involved. For example, Wrong End of a Leash, my first SGA story, started as a concept - a human made into an alien's pet. The thing is, that story easily could have ended up in the Battle Star Galactica or Andromeda fandom. I needed a sci-fi fandom for the idea, but had only just started watching Atlantis. So I thought "what the heck" and used the idea for an SGA fic. So it's because of a story idea that I'm now a rabid SGA/Joe F fan ;).
A lot of my ideas also come from things I do in my original works, or concepts I can't make or fit into an original work, so use it in fandom instead in order to get the idea to stop bugging me.
So, for me, ideas can come from anywhere at any time (I once got an idea for a scene in an original story just from walking into a hardware store). What it all comes down to is whether or not the idea grabs me and hangs on. I've come up with ideas that I'll toy around with for a while, only to have them drift away when I lose interest (or the idea makes me uncomfortable in some way). Other ideas will have me salivating to write it, but the very next day, the frenzy wears off, taking the desire to write it with it.
Anyways... yeah, that's it in a rather long-winded and large nutshell. Aplogies for the rambling.