One of the ways that I come up with my ideas for potential stories is through the practice of lucid dreaming. If you’re not familiar with lucid dreaming its basically where you have the conscious awareness that you are in a dream, which allows you to manipulate the dream environment, and also allows you to remember the dream. Many people don’t remember their dreams, but it is possible to. And as a writer, I can tell you its useful for coming away with vivid experiences that can be turned into stories.
My ongoing serial in my newsletter, When Magic Becomes Real, came from a lucid dream. I dreamed about the basic premise of the story and the characters and when I woke up I pulled out a notepad and wrote down the essentials of the story and the characters involved in the story. I didn’t have the full story from the dream, but I had the essential plot, and when I was ready to start writing it I could refer to those notes and create the story.