The Story Faucet

There are hundreds of websites across the internet with great information that can fill any science fiction author with ideas. Seeing technology that is expected in ten years can not only supply ideas for modern science fiction stories but long distant futures and even fantasy stories.
TED.com — This is one of the best sites for [...]

One of the most frustrating feelings for a writer is knowing that you have an idea that you like but can’t find a good way to use it. It could be a character that you love or a technology for a science fiction story that just doesn’t have enough conflict, or a fantasy race that [...]

One of the things that you will find at the beginning of many fantasy novels is a map. This is often used as a sort of enticement for the reader showing him oddly named places that the characters may or may not ever visit, but the truth is that often this map serves as more [...]

One of my favorite stories about ideas comes from Douglas Adams. The original Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy radio drama. He ended one episode with Arthur and Ford thrown into space by the Vorgons with no idea how they were going to survive.
There were no other ships set up, no planet nearby and he didn’t [...]

One of the things that science fiction and fantasy can do better than any form of literature is allegory. It can give us distance from things that are simply to inflammatory or uncomfortable to talk about.  This is often easy to see when you look at finished work, but if you think about it this [...]

Ideas are important, but often the best ideas are almost infinitely variable if you take them at their most basic. Consider the story idea “A young boy is trained to be a soldier by the military. You could make this science fiction, fantasy, horror, suspense, or even romantic comedy if you wanted. Yet this is [...]

Creative Writing Prompts – Primarily for Journals this could be used for science fiction or fantasy with a little extra imagination.
100 Quite Writing Ideas — Writen for teachers who need writing ideas for students there are some reasonable ideas that could work for sciencefiction or fantasy as well.
From Science fact to Science Fiction: Using Scientific [...]

I used to really enjoy the “What if? Comics. The stories where you would find out what would have happened if Mary Jane had been bitten by the radioactive spider rather than Peter Parker. Of course in those books the answer tended to be that either nothing would have changed or the world would have [...]

When we look for ideas one of the things that often gets in the way is the cliche. This can be especially problematic for the writer of speculative fiction where the idea is often the most important part.
The best way to avoid cliches is to be an expert of the genre. The more you have [...]

I am not famous or important as a writer. I make a little but not a lot, but yet I still get this question on occasion and there are numerous articles written by famous people all over the internet with this same question. There have been numerous answers to this question. Harlan Ellison once famously [...]