How To Come Up With New Ideas

So when you start writing books how do you come up with story lines? Well for me hubby helped me with the first one and then I decided to write a second book in the series with Sam.

Once I started thinking about what I could write about I actually found it quite easy to come up with more stories. I would be writing away on my Sam story and then an idea would pop in my head so on the list it went.

I pop all my ideas in a notebook and sometimes I will add some detail to the idea if I find I want to include something in the story. Also I just add any idea that I get, I don't edit them. Some of the ideas wont work out as a book but I will take a look when I'm ready to write a new story.

So where do the ideas come from? Well for me I just started thinking about anything that interested me and whether it would be a good story for a child. I also thought about nature, went online in book stores to look at other children's books. Could I get an idea from someone else's story, did I have something more to say. Or did I want to take the idea and say it in another way, give my view point on the idea.

Could I come up with a story about Charlie our cat?

This is how I come up with other ideas. So how do you come up with your ideas for other books?

Once I'm ready to write a  new story I will then be asking my self questions about the idea that I have to come up with the story.