"Start with some principles:
- A plot doesn't have to be new. It just has to be new to the reader.
- In fact, it doesn't even have to be new to the reader. It just has to get past him. (It helps if the story's moving fast and there's lots of other interesting stuff going on.)"
Full essay -- with random number generation! -- here.
The assertion
You're going to make a plot out of them. You'll find it's fairly easy to make a silly one, but it's not all that much harder to turn them into a decent one. You've got a lot of potential story to work with.
is -- pitched a bit high. Some of them you would have to mangle pretty thoroughly to get into the same story if you happen to get them together, because they come from different genres, like say, prophecy and high security labs. A lot easier to do a silly genre-mixing story than a serious one. Or, of course, you can transform the genre of the plot device, rather than the story.Still, even if you don't get inspired, the proposed ideas can be a lot of fun to see together.
