I started to create a design document (Word doc) a while back, based on advice I saw on the internet. It turned out to be a great way to gather and organize my thoughts. I doubt it will still be considered a design document when I'm done with it but it will have served a greater purpose.

I also have a few sketches lying around on my desk and in my car. At some point I should scan those and add them to the doc.

The ideas that always intrigue me the most are the ones I forget the soonest and easiest. I've thought up entire plots with casts of characters built on a solid core premise and then forgotten them all. I didn't write them down. Dreams, well, those vanish as soon as the blood leaves that part of your brain.

The ones I have written down are nigh-hard-coded into my brain now. And the onese I remember the most (surprisingly) are the ones I wrote down in some sort of organized fashion, having already scribbled them down in a completely unorganized fashion on copious volumes of paper. The ones I don't remember from ages back were scribbled down in volumes as well, but weren't set into an organized set of documents.

So basically, ideas come out of chaos and that should be allowed, but the ideas will be literally miscarried if some method isn't employed to harness that chaos. (And sometimes, that's for the best... :P)

Some of my old ideas are stored in an HTML file. I'm now moving to a personal local wiki for brainstorming ideas.

Quote:Original post by Trapper Zoid
Some of my old ideas are stored in an HTML file. I'm now moving to a personal local wiki for brainstorming ideas.

Oh that's a cool idea. [smile]

I have a lot of game ideas just stored as a bunch of text files. I would just randomly type stuff up as soon as I think of something and put it where all my other ideas are, or email it to myself if I'm typing it up somewhere else.

Most of them I did forget or thought it was stupid later on. Out of maybe 20 ideas, there would be one idea that I still like after a few months. However, I always change the idea in some way to make it an even better idea. Over time, I like the idea a lot more than when I've first thought of it. Then, if I like the idea enough to make it more than just a description of an idea, I start sketching pictures of characters, worlds, etc., and write a story for it. Then, start writing algorithms for the implementation of the idea.