story time!

Sometimes when I'm a little stuck for a story idea, I take a book like this, open it to a random page, and attempt to write a little story based on the first thing I see (with varying degrees of success):

A Dictionary of Symbols (Dover Occult): J. E. Cirlot: 9780486425238: Amazon.com: Books

Or you could go to the Wikipedia front page and click the "random article" link and see if anything inspiring comes up.

There's all kinds of writing advice out there from famous writers; I'm a bit partial to this list of writing tips myself (probably more helpful after you know what you're going to write about, admittedly):

Elmore Leonard's ten rules of writing | Detroit Free Press | freep.com

One more bit of writing advice that I would give is that not everything has to be super-original. I read an entertaining story yesterday by Gahan Wilson (best known as a cartoonist who writes fiction occasionally) that was a modernized retelling of Hansel and Gretel. I also recently read a retelling of Snow White I liked called "Red as Blood" by fantasy writer Tanith Lee in which Snow White was a vampire.

I've yet to have much success writing anything like that myself, but putting a little twist on a favorite fairy tale or other type of story could probably be a good writing exercise for some.