One of the things people seem to be having troubles with for the crossover contest is coming up with what they want to do, so I am going to cover strategies that will help come up with an idea. The first thing I'm going to say is what doesn't count as a crossover. It doesn't count as a crossover if you're using only one fandom, but mentioning another. For example the characters of one fandom play the Pokemon games, or they don't talk about a certain real person but said person never shows up.

One of the ways to come up with an idea for a crossover is to look through the list of prompts they have. I'm not saying you have to do said prompts, but you can use them for ideas. The first one for example is "Scott and Stiles crash the Yule Ball at Hogwarts." What though do you do if you don't know one of the fandoms? You can change the plot prompt up to be "[character A1] and [character A2] crash the Yule Ball at Hogwarts" where character A1 and character A2 are characters from a fandom you do know. If you don't know either fandom you can do something like this. "[character A1] and [character A2] crash the [event B] at [place B]" where event B is an event that occurs in a fandom of your choice, and place B is the place it occurs.

Another way is to make a list of the fandoms you like to write for. One way to do this is to use a spreadsheet and doing something like this for the top row.

[blank] [Avatar: The Last Airbender] [Harry Potter] [Twilight]

Your first column would look like this.

[blank]
[Avatar: The Last Airbender]
[Harry Potter]
[Twilight]

Put an X in every spot where you have the same fandom. For every cell you fill in a plot idea for a crossover, and copy and paste it into the cell that mirrors it. In other words Paste the [Harry Potter] [Twilight] plot into the [Twilight] [Harry Potter] cell as well. You can find a random number generator if you can't decide on your favorite plot, and use it to pick the cell number plot to write.

Another way is to create an alphabetical list using a numbered list. You can use a random number generator when you're done to pick two fandoms and work from there, or you can generate another list working through doing a plot for every single fandom combination, and skipping the ones you can't think of an idea for.

There are also random crossover generators out there. With those you'll want to keep generating until you end up with a plot you like. Some database sites allow you to click a button that will give you a random show or character. You can also keep hitting said button until you get two characters from different fandoms or two different fandoms you are familiar with and then brainstorm from there.

Moving on from there you'll want to wrie your story. Try being creative with your idea and thinking outside of the box. Think of something you can do under five-thousand words. If you don't feel you can then store the idea for another time. Add depth to your story and watch out for making sure your story is readable. Then think up a catchy title that is not cliché. Title is really important when they have many really good entries and have to narrow it down to the ten in some manner.