Most of the time I start to think of the big events that I want to happen when I get an idea. For instance, in Haunted I always knew there was going to be a party where one of the victims disappeared from, a visit to each of the characters she met in the beginning after that body was found either to see if they were a possible victim or if they were the killer, a scene at the end where the killer kidnapped Raven, a scene where Raven discovers one of the bodies and sees that Cade is already there and so on.

In my mind I have a lot of points like this set up for my idea of the novel. Sometimes I try and write them down so I don't forget them in this little silver notebook I have (though most of it is song lyrics and I originally wrote my ideas in there just in case I died or something so there would be record of how I wanted the story to end). Once I start writing the book, I slowly start to connect the points with lines of smaller plot points, what happens in between the big things. Sometimes they literally come to me as I'm writing a scene or right before I start writing it.

Most plots stem from ideas I get and want to add to a story or from storylines I've always wanted to write. Mary's story in the Hero by Day series was inspired by a former book idea of mine where an innocent character is corrupted into a bad one by someone who claimed to love her when no one else did while her sister (in this case her best friend) got the person she had wanted all along.