[genjipress]

In the golden years of Disney's animation industry, the animators kept a bulletin board out in the hallway between the studios where each animator worked. This board was dubbed "the goodie board". If you came up with a concept, a sketch, a shot, that didn't work for whatever you were doing but which you liked anyway, you could pin it to the goodie board, where others were welcome to take it wholesale or crib from it.

I kept this idea for my own use. If I have an idea in a story I'm working on and it doesn't quite fit, but I like it anyway, I save it to my own goodie board. On rainy days I poke through it, and oftentimes I find something worth reusing in another context.

[belugacat]

In the “Office Ladies” podcast (where actresses from the TV show The Office recount their days working on it), they mention the writers had a similar “candy bag” they’d put ideas in when they couldn’t work them in the episode they were working on, from which to pull down the line.