While I'm no expert on passwords, I will often pick something (anything) then make it l33t or inverse l33t with numbers and letters and symbols etc.
So for example, "Full of fail" could become "FU|10Ff41|_".
I'll then screw around on http://www.passwordmeter.com/ trying to make it stronger, so I can end up with something like "Fu1|0V f4|1_"
(of became ov due to phonetics)
Although my password will usually be quite a bit longer than that.