Ok, Got a really super easy, but effective Tutorial.
[
www.photoshopcafe.com]
Making lighting.
Normally I'd draw my own lighting strikes, especially if I was having a character cast a spell or something.
But this is more, or at least in my opinion, for some background use.
This tutorial is super simple, super easy, and gives an element that can be copied, pasted, cropped, transformed, just about anything to get the effect you need.
As an example, I had to draw this Pikachu for an ATC today and needed a really simple background. I started with a blue bar, a stretched white circle gradient to add depth, and then I took the lighting, silhouetted it and added it around the blue bar for added effect.

The actual lighting took me no time at all to actually make. Photoshop took longer to open than it took to make to be honest.
Some tweaking will be required to get the final effect you'll actually want, but it will be all worth it.