What inspires you?

[Jacob Spire]

Where do you get your ideas for writing, for the characters, the settings, the plots?

Do you get inspired while listening to music, seeing outlandish scenery, drinking one cup of coffee too many?

Just curious.

[Gillhoughly]

A rapidly dwindling bank account.

[justpat]

This came up in a thread earlier, but I'll say it again. For me, the very best place to sit and think quietly with no interruptions is the bathroom. Theres just something about cold porcelain on a bare a*s that really inspires.

[Inky]

This came up in a thread earlier, but I'll say it again. For me, the very best place to sit and think quietly with no interruptions is the bathroom. Theres just something about cold porcelain on a bare a*s that really inspires.
:eek:

[Inky]

Driving, listening to Loreena McKennitt--usually have to pull over & jot down perfect dialogue or idea before it's gone.

Gorgeous, edible men. Fabio Cannavaro (Italian soccer player) just made the cut as the latest character for WIP.

Stranger than fiction and real life 'who are we, why are we here' make for great themes.

And just an over active imagination that believes in UFO, the Fey, parallel universes, magic of stonehenge, crop circles are a sign of ET.....yeah...this is the part where you run screaming.

[Robyn]

think i've answered this before as well... my dreams are HUGE contributing factor to my writing

[Mel]

Characters. They walk up and tap me on the shoulder, or shout at me in my head. Everything comes from my imagination. It's a virtual playground in there, if somewhat over-crowded. No, I don't get ideas in the shower like so many others do, never have so probably never will.

Sometimes something comes to me while writing but more often at night when I'm trying to go to sleep.

[ChaosTitan]

Ideas are inspired by everything and anything. A rude customer. A snip of overheard conversation. A TV commercial. The photo in a magazine ad for sinus medicine. Dreams. Fun quotes.

Life, in general, is fair game.

[deathwizard]

I get most of my inspiration either in the shower or while driving.

[Inky]

Woof, Haggis, Huggis....

[Will Lavender]

I get most of my inspiration either in the shower or while driving.

Me too. In fact, I probably get all my ideas in the shower or while driving.

As for what "inspires" me:

Other writers.

I get so much pleasure out of reading and collecting books that I want to give that to someone else. Hopefully, someone (a bunch of someones, preferably) will read my book with as much joy and awe as I read the books of my favorite authors.

[glassquill]

Random ideas just pop into my head. It can be a piece of music, a picture or even a conversation overhear. Though I wish they'd stop tapping me on the shoulder when I'm driving. It's not as though I can pull over to the side of the road. :tongue

[sunna]

A blank page generally does it for me. I may end up filling it up with total crap, but I always have the urge to fill it with something.

A view of an open landscape often helps me come up with something a little less crap-like. When we've finally saved up enough to build our dream house I'm going to insist on open fields and big bay windows.

[lisamarie]

I'm a house cleaner by day, and you wouldn't believe the people we meet. I keep my notebook with me at all times and write down descriptions of houses, people etc. I also listen to a walkman while I work and if people come into the room while I'm cleaning, I secretly shut it off so I can listen.

[maddythemad]

Random things-- a hideous scarf the woman in front of me in line is wearing, something my friend says at 2AM which she will probably not remember the next morning, a road sign on the highway that's been graffitied... there is no one way that I can be sure to find inspiration. Sometimes I go to my favorite cemetary and I still can't think of anything. You just have to be as open as possible to what's around you, and surprising things might strike you.


... And once you're an adult, Gillhoughly's statement is probably a lot of it... For me, it's a lack of shoes. ;)

[jvc]

I personally love listening to music when I write. For some reason I can't write if there is silence, not sure why. But I have found that different types of music can help me write different types of scenes.

[Danger Jane]

Music, the photos in Vogue, reading amazing books, writing in my diary.


...looking with greatest guilt at my laptop at the end of the couch.

[P.C Greene]

Well, personally, films and other books, i like bunching together loads of things and combining them into one plot, i think its interesting :D

[stormie]

While sitting in church, and if the sermon is long and boring, I'll look at the people, what they're wearing, how they sit, what they look like, and imagine scenes and characters and even a plot. There are no distractions for ten minutes or more.

[Fox The Cave]

I get a lot of ideas while moving, while being physically active. A good run in the morning does wonders for the writing, I can tell you. And, when I don't want to go out the house, I have a ball that I kick against the sofa - dunno why, but that helps like hell. Idea's just flow to me when i'm doing that.

[jvc]

Oh, come to think about it, I go for waks at night and have a lot of ideas when I do. I love waking at night, it's so peaceful and you can get a lot of thinking done without gtting distracted.

[JoNightshade]

I fall in with those "inspiration is everywhere" folks. I very very rarely lift people or places or ideas from real life, but just a conversation about something intellectual, taking it to extremes, can get me started with an idea. An image or something I mistakenly interpret can give me a character or a setting. Example: As a teen I was walking through the living room when my dad was watching some old western. This beautiful young woman was running up to a carriage in happy anticipation. Then the door opens and this middle-aged guy very slowly gets out, leaning on a cane. In a split second my brain was going "Wow, that's kinda sad! I wonder why she's with him, and why she is so happy to see him? I wonder--" and then the hero climbed out after this old guy (the doctor or something) and embraced the girl and I realized it was like every other hero-gets-the-girl story out there. But then my brain kept turning over that misconception, and it turned into my first novel.

The one I'm submitting to agents now was inspired by an image of a man in a heavy wool coat reclining on one of those cruise ship lounge chairs, in the fog. I have no idea where the image came from, but I kept wondering who that guy was and what his story could be. That ended up getting combined with other ideas, but that was the seed that started it.

Unlike many others, I am not inspired by music and I can't have it on when I write because it's too distracting. However music can often put me in just the right mood to write a particular scene, so I might listen to it, turn it off, and then go write.

[Melanie Nilles]

I get most of my inspiration either in the shower or while driving.


Nice to know I'm not alone ;P

[scarletpeaches]

Gorgeous, edible men. Fabio Cannavaro (Italian soccer FOOTBALL, thank you very much. It's not called FIFA for nothing...player) just made the cut as the latest character for WIP.

Oh ding dong! Funnily enough, thinking of him actually distracts me, but each to their own.

I'll maybe put Francesco Totti in my next WIP if he promises not to put me off my writing.

[Jordygirl]

Different little things in my life. The inspiration for WOS was from how different me and my sister are. The inspiration for my current WIP was from the Sugarland song County Line.

[Carrie in PA]

Ideas are inspired by everything and anything. A rude customer. A snip of overheard conversation. A TV commercial. The photo in a magazine ad for sinus medicine. Dreams. Fun quotes.

Life, in general, is fair game.


^ Ditto.

Inspiration is all around, and I never know where it's coming from.

[justpat]

I get most of my inspiration either in the shower or while driving.
These are mutually exclusive, right?

[alaskamatt17]

I base a lot of my writing off of dreams I had when I was a kid.

Another great source of inspiration is scientific journals. Finding out about a developing technology always makes me wonder what the world's gonna be like in a few years.

Watching movies. Anything where somebody willingly gives up their life for an idea sets my mind in motion.

[BarbJ]

Boredom. When I'm bored, I start day-dreaming, jumping about in my head from thought to thought until something catches and lingers. Few day-dreams translate well onto paper (especially since I don't write erotica), but the idea can kick-start the process.

[licity-lieu]

My train journey to work everyday inspires me. Also, the book I'm reading at the mo is giving me the ideas I need to kick start things a bit--"White Teeth" by Zadie Smith.

[IrishScribbler]

Lots of different things inspire me. Sometimes it's watching someone in public (at a park, in a library, at the mall), sometimes it's something I read, or see on television or the Internet. I even wrote a short exercise piece on an outfit I saw in a shop window.

[Writer14]

My ideas come from personal experiences, music, my friends & family, and just little things that happen. Dreams, too. It helps with just the whole thinking process, i guess =]

Understanding people's feelings and their position in life helps me get into the heads of my characters as well. And knowing how people feel and coming up with ways to aid them always gets ideas flowing in my head.

But thats just me ^^;

[Southern_girl29]

I'm inspired by a lot of things. When I write short stories, I tend to write Southern fiction, and I take a lot of the characters from people I have known. In fact, one of the characters in my first novel is a conglomeration of nice Southern men I've known over my life. He is probably one of my favorite characters ever.

Ideas just pop in my head, so I can't say how I really get my ideas for longer works.

[JJ Cooper]

This came up in a thread earlier, but I'll say it again. For me, the very best place to sit and think quietly with no interruptions is the bathroom. Theres just something about cold porcelain on a bare a*s that really inspires.


Men have been doing this for generations with newspaper in hand. It's not inspiring, rather escaping.

JJ