Inspiration

[rsriem]

So anyways, I was wondering, since everyone is different one way or another, what your inspiration came from for your current WIP?

For me it came from two different places. The first was when I was writing the bus from school after I had taken my finals (It was the last week before summer), so yeah as I was looking out the window and it got me thinking about how time can slip right through your fingers. Like you can be playing jump rope or reading comic books one moment and the next thing you know it you out of college, married with three kids, etc. (Don't ask me how I got that from riding a bus. It still remains a mystery to me.)

So I put the idea off for a bit, because I had one killer writer's block. Anyways Sophomore year came and went, finals week once more. It was early releases that week and I was at the library. Sitting in a quiet little corner on the second floor over looking the river, Listening to Radiohead "Fake Plastic Trees". To sum it up I was inspired by a radiohead song.

[JoNightshade]

My current WIP was inspired by a fanfic I wrote in high school. It was so far removed from the original source and I loved my plot so much that I stole it from myself.

My last WIP was inspired by a mental image I had of a guy in a dark wool coat sitting on a lounge chair on a cruise ship in the fog. I have NO idea where the image came from but it just sprang into my head one day. I wrote a short story about that man, and then decided that his whole story needed to be told, so I flipped the clock backwards 10 years and wrote his love story.

My first WIP ever came from a misinterpretation of a movie scene. I walked in at the middle of a western my dad was watching and I saw a scene. I completely misinterpreted the scene in a way that I liked, and then discovered I was wrong. So I wrote a short story about that scene, which soon became a novel.

[Vorteil]

The last story I wrote was inspired by 419eater.com and scambaiting in general, even though it didn't have very much to do with it. The idea for the novel I'm planning now came from a long conversation with my sister about titles. She mentioned something, and though I might not even use that title, it gave me a basic plot within seconds. It was quite nice.

[Zoombie]

My insperation was all started by an old computer game called Harbinger.

It was a Diablo clone, but it took place on a GIANT PLANET EATING SPACE SHIP, so that made it okay.

So I stole the setting, put in new characters, stole the giant space lizards from Starflight (Though I didn't take the plant people...I really should have...) and voilia: E.L.F was born!

[WorldPlanter]

Well the world for the story I'm working on at the moment has existed since I was about twelve (I'm 27 now), but the inspiration to actually bring that world to an audience didn't occur until a few years ago when I was hiking at South Mountain in Arizona.

I was about three miles back on the trail in 110+ degree weather amongst cacti, lizards, and snakes. I was literally the only person on the trail that day and allowed myself to fantasize that I was on an epic journey within my world, something I hadn't done in years. Even though I had disciplined myself to resist this particular fantasy it caught my imagination again, this time from a new perspective. I realized at that moment that I could share my world and the characters I knew with other people. I didn't have to keep it all to myself.

It's several years later and I'm still pursuing the dream. I'm under no pressure to get it done since I already have a day job I enjoy. I'm doing it purely for the satisfaction of delivering a unique story to an audience.

[Kudra]

I haven't looked at my WIP in months, so I feel bad for even posting here, but the fiction I was working on was inspired by a spiritual healer I met during one of my travels earlier this year.

I didn't really warm up to her spiritual practices and told her I didn't believe in the stuff she did, and she was totally cool with that. She kept talking about (my) past lives, my future, my issues, and it kinda got me thinking about things I'd never thought about.

Got no spiritual healing (or maybe I did-- who knows), but formed a story in my head that kept wanting to be told.

[zebedee]

I was fed up not seeing the kind of story I wanted to read, so I started writing it myself.

Usually though, I get a spark of an idea for a character and it develops from there.

[scarletpeaches]

I can't really say my WIP was inspired by anything. I wrote the first draft for a bet in a month. Right up until the last minute I had no idea what I would be writing about. It was the easiest thing I've ever written; once I started it just flowed and the most important thing it taught me was I work much better and much faster without an outline. I'm surprised I managed it, but proud, too.

So if there was no real inspiration, I put it down to motivation. What kept me going? Someone had embarrassing information about me and I said, "If I don't email you the first draft in thirty days, email my ex-boyfriend with what you know." ;)

It worked!

[Carrie in PA]

A name. I heard a name and the character popped into my head and the story followed close behind.

Somehow, after the initial inspiration, my MC informed me that she wanted a new name, so my inspiration isn't even part of the equation anymore. Go figure.

[Shane Fitzsimmons]

I wanted to write a science fiction/fantasy novel that had neither high-tech gadgets or magick/mystical creatures. I wanted it to be both foreign and familiar, on Earth but in a world of its own. And I wanted to have a setting that, while somewhat out there, felt like it really could exist. I also wanted to do away with this nonsense idea that science fiction/fantasy requires Elves or Mutants or Robots or Dragons or Aliens, and have it hold only humans.

Then there's my deep fascination with the end of the world.

The two wound up coming together fairly well. But I had quite a few inspirations for the book, some movies, a couple video games, no books though.

[CaroGirl]

My first novel was inspired by a news story. My second was inspired by a non-fiction book about rescued horses. I guess I should keep reading!

[Zoombie]

Oh and I also stole, liberally, from Terminator, Starship Troopers and the Goonies.

[DocBrown]

The inspiration for my story came from a friend of mine. He had more of a concept than an idea that he had gotten from a TV show. He thought the premise was cool, but since he's dyslexic he wanted someone else to write the story and fill in all the details.

He mentioned it to me and it could be summed up in a paragraph, so we started talking about it and expanded the idea. Over the next couple of months we had sat down to talk about the story maybe 5 or 6 times and slowly expanded the culture of the people surrounding the idea. We then wrote down a plot outline that hit the highlights of the story we had created together. The story ran over the course of a hundred years or so and quickly turned into a trilogy.

I have since been creating the universe to connect the dots of the outline. It's come a long way since the "concept" my friend pitched to me and oh does it have so far to go. I'm at 50,000 words now and I think I am about 1/3 of the way through the first book.

[OverTheHills&FarAway]

My muse is Morpheus, the Dream King.

Every one of my stories is inspired by dreams. My current WIP no exception. And it's changed very little from the plot of the original dream I had a year ago, on Sept. 8. Very unusual. I sorta feel like I'm cheating! I just go to sleep and get ready-made ideas delivered in my dreams. And now, every night I've been dreaming different scenarios for the story I'm working on next...pick and choose?

It's about triplets and crimes and talent and jealousy and growing up. And comic books. That part wasn't in the dream, though. An ACTUAL original idea??? Yes, I DO have them!

[PeeDee]

For God in the Machine, the weekly science fiction serial story (http://www.gotm.wordpress.com)the original idea came from me looking at a weird picture of a robot, wearing a robe. And I wondered why the robot would wear a robe.

My mind spins fast. I don't always know where it goes, but I always remember what it comes back with. What it came back with was Loeb waking up on a starship hull, and then it spun away from me again and came back with five years' worth of story.

For my Rome novel, it was a simple "what if" question. Those are your best friend. Mine, anyway.

[preyer]

i just started writing it out and soon enough i said myself, 'aw, crap, it's got vampires in it.' i hate vampires.

[ajkjd01]

I work with cops. I hear them talk about the job all the time. Once in a while I get the opportunity to see the shiny new pennies straight out of the academy, who seem to be on the street to fight for truth and justice and the American way, and within a year or so, they get a little harder, a little more jaded, and more compassionate toward the people they meet. I've found it fascinating to watch. It's the underlying theme of my WIP. I just added werewolves for fun.

[Siddow]

The inspiration for my current WIP came out of pure envy. A friend of mine was starting his second book of the year, while I'd been dicking around with short stories and non-fiction. I didn't want the year to pass with me writing zero novels, while he wrote two.

So I started brainstorming, playing What If and came up with a blurb. I sent it to my friend, asking, "Whadda ya think of this?" and he replied, "If you're not going to write that beautiful hooky bitch, can I have it?"

And I thought, hell no!

[mscelina]

I read too much mythology. That's pretty much the inspiration for anything I write.

[AceTachyon]

Gun-Toting Women, a la Resident Evil, Underworld, and Tomb Raider.

I'm a simple creature...

Oh--and Xena.

[MidnightMuse]

My current WIP is spinning out of a series I created that was popular enough to warrant my wanting to stay in the universe, but expand on it with completely new characters.

That, and I had a dream one night that really flipped me out, and I thought "Dang, there's a whole series in that bugger!"

[Shady Lane]

I was sitting in the car with my Mom, listening to Say Anything, and Spidersong comes on.

"I'm growing legs! I'm the spider, I'm the spider!

And I think

hmmm....I wonder what it would be like to grow extra legs.

Or extra fingers......

Enter Nimble.

[HourglassMemory]

What motivated me to write my first was seeing a friend of mine writing his own story. He had been doing it for a while then and I just thought to myself....."That's right. I could write a story myself also! I'll put in it everything I have always wanted to see in a story."
Then from there I just put what I liked. Stuff like 19th century and science and exciting scenes.

For other stories I usually see something and take it to an extreme level. I put them to a level that strikes me with an emotion.
That, I register in paper later to work on, or incorporate into an already existing story.

[BigRed]

It's funny you should ask this question. Just today I was listening to a client telling me about what he does for a living (I'm a barber by trade, BTW) and I thought "Wow! His job would be an incredible basis for a novel!" (Yeah, with 2 WIP's already, I really need to start a third! :ROFL:) But, I'm really considering it. I get a lot of inspiration from the stories I hear...and man, do I hear stories!

[HopelessDreamer]

My inspiration came from reading an article in my English Comp II book last year. The idea just hit me, I wrote it down, and that was that. If I try to think of something to write about, it usually doesn't work out as well as if I get hit with inspiration.

[Koobie]

Video games. Movies. Books. Anime. Comics. Internet gags. Music. People. Jokes. Whatever. :)

[qdsb]

Inspirations so far:

completed short story--aunt who died several years ago
completed short story--Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants"

novel-length WIP1--distant friends
novel-length WIP2--a spider building its web nightly on my deck
novel-length WIP3--Don Quixote, The Female Quixote, and Evil Editor's (http://www.evileditor.blogspot.com/)announcement that his queues were running low :)

--Precie