What inspired your idea?

My current WIPs are inspired by an rp partner I had years ago. They idea the shot at me when I needed something to write and it ended up creating a novel idea and sequels(well not really sequels more like series(?)) that I'd yet to pin down completely until recently. The ideas have gone though many revisions but I'm happy with where they are now.

Prompt tables are my favorite for inspiration. I've done many prompt table challenges on livejournal. Though I haven't finished many of the tables, they're good for flash fiction. Fandom and RP are another source of inspiration. Every now and then I get an idea that I could either use for a fanfic or original story. Plot generators also inspire ideas for me.

My ideas come from everywhere. An interesting conversation, a really striking person, etc.

Sometimes there is no clear inspiration. The idea just pops up and being a pantser by nature, this works for me.

1. Epic Fantasy but using elements and characters from the African Diaspora around the world. Add swords, Kushite pharaohs and armor!

2. Vengeance Is Mine always stuck with me. It's a bible verse that became a story about a murdered girl who won't go quietly into the pastel colored heavenly afterlife.

3. Ghost stories about chanting slaves and big black dogs guarding slave graveyards from my grandmother.

4. Hoodoo tales and Petey Wheatstraw from my mother.

Those are just a few! I think my childhood had a lot to do with how my inspiration works now. My stepfather never said "child, you need Jesus" when I shared an idea or story. He always said, "Well,Kitty,that sounds interesting. That encouragement and acceptance meant a lot. Now my mind goes wherever it wants with no hesitation,lol.

Kitty27 said:

My ideas come from everywhere. An interesting conversation, a really striking person, etc.

Sometimes there is no clear inspiration. The idea just pops up and being a pantser by nature, this works for me.

1. Epic Fantasy but using elements and characters from the African Diaspora around the world. Add swords, Kushite pharaohs and armor!

2. Vengeance Is Mine always stuck with me. It's a bible verse that became a story about a murdered girl who won't go quietly into the pastel colored heavenly afterlife.

3. Ghost stories about chanting slaves and big black dogs guarding slave graveyards from my grandmother.

4. Hoodoo tales and Petey Wheatstraw from my mother.

Those are just a few! I think my childhood had a lot to do with how my inspiration works now. My stepfather never said "child, you need Jesus" when I shared an idea or story. He always said, "Well,Kitty,that sounds interesting. That encouragement and acceptance meant a lot. Now my mind goes wherever it wants with no hesitation,lol.

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I love each and every one of those ideas!

Mostly my ideas come from everyday life. I get obsessed with a word or a quote and then I make up characters or plug them into my WIP. I've had many ideas from dreams too.

It's really interesting to hear how many of you/us have inspiration from dreams. My Mum has a theory that we are connecting to the Universal collective and receiving messages from there. Could it be that we have spirit guides? Or are we all just a bit mad, as someone said above?

Once I read a book that I adored so much, but it wasn't perfect; close, but not perfect. This annoyed me, so I would sit at night thinking up new twists in which that book could have led off to. In the end, I have took all these new crazy plots and twists and incorporated them into a story. Finally I have the power to create an ending that is perfect (To me, anyway). However, the further I delve into this story, it resembles no book I have ever read, so I'm excited on finishing the first draft and really making this novel into something that can stand out on it's own.

the first by a video game. the second by a system of magic i wanted to explore. the current wip (a series) grew from a short story that came to me when my sister described a trial where she was a jury member.

I pubbed the short story in an aussie mag, then liked the characters so i just kept going.

The inspiration for my current WIP came in pieces. One of the elements, two sentient races of robots, I recycled from my Star Trek fan fiction stories. I think I came up with them while watching Independence Day, specifically when the alien ship clears the cloud over New York City. Being 11-years-old at the time, I thought that would be a cool way for an alien ship to travel--in a cloud. I have no idea how robots came out of that, but they somehow did.

Years later, after I had broken away from Star Trek stories and had begun writing my own science fiction Universe, one of my nephews came up with an idea for an ancient race of aliens that he wanted me to include in my Universe, so I did, making them the creators of the aforementioned robots. But then, he made some changes to his aliens, so I just ended up calling the robot creators something else.

Another element in my current WIP, the time travel element, came simply from time travel being one of my favorite science fiction elements--especially when it involves traveling to prehistoric Earth, something that I haven't seen much of and was, admittedly, not in the first draft that I wrote 12 years ago. Since then, I played around with the idea of an alien ship visiting prehistoric Earth--long before Barry Sonnenfeld announced his plans to make a Dinosaurs Vs. Aliens movie.

So, when I went back to re-write my original story I decided to include that into the story, I added a prehistoric Earth segment along with two other time periods for the main Human characters to visit.

Ohhh, nice thread.

1.) The whole what-if game. My WIP is along the lines of, "What if a handful of people had the power to create anything? What would they create? How different would the world be?"

2.) Art. Specifically surreal photography / fantasy art.


3.) History. Or at least the weird things that happened in history. I was reading this piece the other day:

Insane Military Tactics: The Cat Army​

Animals have been used throughout the history of human warfare, usually as things that are as simple to light on fire as humans but much easier to talk into it. But rarely do we see animals being used as elegantly as Cambyses II of Persia used cats. He was fighting the Egyptians in the battle of Pelusium in 525 B.C. and as we all know, the cat held a high place in Egyptian society as sacred creatures and the Achaemenid Empire sought to use this to their advantage in the invasion of Egypt.Cambyses ordered his men to paint felines on their shields, and he brought hundreds of actual cats into his front lines. The plan worked: The Egyptian archers refused to fire on his felines, fearing that they would injure the animals—a crime punishable by death. Instead they retreated, and most were massacred by the pursuing Persians. This ultimately led to the capture of the pharaoh.

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I love finding inspiration and the feeling I have whenever my mind is going a thousand miles per hour with ideas.

My current WIP was inspired when I didn't like where the story I was reading was going and resolved to do better.

I couldn't be a writer if I wasn't massively curious and constantly asking "what if" or "how" or "why" about things I encounter everywhere. Most of my ideas start because something sparks my interest and I try to appropriate the idea--like the caste systems of India, or wondering how someone ended up homeless and what it's like to live without possessions. Songs, music, history, eavesdropping, etc... every kind of experience can spark an idea! And I kinda think that's how most people are, essentially. You get bits and pieces here and there and the there's a moment where you may realize, "hey, a story is there, it all just clicked together and I gotta write this down."

It's actually extremely strange that the last idea I got was inspired by an incredibly vivid dream, especially because trying to make sense of dreams in the morning, you tend to realize just how many plot holes there are in the idea, although now that I've begun working on it, I remember less of the original dream and have appropriated a few other ideas into it's development.

I think for nearly all of it, what it comes down to is curiosity-- You wonder, "hey, how would X turn out," and you innovate. That's how so much of my creative friends are.

Does anyone get inspired by philosophy or thinking up a book title and building the story around it

I was reading a historical novel,about a medieval Welsh king. It mentioned that he had a brother with a club foot. This disqualified the brother from kingship or, it appears, anything else of note, for his entire life. The physical defect turned him into a one-sentence footnote.

Now, knowing the life expectancy of royal claimants, the brother might have been extremely crafty. "Nope, no need to kill me if you want the throne - I'm harmless, see? Bad leg. Just give me a small allowance, and I'll be totally not a danger to you. I'll just be at home not plotting anything if you want me."

However, I started to wonder what it would be like if the handicapped brother were not quite so passive. There started my story.

Just one of those ideas fro a short story. I was standing in a very long parking lot, and the wind was howling along at about thirty miles an hour. coming straight out of the north. A leaf cam skittering straight toward me, but stopped about ten feet away. The wind kept blowing but the leaf stopped. Then the leaf skittered about eight feet to the west. A second later is was again skittering long to the south at a rapid pace.

It was like it saw me, stopped to think about it, and then went wide around me. I'm not even sure how that leaf's change of direction was even possible, but the short story jumped into my head immediately.

The inspirations for my two story ideas are very different.

Untitled Fantasy #1 is inspired by a mish-mash of some of my favorite stories, a dream, and a desire to just write something already.

Vague Untitled Concept #1 came when I was reading a blog and saw a thumbnail pic of the cover of a book. The thumbnail was too small to see what the book was about, but I suddenly got a vivid picture in my head of a girl dressed in the same white dress as the girl on that cover desperately running through a field on a crisp, moonlit night. The image intrigued me so much that I decided I wanted to write about it and find out what was happening and where the girl was going.

I definitely find ideas fascinating! I'm in my final year at university so everyone else is doing an academic dissertation, whereas mine is a creative writing one. I love hearing about people's niche interests and why they've chosen to write on certain topics.

My idea came from a desire to read more of my native folklore and mythology. I wanted to write something that explored elements of magical realism and used surreal and experimental narrative styles. As I kept researching, the plot and characterisation started progressing. I took images, impressions and the spark of ideas and eventually had a solid idea of what I was writing.

I was really gripped by the news story of the recent Korean ferry disaster, and thought the aftermath of a similarly devastating event would make fertile soil for a YA novel.

Every project is different. Some ideas are rooted in a single concept, others come to me in pieces. A dream journal is one of the best resources I've ever had.

I have a recurring dream in which some sort of disaster is headed my way and I need to flee... but then I get all hung up on what to grab on the way out of my apartment and it turns into a nightmare about having to pack my suitcase as fast as possible.

I decided to take my stress about packing in an emergency and use it to fuel my writing!

My current novel was heavily inspired by Mass Effect and also the tv show Chuck.

One of my characters came from watching Scarface for the first time. I'd seen it for years in the Goodwill VHS bin, heard about its legendary status, built it up in my head to be this great big devastating thing.

I watched it and was completely disappointed. Like, for one, no one even mentions his scar after the first scene. Why would you call it Scarface?!? (I know, it's based off an older film.) Mostly, my problem was that it wasn't the movie I'd imagined for the title all that time. I walked away feeling kind of nauseous, like I'd seen a Quentin Tarantino movie without any of the funny parts.

So, I wrote my version. Instead of a drug lord, my Tony Montana is a teen on the moon. I guess he's not a lot like Tony Montana, if we're being honest.

Coincidentally, another character from the same book was inspired by re-watching the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man for the first time since I was a kid and realizing how much I didn't like it. Disappointment is just a mine of inspiration for me, I guess.

J.S.F. said:

With Twisted, I saw a picture of Jenna Talackova, the transgendered woman who was in the Ms. Universe contest. Totally gorgeous. I had no idea that she was a trans-woman until I read more about her. I wondered how a guy would feel if his consciousness was suddenly placed in a woman's body.

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Just want to let you know, "transgendered" is generally considered an offensive term by the transgender community. You are transgender; it's not something that's done to you. It's a common mistake, maybe just avoid it in the future? Also, you don't need to hyphenate "trans woman". Language is really important to the trans community. I'm a trans guy, I just try to correct people when I see incorrect terminology going around.

(Jenna Talackova is gorgeous-- pretty much all the trans women I meet are, tbh.)

The idea for my first book was inspired by a nonfiction article I read in a science fiction anthology back in the 80s about an idea to create artificial soldiers by using cloning technology to grow tissues in a lab and "Frankenstein" them together into a humanoid. They suggested the artificial soldiers could be colored blue in order to differentiate them from real humans. I took that idea and ran with it.

I was thinking about Final Fantasy XV and how it's a bunch of guys going on a road trip. I pondered, "A fantasy road trip? I wish I thought of that..." So I did the next best and creative thing: I stole the idea.

The heroine is inspired in part by a cartoon character I...had a thing for when I was a teenager. (Which I now realize was totally a crush... #^_^#)

I have two pots.

In one pot, I put shiny things. Fragments of scenes. Ideas. Characters. Plots. Words. Situations. Jokes. Stories I wish I had written.

I have absolutely no idea what I am going to do with any of this. But if I come across an idea that intrigues me I put it in the shiny thing pot.

The second pot is full of questions. Why does X and Y happen? What would happen if ...? What sort of person could do A, B and C? How would I get out of situation Z? How come no-one has ever written a story about...?

When I need to write something new, I dip a hand at random (ish) into both pots. I take one or two of my questions and see if I have a few shiny things that might answer it.

My last three books (two published and one WIP) have been based on questions around the nature of heroism and villainy.

Can a villain be a hero?
Can a mousey character become a hero without the normal trappings of prophecies or magical doohickies?
How does a person become a villain?
What would happen if James Bond got it wrong and the megalomaniac actually did manage to take over the world?

My current WIP is based on a character who does not know whether she is good or evil - and we don't know that either. Can there be a story without a villain? Or where everyone or no-one is a villain?

Add a question to a few of the shiny things, mix well, shake ... and see what comes out. And as you write it other ideas come along, other questions, other shiny things.

My first novel (which I'm still writing on) was inspired by my fieldwork in Australia.
My MC in this novel is writing on my second novel, inspired by the Stolen Generation.