What are your story seeds?

[Jackarandajam]

I've had several conversations today that have led me to this question:
What was the initial spark of inspiration for a story you've finished, and what did the initial, rudimentary development process look like?

I tend to hit the ground running on stories inspired by a flash vision of a character in a difficult situation, and that particular scene usually comes off pretty well, but building a 3 act structure and 50k+ more words around that hasn't been particularly successful.
Id love to hear some firsthand experiences of the spark of inspiration resulting in a completed work. If nothing else, I think the recollections would be super motivating for those of us hitherto unpublished.

 

[skip.knox]

Different things, but they fall into two categories. In one, I have something specific I wanted to try to do. For example, I wanted to re-tell the historical even of the defeat of Emperor Valens at the hands of the Goths, and the near fall of Constantinople, but with fantasy elements. In order to turn that into a story, I had to have characters. Since this would involve Roman legions and such, I figured I needed a general. Just to spin things, I decided my general would be someone who didn't actually want to be a general. From there it was a short jump to use Alcibiades as a kind of starting point, and I went from there.

In another case, I decided I wanted to re-tell A Journey to the Center of the Earth, but with fantasy elements. And no Pat Boone.

In the other category, it really is a spark out of the blue. I was walking my dog. Had a stray thought that entailed human bodies being grown out of the ground like plants. In another, I had this phrase: a child of great promise. That became the title of the book. The writing became working out what sort of child and what sort of promise.

I don't really get the image you speak of, and I've heard others say things along the same lines. I don't think cinematically very well.

For me, more generally, it's not much about inspiration and more about the logistics of storytelling. How can I create interesting characters doing interesting things, and have it all come out in a story that has good pacing and a satisfying conclusion.

 

[Finchbearer]

I think I answered a question similar to this elsewhere recently. Essentially most of my drive comes from my love of reading, much inspiration comes from non-fantasy fiction, or non-fiction history or other. Otherwise like skip, although I’m not a professional historian, I’m a ‘fan’ and I just want to immerse myself in a certain time period, or a time period that inspires my fantasy storytelling. All of my stories are character driven, so I want to go on this journey with someone who does crazy and interesting things.

 

[Jackarandajam]

In the other category, it really is a spark out of the blue. I was walking my dog. Had a stray thought that entailed human bodies being grown out of the ground like plants. In another, I had this phrase: a child of great promise. That became the title of the book. The writing became working out what sort of child and what sort of promise.

The difference between this and what I usually experience is, as far as development goes, negligible. rather than your stray thought about human gardens, mine is a stray thought about, say, a god sitting at a campfire in a prison farm where his memory is being magically suppressed. The image may be more specific, but there's just as much work to do as in your example.
So you just keep mulling it over, start developing an outline?
Do you find attaching an overarching motivation to the initial random thought difficult?

 

[ThinkerX]

Hmm...

With 'Empire: Country' the initial spark was a short 'Warhammer Fantasy Role Playing' adventure where a group of travelers sought shelter from a storm under a spreading tree only to find a massacre. Unlike normal adventurers, these folks were underlings of a wealthy merchant scouting for potential profit. Likewise, the location was close to civilization, not out in the wilderness. That concept intrigued me.

At the time, I'd written parts of other tales set in that world, but those were wartime tales at the edge of the empire. I decided it would be interesting to write a novella set in the imperial heartland and went with that concept as a starting point. Like that WFRP adventure, my characters were working for a powerful merchant. They needed a leader, and that leader needed a compelling reason to enter a backwater barony - enter Tia Samos, a wealthy merchant's daughter, seeking a husband of noble rank. She needed protection - hence Sir Peter Cortez, a bitter warrior tired of shedding blood on distant battlefields. Being wealthy, and soon to be a member of the aristocracy, Tia needed a maid - Rebecca, a gypsy minstrel and female confidant. Being wealthy, Tia also traveled in style, meaning she had a carriage, driven by Kyle of Bestia, a peasant drafted into the army and trained in the rudiments of magic.

Getting the characters properly developed took multiple drafts.

The inspiration for 'Empire: Capital' was Crawford's 'Sure Death of Mouse,' a tale that featured a huge assortment of roguish characters in a decadent palace and city.

Books 3 and 4, 'Estate' and 'Metropolis' respectively were inspired by a high-stakes WFRP adventure - one that seemed simple enough on the surface, but with catastrophic consequences for failure.

 

[Jackarandajam]

They needed a leader, and that leader needed a compelling reason to enter a backwater barony - enter Tia Samos, a wealthy merchant's daughter, seeking a husband of noble rank. She needed protection - hence Sir Peter Cortez, a bitter warrior tired of shedding blood on distant battlefields. Being wealthy, and soon to be a member of the aristocracy, Tia needed a maid - Rebecca, a gypsy minstrel and female confidant. Being wealthy, Tia also traveled in style, meaning she had a carriage, driven by Kyle of Bestia, a peasant drafted into the army and trained in the rudiments of magic.

I'm experimenting with a type of this sort of waterfall method. Taking my typical initial flash thought and using a diagnostic process to figure out where in the 3act it belongs, based on who the person is and what they're doing, and then expanding it from there. It's weird but I'm excited to try it out.

a group of travelers sought shelter from a storm under a spreading tree only to find a massacre.

just curious, how did this motivate a group out searching for profit to, I assume, start investigating the massacre? This is the same kind of eye-catching scene that I get fixated on, and I can imagine wanting the group to get invested but not being able to figure out how to make that happen.

 

[ThinkerX]

I'm experimenting with a type of this sort of waterfall method. Taking my typical initial flash thought and using a diagnostic process to figure out where in the 3act it belongs, based on who the person is and what they're doing, and then expanding it from there. It's weird but I'm excited to try it out.


just curious, how did this motivate a group out searching for profit to, I assume, start investigating the massacre? This is the same kind of eye-catching scene that I get fixated on, and I can imagine wanting the group to get invested but not being able to figure out how to make that happen.

I'd suggest reading the story.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CVZ2C6MV

But if you don't have the time or inclination for that -

Tia has two goals - the first is hunting for business opportunities in a post-war empire that is coming apart at the seams. The second is finding a nobleman willing to marry a wealthy commoner. Enter Baron Ian Cortez, overlord of Cosslet Barony (and Peter's estranged half-brother.) He finds the group immediately after the massacre and puts Peter in charge of the monster hunt while taking Tia back to the castle. From there...well, Tia is independent and irritated, Peter's monster hunt fails but he makes a valuable discovery, Kyle goes on a bicycle ride, things look up...and then get really, really bad.

Tia is intrigued by the baron but unimpressed with his domain (the primary economic activity is growing cabbages with a sideline in wool and wood).

Peter hopes to use Tia to gain a position as Sherrif of Cosslet - despite being only sort of welcome in the barony.

Kyle has what we would call PTSD. He's looking for a quiet place away from the world, and figures Cosslet might be it. (He's also self-medicating with booze, which doesn't help his situation.)

Rebecca sees Tia as her meal ticket - but her past intervenes dramatically.

 

[inverty]

I watch a lot of anime and I also like to blend contradictory themes into characters and plot. I see something generic and just try to think how I can flip it in a way that has never been or rarely been done and I put many of those concepts together into something that makes sense to me.

 

[Not_Alice]

I get those flash visions, too, those perfect scenes you just HAVE to turn into a story... usually, they don't quite turn out the way I originally imagined them. I remember, I had a scene in my head once which I knew would be rather late in the actual book, and when I eventually got there, I realized that the character I had envisioned holding that particular conversation was on the other side of town, and unavailable, because at that point I had blown up parts of said town and she was a healer and really, really needed... well, someone else stepped in and it worked even better. Such fun moments aside, I get my sparks pretty much everywhere. Walking the dog. Reading. History. Song lyrics. Random conversations.
I suppose the weirdest thing in terms of how a tiny spark turned into a completed work was when I actually read one of the newsletters I subscribed for during the beginning of this whole writing adventure. There was some lit mag looking for stories, they wanted, rather specifically, an MC named Alice whose life changes when she meets a white rabbit. I read that, and suddenly the story was there. By the time I had it finished, and wanted to submit it, I realized that the deadline given in the newsletter had been wrong. So there I was with a 4k short story I was rather proud of, and no place to send it to, but I had this vague idea who, what, this girl should be and where she should go after the end of that story... next thing I knew, I was writing on, those 4k turned into the first part of an 80k book, and I'm currently editing the seventh installment of the series.

 

[Penpilot]

So I love the story of the Last Unicorn. I've always wanted to write something with a similar tone. When I was trying to choose what to write next, this was one of the things came to mind. One of the appeals to me at the time was I figured it'd be a shorter novel and something more straightforward. The novel I wrote before was a long, tangled mess, so I wanted something less tangled.

Let me start by saying every novel I've written, the development and writing of has been different. There are commonalities in the process, but for reasons, I'll approach things slightly different.

With that said, I usually start by brainstorming characters, plot, and world. For this book, I think I spent about a month just playing around with ideas. Eventually, one thing took root, the MC and their wants and desires. Then, that led to the plot taking root, and then the world, and I started to fill things out from there. I did an outline using three-act structure. I'd planned for the story to be around 50k words. I thought it'd be a relatively quick write, because the basic idea was simple, a girl searching for her family.

It all started off as planned. Before I used to just peek at my simple outline, and then based on that, I'd jump in and just push out the scene. My attitude was if I ran into issues, I'd fix it on the edit. I'm no stranger to throwing out half a book because I'd messed something up.

But after the first couple of scenes for this book, I started to be more methodical. I'd block things out more, and I started to do a more in-depth outline to the scene before I started writing. Any time I ran into trouble, I'd stop and figure things out before proceeding. One time I stalled for about a week or so while I figured something out where as before I'd simply push through. The deeper I got into the story, the longer the in-depth outlines to each scene became and the longer and longer each scene became. The single scenes were no longer single scenes. My usual scenes are around 2.5k. These scenes were 10k+. So what started off as a 50k story is now just shy of 200k. Best laid plans.

But this new way of doing things, for me, resulted in a way cleaner first draft. Editing is never easy, but this time around, it seemed simpler, so this new process is something I plan on carrying forward for my next novel. Well... until I change my mind and decide to do it a different way.

 

[Prince of Spires]

The main lesson I learned which has led me to finaly finish novels I started is that the initial spark of inspiration, and knowing a few scenes of your novel, isn't enough to get to the end. You need a lot of scenes in a novel, a lot of ideas and bits of inspiration. Whenever I used to start a story based on a single point of inspiration I would come to a point where I had no idea where to go next. My mind would end up blank and I'd be thinking "now what?"

For the first novel I finished I started with the spark of "if an emperor is always masked when he appears in public, how can you then be sure who the emperor actually is? And what happens if the emperor doesn't exist anymore but is replaced by a series of random servants?" I got the idea reading about a (made up) culture where the royal family was always masked (surprise surprise).

That idea gave me 2 scenes to start the story with:
- protagonist gets recruited to stand in for the emperor for some made up reason
- protagonist pretends to be the emperor when a group of foreign leaders visits

I wrote them, and connected the scenes, and learned a bunch about my characters. However, when I'd finished the second scene, I had no idea what to write next.

So I sat down and thought about what story I wanted to tell. I wrote up a basic idea of my plot, and which steps I needed to get there. From there I made a list of chapters with a one or two sentence description about what's going on in that chapter.

With this outline in hand, I found that I could easily keep writing.

 

[pmmg]

I think this is one of those questions where I could not ever quite give the sum total of the why.

I like challenges, and most stories I wrote to completion was in response to a challenge, or commentary that such would be difficult to pull off. But most of those stories don't hold a dear place in my heart.

The stories I put most of my effort in are usually something in response to things I see in the world or culture around me. Generally, if the zeitgeist of current thought is one where complacently, or absurdness, has set in, and I find it is still an open question, I'm probably gonna pick on it. Sometimes that is in story form. I tend question a lot, and don't settle for the for answers that have no depth. And if something is being taken as "True', I tend to ask is it really true? And if its not, I don't have a lot of patience for it.

So much of what motivates me, tends to be counter to current trendy attitudes, and is either directly challenging it, or making them earn it.

Sadly, writing for me is a slow process, so by the time I get it written, stuff has changed and the stuff I was writing about already moved to the back burner....But I also love the characters, and the world, and their challenge. I still want to say stuff, but I also want to see my characters through and get their tale told. So...the initial spark has faded into a labor of love. I am more good with that, than the spark.

I don't know if someone reading my tale would be able to pick up the many themes in it, but I would pleased if someday, someone was to hit me with it and say....was this really an allegory for X? That would be cool.


Speaking a little to the process, I tend to think of stories in series's, and rarely as one offs. I always have an idea of the end I am reaching for, and have many moving parts in my head, and for each character. I dont outline (the rough is the outline), and that does not hurt me. Sometimes I write towards a wall where I dont know what will happen, but....I trust my ability to figure it out and get past it. My initial idea for my main story was Conan-esque, where as the sum total of many short stories would make a much larger tale if pieced together. I did not enjoy the short story format, and somewhere along the way, I just made it novel length instead. My current tale is five books long. I know the end, I know its five.

I have a next story in mind, which is a space-faring tale. Its been on hold for a while. After that, I dont feel anymore stories in me. I may stop there and move on to something new (or I may dead, as it takes so long to write them).

Edit: I want to add, the current tale is the third novel length thing I attempted. The first two were not of publishable caliber, and I dont think I will pursue them again. Everything comes with a learning curve.

 

[Mad Swede]

I felt a need to write, shortly after being medically retired. There was something I needed to write about, so I thought about it a bit, thought about what I'd seen in life, then started to write. I just took something I'd seen as the basis for the opening and went from there. I didn't create a setting. I didn't create any particular characters, I just wrote and they all turned up. And it all turned into three novels, a collection of short stories and a fourth novel being written (slowly, I'm severly dyslexic).

 

[Not_Alice]

I just wrote and they all turned up.

This sounds so much like me. I write to find out what happens and who will come along. If I tried outlining things, if I knew everything that happens before I write it down, I probably wouldn't write it, I'd just get bored. I like it when my characters surprise me with messing everything up. The one time I thought I had an outline, I was halfway into the book when my MC suddenly opened his mouth and started pointing out all the plotholes. I wanted to kill him then and there, but he was right.

 

[pmmg]

The one time I thought I had an outline, I was halfway into the book when my MC suddenly opened his mouth and started pointing out all the plotholes. I wanted to kill him then and there, but he was right.

Why didn't they just fly the eagles to Mordor?

This occurs to me on some occasions. Sometimes I use it as fodder for division, and just have the baddie ask the MC, why didn't the eagles help?

As a plot device, it works well for sewing dissent and lack of trust. Also, lets me address the issue for readers.

 

[Not_Alice]

Why didn't they just fly the eagles to Mordor?

I've been asking myself that question way too many times!

 

[pmmg]

Well...if it had been winter, they would have stayed in the south, but as the weather was nice, they had all gone back up north, and just not paying attention.

 

[skip.knox]

>So you just keep mulling it over, start developing an outline?
There's a bit of mulling, but I have an Ideas file and it goes in there. I pull this out once in a while (I admit it's been rather a long while because I have four books lined up waiting for me to get to them) and do more mulling. I've moved from that to actual writing a few times, but mostly they just go back into the drawer. The one located on the back burner. In the other room.

>Do you find attaching an overarching motivation to the initial random thought difficult?
But once in a while the idea develops. How?
Mostly it's about character, and secondarily about plot. And somewhere in there, a mood or tone. That one with the human garden, I had an image and not much more. Someone obviously had to be doing the growing and that had to be by magical means, so that gave a bit of context. I put the setting in the Alps for no particular reason, but a remote mountain castle overlooking a lake just felt appropriate. That's the sort of thing that happens in Mulling (which isn't a village in Yorkshire but really ought to be).

The tone was now sinister and a little wild, so I started thinking about who would go and discover this and put an end to the horrific practice. That led me to some independent agent ... oh, ok, call him a private investigator before such things existed. For worldbuilding reasons, I set this post-medieval. Anyways.

I did some writing, getting my MC from Here to There, but it lacked life. Then, out of the blue, I had a sentence and it was an opening sentence: The elf was already dead by the time I got to him.

Just that. It was a clear image--an alleyway, an elf lying in a pool of blood, night time, rain.

And that was enough. I found I was writing in first person (not my usual choice). I had an urgent scene, and had to write my way through and out of it. Everything else followed pretty easily. Why was he dead? Because someone murdered him. Why? He had something they wanted. What? ... and so on.

Now I think about it, that's a kind of mulling in itself. It's literary sketching, trying to see shapes on the blank page, and seeing if they catch my fancy. That has to happen, though it doesn't need to happen right away. With my first novel, it didn't happen for quite a long time (many months and many words), but the core idea was solid enough, I knew that all I needed was to "find my character" as an actor might say. Once I had found Julian and Avitus, along with Marcus Salvius and Inglena, I knew the rest of it was a matter of simply writing (ugh). I think that with every story I've written, there was a point where I started to believe in it. To like the main character, and to believe the story was worth telling.

There have been one or two stories I've abandoned. In those cases, either I couldn't find a character to care about, or the story itself failed to take on a clear shape. I gave what I felt (and still feel) was my best effort, then gave each a decent burial.

 

[Gurkhal]

For me it was "This is something I need to develop in my writing" and from there it grew with a focus on that specific aspect and it turned into a pretty good short story.

 

[CreatureHollow]

It's starts from some stray thought that wiggles its way into my brain then refuses to leave lol

It varies in what it actually is. Sometimes it's a character concept or visual design, a scene, some broader piece of world building, or sometimes it's even just a single sentence where the wording really sticks with me-- so on so forth. Never know what will suddenly take root, I'm just here for the ride in that regard!

Once the ball gets rolling for one of those ideas though, it rolls slowly. I get a lot of enjoyment out of slowly carving out those stories and honestly that's enough for me. It's a very engaging hobby and craft as is, and while I aim for them to eventually be finished, if they don't... well that's fine too. The fact it may never see an audience beyond myself doesn't negate any fulfillment I get from just quietly working away on it.