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Confess and all is forgiven

Not sure what sub-forum this should go in so I'll put it here for now.

So what stories, plots, characters or scenes from other works have played a significant part in influencing certain things in your own stories? We all borrow or base something off of what another author was able to accomplish because we really liked what they did and want to just change it a bit to fit our story. No harm there. :)

Not surprisingly I have a lot of Lovecraftian influence. I'll post more details when I get a chance.

PS - It could also be from movies or even songs.
 
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Ireth

Myth Weaver
The main concept of my novel Winter's Queen was based on the premise of O.R. Melling's The Hunter's Moon -- human teenager is chosen by Fae royalty who wishes to marry her, while her family sets out to rescue her. I basically took the idea and flipped it on its head. Then I later realized it could also be taken as a fusion of Finding Nemo with Beauty and the Beast, strained through a mesh of Celtic myth. That was a weird moment for me. XD
 
I think the movie How To Train Your Dragon was what first made me obsessed with dragons. Before that I had basically just thought of them as big scaly lizard things with wings, which wasn't very interesting. When I fell in love with Toothless, though, I fell in love with the whole species. There was a lot more dimension to his character than just being a scaly winged lizard who can cook you. I really liked the idea of dragons that were beautiful, intelligent predators instead of being godlike, invincible flying tanks who pillage and destroy. I liked the idea of having different species of dragons instead of grouping them by color in a D&D type fashion.Also, that movie made me obsessed with flying. I liked the idea of a dragon who was fast and agile in the air and was designed for flight instead of being a creature the size of a blue whale who just has wings stuck on it. So, yeah, Toothless was the inspiration for how I wanted most of my dragons to be.

Other than that...? Umm...I probably "borrowed" practically all of my ideas from somewhere. Whenever I read a book I find something I like in it that I want to emulate. George Orwell's 1984 (go read it if you haven't) was a great influence on my dystopian society. I suppose Star Wars deserves a mention, since I've been obsessed with Star Wars for as long as I've been working on my book, and it has a similar feel--hostile environments with weird creatures, sci-fantasyish, internal struggle between good and evil--and the main plotline is kinda the same. There were people with powers, but they were destroyed and an evil, tyrannical regime took over, main characters discovers they have powers, goes to join a rebellion to restore the society that existed before--that sort of thing. Also, arena fights, sarcasm and scary worms, y'all.
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
My idea of a good strong plot still comes from the Final Fantasy series and similar video game RPGs. Final Fantasy could make you think you were right at the end of the game, then alluvasudden they redefine your MC, destroy the entire world and start everything over. To me it's incredible how far they were willing to go to squeeze and torture their settings to make a better story. They probably went a little too far in screwing up some of their MCs, but I'd like to go to similar lengths in making certain villains, which I think fits better.
 
OK I suppose I should list mine since I started the thread.

Like I said, there is quite a bit of Lovecraft influence, though not necessarily Cthulhu Mythos stuff. At least not specifics.

I have a tower in a wasteland like Kadath where one of the gods resides when he takes physical form in the world. He's the antagonist of much of the story.

I base the ideas of necromancy around how it is represented in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, which in turn was inspired Egyptology. Essential salts are extracted from the boiled bodies of the dead and used in rituals to raise them up a shades. They can thus be questioned or interrogated by certain means to extract information. In my story there's this massive crypt where there are literally thousands of Canopic jars holding the essential salts of long dead wizards, rulers, etc. Even one massive tomb where the essential salts of a long dead dragon are kept.

I also have an underground world that's similar to where Darkness resides in the movie Legend.

The Horror at Red Hook and The Lurking Fear are also influences but on a different story which centers around a sort of occult detective.
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
'Ideas are cheap. Execution is difficult.' A common motif on this site.

'Give five authors the same four ideas and you get five different stories, not five versions of the same story.' Demonstrated on this site with 'Iron Pen,' 'Top Scribe,' and other challenges.

That said, I freely fess up to latching onto lots of ideas from a wide range of other sources.

AD&D and WFRP (Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay) remain lingering influences, though game mechanics translate poorly to story telling.

Lovecraft and his literary descendants are a major influence. I have plenty of company in that here and elsewhere - one of King's recent bestsellers was pretty much a Lovecraft story. In my case, I am more into the 'weird' aspect than the 'horror' end; utterly alien races - a couple straight from the Lovecraft Mythos, and barely disguised versions of a few of his deities.
 
That's the point of the thread. To scoff at the idea that people shouldn't find ideas inspirational and borrow them for their own stories.
 

Reaver

Staff
Moderator
Read Joseph Campbell's "The Hero With A Thousand Faces" if you haven't already. You'll quickly see that every story takes stuff from every other story. It's been that way since the beginning of recorded history.
 
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