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Where do you get your inspiration or ideas from?

Cinninamon

Dreamer
Personally, I get the majority of my ideas from dreams I've had the night before or aspects of dreams from ages ago that I can remember and can actually be bothered to write down somewhere. But I was also wondering how anyone else gets their ideas?
 

Roc

Troubadour
I don't base my writing on inspiration as much as I used to — I get a lot more done.

But, I get ideas and occasionally inspiration from a good movie.
 

Chilari

Staff
Moderator
Life. Reading. History. Dreams. Watching films or TV. Discussions on films or TV.

I have a notebook with me at all times. I've got a little one in my handbag, another by my bed, another on my desk. If I think of an idea, I write it down, whatever it is. Then it goes either into my Catalogue of Ideas, if it could be used in anything, or in my story notes, if it's an idea related specifically to a particular story. Occasionally I go back and read through my Catalogue of Ideas, or notes files from my old stories, to see if any sparks emerge, either between ideas or off old ideas. Time gives me a new perspective and a different mindset, so actually I've found reading through old story notes can be quite useful.
 
I create a world and characters, and then follow trains of logic to their conclusions. You could argue that I am never inspired or that I am infinitely inspired.

New ideas generally force themselves on me—usually in the form of a voice I need to flesh out or a new fact that I've learned that is applicable to a ghost of a story in my head.
 

T.Allen.Smith

Staff
Moderator
By writing everyday, working everyday, & beating the muse, into submission, until she begrudgingly sits down beside me at the desk each night.
 
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I honestly get my inspiration from everything I see. The world around us is a beautiful thing filled with wonder. Think about all the aspects of life that are just so amazing and astounding, its hard not for me to find inspiration from that! Now you might be asking, "well what exactly are you talking about?" Well just recently I moved to Georgia. When I was on my way to my house I saw huge mountains in the distance. I had never lived near mountains before (let alone see them from my house) and it was a very beautiful. When I went back to writting one of my novels I decided to describe the mountains that I was creating like the ones I saw. Now I'm not saying I describe everything I see in my books from things in real life exacxtly like they are, no. I just them as a base or foundation. I was designing a courtyard for a palace in one of my works and as I was walking outside I saw beautiful trees with pink flowers(would they be called flowers?) and thought, "hey why not have those in my courtyard? Hey, I can have a statue like that here or maybe have a lake over there!"

I also take a lot of inspiration from books and movies. Even if the movie had nothing to do with fantasy I can still take inspiration from it. Maybe I liked how a character looked and behaved so I can draw some of that inspiration from what I saw and add it to my own world. I know that sounds like I am just copying everything I see and I assure you I'm not, I'm just always inspired by everything.

(when it comes to actual plot ideas, I just try to think "what would be an epic story that I myself would want to read?")
 
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Penpilot

Staff
Article Team
Poughkeepsie. :p

Seriously though. I constantly get sparks from every aspect of my life. Maybe I'm sitting on the throne doing my business and the angle my razor is sitting on the sink gives me an image of a starship, or a sword, or triggers a train of thought that leads me to an idea for a story. Other times, I have a basic idea and to flesh it out I ask myself questions through out the day. What's this story about? Who's story is it? etc. And thinking of the answers to those questions triggers ideas.

But to me the most inspirational thing I can do is write. As I'm writing ideas tend to pop out on me left and right. It's a good thing when those ideas relate to the story I'm working on, but can be bad when there ideas for other stories. It can be distracting.

To me ideas are like Tribbles feed them a little, give them a little love, and they'll multiply like crazy.
 

Guru Coyote

Archmage
Reading what others have said here, I feel reminded of what my brother once said to me: "You mind is haunted."

yes, inspiration lurks in the smallest of things.

When I need an inspiration or idea 'on demand' here is something that always works for me: I take two things that seem very unrelated, put them together and see what happens. Say... strawberries and warp portals. Fresh strawberries, none other will do.
 

ThinkerX

Myth Weaver
All kinds of things.

The inspiration for 'Labyrinth' came partly from a time of my life when it felt like I was trapped in a giant maze (pizza delivery in the immediate wake of the great recession, learning streets and addresses) combined with a solitary passing reference in an old AD&D rulebook.

'Waiting for Godek' was inspired by the play 'Waiting for Godot' and a bit of russian folklore.

'Empire: Country' takes its start from the opening paragraphs of an old fan written 'Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay' adventure - characters seeking shelter from a rainstorm under a tree only to find something horrible. My story diverges radically from the adventure from that point on.

The 'Toki / Hock-Nar' stories owe a nod to Liebers 'Fafhrd and Grey Mouser' tales, but the theme is fairly common; our own Michael Sullivan uses it in his series. Some of the individual (planned) Toki/Hock-Nar stories bear inspiration from passing one or two line references made in other fantasy works - things mentioned, but never developed, like a mercenary company which was formed one week and disbanded the next (inspired by a single passing comment in 'Game of Thrones'), or a strange feast a weird dwelling (a takeoff of a Lovecraftian story and 'Rocky Horror Picture show').
 

Ireth

Myth Weaver
Winter's Queen came from the core plot of the first book in O.R. Melling's The Chronicles of Faerie -- human girl is kidnapped by Fae prince, her close relative searches for her. In TCoF, the prince is a good guy who genuinely loves his human bride, and she loves him back; I took that and turned it on its head, making my prince into the villain who only wants her for sex and children, and having his bride hate his guts. The sequel, Summer's Pawn, came from the questions I had after finishing with the first draft of WQ: "What would happen if the consequences of their actions, intentional or not, caught up with the Hawks?"

Low Road, my vampire story, was actually my mom's idea. "You should write a story about a Scottish vampire named Olan." I took that idea and ran with it, and it spawned ideas for a sequel and a prequel, as well as an RP exploring the backstory of the villain.
 

Jabrosky

Banned
My current heroine, Mukondi the dinosaur huntress, is in large part an evolution of the "jungle girl" stock character best represented by Marvel Comic's Shanna the She-Devil. However, whereas Shanna and most other jungle girls have tended to be stranded blondes, Mukondi is a black woman whose people have lived in their respective jungle region for many generations. I didn't make that choice out of mere political correctness or a desire to contradict cliches; I find black girls more attractive to begin with, and I honestly think black people make more sense as the natives of a steamy prehistoric jungle than do white people. After all, most of the physical differences between blacks and whites exist because the former are better-adapted to a tropical environment. In addition to the Shanna archetype, Mukondi's whole story has influences from the Turok video games I played as a kid and the historical "Amazon" woman warriors of Dahomey in West Africa.

My other project in the works, which is for my creative writing class, features a 21st-century guy who finds an Egyptian mummy in his late grandfather's basement. The mummy, actually a villainous Pharaoh with magical powers, comes back to life and attacks the hero's girlfriend, whom he confuses for his assassin in life. Obviously there's influence from the Mummy movies there, but another film influencing me was Jumanji (specifically the eerie drumming part, which inspired my story's opening scene). The character of the evil Pharaoh is based on a real king from the Egyptian 12th dynasty, and the whole idea of finding a mummy in your house sparked from a recent newspaper article about a British guy finding a mummified cat in his attic.
 
I think of ideas like words. That is: We all know all the ones we'll ever need, and sometimes we get credit for putting exactly the right one in place, but mostly writing is how to fit a lot of them together.
 
Ideas appear on their own - my brain handles that automatically as long as I keep thinking about things I find fun or interesting.

Inspiration, to me, is whenever two or more ideas collide and gain enough mass to start attracting more ideas.
 

Guru Coyote

Archmage
I think of ideas like words. That is: We all know all the ones we'll ever need, and sometimes we get credit for putting exactly the right one in place, but mostly writing is how to fit a lot of them together.

That is putting it very nicely, better than I did.
 
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