# How do you *spark* your ideas, and creat your stories?



## McYork (Oct 20, 2011)

As it says in kind of says in the title I'd like to know how you come up with a plan for your story. This topic can probably be broken down into two different questions... first off how do you *spark* your ideas? Do you create a main character and then build the story around them?  And secondly how do you plan out your story? Do you draw up an outline of the whole story before you begin or just kind of write whatever comes to mind? 

I can say that for me I've always made a main character and build a story around them, just kind of writing whatever comes to mind... but I'd like to know how you guys start writing.


----------



## Arcbound Phyrexian (Oct 20, 2011)

I still don't have a story in mind. With every bit of research I do for my world-building, I think of little details and plot points that I write down. Eventually, when the whole world is build, I'll be able to take that list of ideas, and separate them into one, or more, stories. (I can't guarantee this works though, as I'm still working on it. XD)


----------



## SeverinR (Oct 20, 2011)

Stuff I read spawns the stories I write.
Usually some small incident would spark the thought, of how this story would be interesting.
One book I read dealt with mind speaking, it reminded me of Psonics in D&D, and the background fell into place.

Another book dealt with people bonding with  magical beasts, I began my dragon series.

I have also written short stories from fantasy pictures. (Dragons always welcome, visiting blu are two written from one picture)


----------



## McYork (Oct 20, 2011)

Arcbound Phyrexian said:


> I still don't have a story in mind. With every bit of research I do for my world-building, I think of little details and plot points that I write down. Eventually, when the whole world is build, I'll be able to take that list of ideas, and separate them into one, or more, stories. (I can't guarantee this works though, as I'm still working on it. XD)



This sounds interesting... Every one has there own way to plan out their story. It's interesting to hear new ideas... I think I might try your method some time.


----------



## McYork (Oct 20, 2011)

SeverinR said:


> Stuff I read spawns the stories I write.
> Usually some small incident would spark the thought, of how this story would be interesting.
> One book I read dealt with mind speaking, it reminded me of Psonics in D&D, and the background fell into place.
> 
> ...


]

Awesome! I'd love to read your short stories! What was the picture inspired you? (Could you link it or describe it?)


----------



## Digital_Fey (Oct 20, 2011)

'Sparking' ideas is usually easy enough...taking a nebulous idea and setting it out as a logical draft is another matter >.> Usually it starts with a scene or a character, the former giving me a potential setting and the latter determining the thoughts/emotions I want to build the story around. Inspiration is an unpredictable creature, but I usually find it in books, art, lyrics and oddments from everyday life.


----------



## ShortHair (Oct 20, 2011)

It seems to me that most speculative fiction starts with a "what if" thought. "What if dragons actually existed?" "What if people could use magic?" Those things aren't possible in our world. You then have to create a world where those things _are_ possible, which opens several cans of worms. Who lives in that world? How do they survive? What do they wear? What languages do they speak? And so on and so on and so on.

Coming up with a story is simple. Pick an inhabitant of that world who does interesting things. Follow him/her around with a camera crew. I think of it as a reality show from an unreal world, somewhat scripted, character driven, unpredictable.


----------



## Arcbound Phyrexian (Oct 21, 2011)

McYork said:


> This sounds interesting... Every one has there own way to plan out their story. It's interesting to hear new ideas... I think I might try your method some time.



Yeah, I didn't even come up with this method, it just kinda happened. I am way better at world building that story writing, so I decided to kind of ignore the story writing part for now and what story I do have just found it's way out of my world naturally. Lol.


----------



## Lord Darkstorm (Oct 21, 2011)

The most successful for me have been stories based off a simple idea.  My computer backgrounds are all computer generated from digital blasphemy, and one day I was looking at one and got an idea, and from there it grew.  Actually, I had a couple more ideas come from some of those pictures.  

Sometimes I get a situation that will spawn an idea, and that can be worked into a decent story.  

Of course, once I have an idea, I then have to come up with the people that are going to drive the story.  I prefer stories that are driven by the characters, they are more enjoyable to me, so that's what I try and write.  I do spend time planning and organizing the plot and scenes, that is important as well.


----------



## boboratory (Oct 21, 2011)

I will imaginary role play as the character, and try to document whatever comes into the experience... It's kinda silly, but in a quiet space where you can just let your mind wander, and channel your inner 10 year old, I get some great stories...


----------



## HÃ«radÃ¯n (Oct 21, 2011)

I think about totally random things to come up with stories. take what would come to be my main world. I was laying in bed and then some kids were making noise outside so I went to close my window. I saw what was referred to as "the hill" (I wonder what it could have been.) and I imagined myself running through all the annoying kids where I was living and killing them all and then me standing atop the hill looking at all the carnage I'd caused. The complex became the city gÃ«ldÃ¯s galhÃ«m and I became hÃ«ramÃ¯s and things just snowballed until here I sit hammering out details of the war of strife, which takes place more than a five hundred years from its end to the start of DamrÃ¯k's attack on hurkyulÃ«s.


----------



## Ghost (Oct 21, 2011)

McYork said:


> how do you *spark* your ideas? Do you create a main character and then build the story around them?



It's easiest when characters appear out of nowhere, fully formed and raring to go. I still learn about their histories and how they react to different situations, but it's as if I've understood the essence of them. As I'm reading Cracked or clipping my toenails, a young woman pops up. Her hair is shaved off unevenly, and black tattoos mark her wrists. She kick back and puts her grimy feet on my coffee table. Gross.

Bald woman: Hey.
Me: Hi...
Bald woman: How are you?
Me: I'm good, I think. How did you–
Bald woman: Guess what. I live in an insane asylum! Look at these runes on my arms and legs. They keep me restrained.
Me: ...
Bald woman: Don't worry, I figured them out. Ooh, look at me! I just escaped the asylum! Runes are fun. I want to destroy things now. Bye-bye!
Me: What the?!

It doesn't happen to me very often. I don't even know how it happens, which sucks because those are my favorite characters. They come pre-packaged with a conflict and a setting, which cuts out a lot of the guesswork. That, and their persistence means they're the types to set the plot in motion instead of being passive.

Sometimes a story or plot idea grows out of an imagined location with an unusual atmosphere. These are harder because residents in new locations _always_ evade me like it's a local pastime. The rest of the time, I expand on a simple idea, like brothers betraying each other or a man's conscience at odds with his familial obligation. The ideas blossom out of that.



McYork said:


> how do you plan out your story? Do you draw up an outline of the whole story before you begin or just kind of write whatever comes to mind?



Er, still having a problem with this part.  Plans are necessary for me, otherwise the story stalls. I decided on one or two sentences describing the key development in each chapter, without it turning into an outline riddled with roman numerals. We'll see how it goes.


----------



## Thursday (Oct 22, 2011)

My characters usually come from someone I see in a grocery store, something they're doing or wearing will spark something in me that makes them otherworldly. As far as planning I definitely use an outline, I've tried it without one and I end up getting so sidetracked I have to start over.


----------



## Arcbound Phyrexian (Oct 22, 2011)

Thursday said:


> My characters usually come from someone I see in a grocery store, something they're doing or wearing will spark something in me that makes them otherworldly.



This too. Lol. I love watching cool people. XD


----------



## mythique890 (Oct 22, 2011)

It seems like a lot of my ideas come when, for a split second, I think something is one way (usually weird or crazy), then find out it's another, if that makes sense.  Like if I'm looking at the mountains outside, which I've seen thousands of times, but for some reason this time it looks like there's a cave half-glimpsed in the shadow of a cliff.  Then I look again and realize it was a cloud shadow.  But then my mind starts going.  What if there was a cave?  And what if it only appeared at certain times?  Why?  Does someone or something live there?  Where does it lead?

When I have about fifty ideas that go together, I have the beginnings of a story.  


Often though, I come up with one idea I think is cool then make a character to go with it... then realize I have nothing for that character to do, because he/she lives in a vacuum.  That's where I am right now with an idea I'd really love to do something with.  I have the character and his opening scene and I sort of know his backstory, but that's about it.  I think I need to do a bunch more worldbuilding on that one, though I am sort of thinking of setting it more in an alternative history sort of setting.  But ugh, alternate histories mean so much research!  Steampunk might be cool, too, but I'd have to do a lot more reading in the genre before I'd feel comfortable writing in it.  Anyway...

I also tend to get a lot of my ideas from things I read.  Sort of a "but what if the author had done it _this_ way!" kind of thing.

Oh, and I'm an outliner.  Have to be, since I'm no good at plotting and need to know where I'm going!


----------



## Shadoe (Oct 22, 2011)

My story ideas come from everywhere. I keep them in my idea files folder and go through it periodically so I know what's there. Eventually, something will come along that will make a bunch of notes from the file come together.

Usually, I have a character to begin with, and the stories are built around how I want to torture that character next.


----------



## Codey Amprim (Oct 24, 2011)

Honestly, I rarely will sit down and try to pound something out of my head. Quality things take time, a lot of time. I may come up with a major plot event, but then days will pass and tidbits will come to me that add to it. But most of the time, ideas will come to me whenever, mostly before I am trying to sleep or showering... at moments when you're alone with your thoughts. Sometimes I've actually been kept up for hours on end because of a really great concept or idea that I just cannot let go.


----------



## subdee (Oct 28, 2011)

Codey Amprim said:


> Honestly, I rarely will sit down and try to pound something out of my head. Quality things take time, a lot of time. I may come up with a major plot event, but then days will pass and tidbits will come to me that add to it. But most of the time, ideas will come to me whenever, mostly before I am trying to sleep or showering... at moments when you're alone with your thoughts. Sometimes I've actually been kept up for hours on end because of a really great concept or idea that I just cannot let go.



I think sometimes you do have to pound things out of your head, you have to make the story move along and eventually end at some point. I have a feeling that if you just wait for things to come up, yea you'll get a great story most of the time but you might never finish it or it might become cumbersome and lose interest.


----------



## Zak (Oct 28, 2011)

I like to create my world first. Afterwards, I usually develop my plot.


----------



## Wordweaver (Oct 28, 2011)

Admittedly I'm pretty new at the "real writing" thing, as opposed to just jotting wicked-cool ideas on sticky notes instead of taking calls at work, but here are a few things that help inspire my concepts and ideas:

I take a situation that I've been in, or someone I know has been in, or that I've witnessed, and write down the details of the situation IN ITS ENTIRETY. What happened, who was there, how I felt, how other people around reacted, what effect the situation had on other people who are NOT present and the rest of the world/universe, etc. Then I translate the situation into the language of my genre. How would it have gone down in my fantasy realm?

My main style of writing is very sword-and-sorcery...esque, so I adopt a kind of archaic, elven-elder-narrator tone and adapt the setting and scene to match the style of the story. Even when I'm not working on my main story, I've found this to be great practice for developing authenticity and believability in my writing.

@Ouroboros, I actually have to disagree with you...I've always felt the "ready-made" character with a self-evident past written all over his/her appearance and/or attitude to be kind of...(no offense intended)...cheap. Like "Where was I when this character was developed? Oh...they weren't." But then again I tend to king of over-develop my characters sometimes if that's possible.

BTW...was "Bald Woman" Jack from Mass Effect 2? Chillin in your living room? What's she like in real life?


----------



## Ghost (Oct 29, 2011)

Wordweaver said:


> @Ouroboros, I actually have to disagree with you...I've always felt the "ready-made" character with a self-evident past written all over his/her appearance and/or attitude to be kind of...(no offense intended)...cheap. Like "Where was I when this character was developed? Oh...they weren't." But then again I tend to king of over-develop my charaters somethimes if that's possible.



We operate differently, that's all. For me, the setting is almost a character on its own and it strongly influences people who live there, so my settings aren't as mutable as yours are. My plots are about people and things that frighten, astonish, or intrigue me, not about things that happen in my daily life. I don't disagree with the way you write. It just wouldn't work for me.

I _think_ I can see where you're coming from with the idea that this type of character is cheap, but I'm not sure what you mean by a self-evident past. If it's the runes as a means of restraint for mental patients, well, that was on my mind before this character. I wasn't going to use a viewpoint character to tell that part of the story until she showed up. The package I referred to is conflict and setting, like a character running away from an insane asylum. I have to find out her past and future on my own, along what makes her her.

It's basically like a snapshot or stills from a few moments in someone's life. I have to create a story to explain what I saw. I can see fragments of myself in those characters, so I know they're truly mine.

I've never played Mass Effect.


----------



## Liu Xaun (Nov 14, 2011)

My characters were made first, strangely. Compared to them and the plot my world is fairly new.
What sparks my ideas though? It's weird. Usually sitting alone waiting, or riding the bus home causes everything to just fill in.


----------



## Terra Arkay (Nov 14, 2011)

A lot of my ideas come when I listen to magical songs, the more I listen to them, the more ideas spark.


----------



## Thalian (Nov 14, 2011)

The way I did it was I created my world and brainstormed the beginning of my story, and as the first few chapters unfolded I brought in characters and if they felt like they should be important  then I started to develop them into main characters. Now, halfway done I have main characters fleshed out and my plotline is finally set as I kind of flew by the seat of my pants for the first half. I know this is most likely unorthodox, but it seems to have worked for me so far!


----------



## Devor (Nov 15, 2011)

I need to see a lot of inspiration.  If you put a blank page in front of me I usually don't know where to start.

One thing I find useful is to read classic literature, looking for ideas and characters and experiences that will translate well into a fantasy genre.  For instance, I recently read through the Count of Monte Cristo, where a man is falsely imprisoned, breaks out of jail, discovers wealth, and returns like an undercover cop infiltrating their lives to extract vengeance on those who set him up.  Coincidentally they're currently revisiting that story in ABC's Revenge, but could you imagine that set up in a high fantasy setting?  Imagine a person being falsely imprisoned, breaking out, discovering a source of magic and returning to mingle with the wizards he or she wants to destroy.  That story could have incredible potential.

But that's just an example, I don't really mean to steal old literary ideas.  I go in looking for much smaller points of inspiration.  In the above story, Monte Cristo plans for years to break out of jail, devising an elaborate scheme with his partner.  Finally, when it comes to the attempt, his partner dies of a seizure, and Monte Cristo escapes by hiding in his body bag as it's thrown over a cliff into the ocean.  If you're doing a jail break, the story beats are worth looking at.  He's desperate, then he's inspired by his "insane" partner, their scheme has one problem after another as his partner, a priest, won't condone violence, then they become like family, then everything goes wrong, and then an opportunity presents itself amid loss.  In the broad outline I think you can find inspiration without copying the actual events of the story.  That's closer to what I'm looking for when I read.


----------



## lawrence (Nov 15, 2011)

The Count of Monte Cristo is a GREAT story ! 

For me, the Spark can come from something I read, especially real historic accounts. For example, the account of the two roman officers who were charged with defeating Germanic armies, and the officer of noble birth would not take orders from his senior out of sheer class arrogance, and his thirst for personal fame cost thousands of lives. Such events will spark ideas.

As for plot, I try to have a basic idea/objective underpinning things, but keeping it fairly vague so that I can give the characters room to create the story themselves, as they move through their environment as living thinking breathing beings. I think its important to not make your MC a slave to your plot. Something you do not envision may happen. Characters need to be more than puppets dancing to the tugging of our plot lines. I don't necessarily manage it, but thats what I aspire to.


----------



## aderyn (Jan 12, 2012)

This is a great topic, it's interesting to read how people come up with their stories and begin their development.

Most of my ideas are sparked by something I hear or see, could be another story, but could be 'real life'.  An example - one of the stories I am curently working on was sparked by a conversation I was having with a friend who told me about a man he knew who lived on a boat.  We live in an extensive lakes system, this man will move around the lakes, spending a week here, a week there.  I found it interesting and I began to wonder what that might be like.  Then I realized I got an idea for a story.

After I get the initial idea I spend a lot of time living in my head, imagining the story, the character and the setting.  It's really just like day dreaming.  Then I will write a plot outline.  I have to be careful with this though as I have a habit of spending too much time on the outline when I could be writing the story.

So that's how I usually begin


----------



## ThinkerX (Jan 13, 2012)

The spark comes from different places for me.

'Falling Towers' came out of an old play by mail game I spent two years or so mucking about with.  The game set up a premise which I found to be interesting, even though it wasn't really relevant to the game itself.

The inspiration for 'Empire' came from the opening to an otherwise forgettable Warhammer game module.  

'Pilgrim' came from Kim Stanely Robinsons 'Short Sharp Shock' (though Pilgrim has been in the research and small fragment stage for like fifteen years now).


----------



## Philip Overby (Jan 13, 2012)

I come up with about one or two ideas for stories a week.  I'm not at a loss for ideas.  Are they good ideas?  Who cares?  They're ideas!  Some of them are great, some not so great.  I used to have trouble coming up with ideas because I wanted everything to be perfect.  Now I don't care anymore.  I think I'm sort of outside the bounds of most fantasy writers as I don't really have a "set" way of writing or creating something.  I just write it.  I don't think of worlds or characters.  I just write them.  If they suck, then they suck.  I can always fix it.  If they're awesome and great, even better.

I think generally my ideas are sparked by just thinking, "What if _____ happened?"  Then I go from there.  I take notes and there you have it!  

I try to think of the audience I want to aim for.  Sadly, most of the time I have no idea.


----------



## Alex (Jan 13, 2012)

Well, I watch a lot of movies and read a lot of books, usually I can get a random spark of inspiration from a movie I have watched or book that I have read.  After that, the world and the people in it spawn from the initial seed of an idea in my head.  Basically, I know what I want to write, I just have to put the characters in and design the world to fit the plot and time period


----------



## Jess A (Jan 14, 2012)

boboratory said:


> I will imaginary role play as the character, and try to document whatever comes into the experience... It's kinda silly, but in a quiet space where you can just let your mind wander, and channel your inner 10 year old, I get some great stories...



I do this with my characters too. I try to look at various angles and play out each one. I try to work out what fits best, what is the most interesting, what serves the plot etc. 

I also like to visualise certain places in the world. You would be surprised what can 'spark' from something as simple as placing your mind and senses within the setting. Quite a few of the major 'settings' in my book are based on places I have been to - climate, landscapes, animals and plants, geography, topography. I can bring myself back to those places very easily because I have been there.



Terra Arkay said:


> A lot of my ideas come when I listen to magical songs, the more I listen to them, the more ideas spark.



This also helps me!


----------



## W.k. Trail (Jan 15, 2012)

I don't really create my characters on purpose, for the most part they appear to me fully-formed (though they change a lot over the course of the stories.)

I also find that a good enough character will make the story write itself.


----------



## Dakkle (Jan 16, 2012)

Characters tend to come to me more or less fully formed, I role play them for a bit and see where they end up. That's how the story tends to begin, and then I just have the joys of trying to work out the middle and the end. Sometimes I'll be bumming around with friends and come up with an idea based on a story they've told me. One of my best friends is pretty good for this. We've talked about writing something together one day.


----------

