Inspiration is something that really fascinates me. It’s quite the magical and mysterious process, whereby either synapses and brain gunk align just so or the idea fairies flutter down from the magical idea kingdom and knock you over the head with idea wands. You know. Depending on your belief system.
What I find interesting about inspiration is that it’s something that’s mainly outside of our conscious control. It would be pretty nice if you could just make inspiration strike on cue, but then, that wouldn’t be much fun, would it? Also it would be annoying to walk down the street shouting, “EUREKA!” every five seconds.
So where and how did you come up with the idea for your work in progress? How fully-formed did it emerge from the inspiration ether? What do you do when you need inspiration to strike?
JACOB WONDERBAR emerged very roughly formed: all of a sudden I decided I wanted to write a wacky middle grade science fiction novel and then simultaneously thought of one of the planets the kids visit, which I shant share because it’s a spoiler alert. Everything after that emerged from staring at the screen and wringing out ideas.
What about you? How did you come up with your idea?
ryan field says
I loved reading all the different creative comments on this post.
Kristi says
Dreams – I've always been a vivid dreamer. My three works-in-progress have come that way and the nice thing is that the plots are pretty much laid out when I wake. However, I still have to flesh them out — which takes forever! 2 are written but feel like they'll never be revised.
Lynn says
I love Jennifer Weiner's answer to that question. On her FAQ page, she responds, "Target. They have everything at Target."
For me, it started as something memoir-ish, but as I embellished and invented characters I discovered that what I created was waaaaaay more interesting than what I have actually experienced in life. Also, the whole James Frey/Oprah thing scared the memior right outta me.
Amanda says
It started as a diary entry for an Amber game, then became the basis of a short story for a writing class, then when I decided I really needed to stop writting fan fiction and create my own world, it looked like a good place to start.
Thermocline says
I went to summer camp as a kid and worked there as an adult. Most of the camp novels I could find had psycho killers, were chick lit, or just too over-the-top goofy to be believable. I wanted one about a boy I could relate to set in a realistic camp. So, I started writing it.
K says
I love urban fantasy, and I don't even remember how, but one day I just asked myself "what if?" about a bunch of situations. They led to more what ifs and I wrote what ended up being the first chapter and a few of the more high-action scenes. It took about a year and a writing class deadline to even think it could be a book. Now I'm about to start the query process! 🙂
Blogging Mama Andrea says
I heard about this blog called Fiction 500 where you write a complete story in only 500 words. So I sat down and wrote the story. After I submitted it I couldn't stop thinking about the character (who is on the ledge of a roof contemplating suicide) and how she got there. I started writing out her story and boom, I'm 175 pages into it.
Bryan says
I like this post Nathan because after reading through…I am amazed at how many did come from a dream. My novel came to me in a dream but several dreams over a month while I was laid up from back surgery. Wait…was it the drugs? Who cares, it is out with queries as we speak!
abc says
I wanna read Hollywoodclown's book!
Nick says
The idea, as it were, was more of a thread of ideas spread over time:
I'd been working on one of my short stories featuring Ian Goodenough. The Goodenough stories are meant to be fluffy throwbacks to the days of Arthur Conan-Doyle and Agatha Christie; days when a mystery was about the fun of solving a case, and damn the realism so long as there was an ounce of plausibility. But from the moment I started working on Goodenough, I knew I also wanted to write mysteries with a more serious, darker slant. Stories which more aptly fit the title of "crime novel".
I was working on one of the Goodenough stories, hit a bit of stoppage, and my mind just kind of wandered. The name of the protagonist for this WIP came to me during that, and my mind refused to let me go back to Goodenough until I was done with this new character (and honestly now I may only write Goodenough when I have nothing better to do, as a hobby). But I still had no plot. Didn't even really have a setting.
Initially I wanted to set it in Philly, but in spite of the fact that I only live some fifteen or sixteen miles out of the city, I don't know Philly that well. I've been up to New York numerous times and have a decent mental handle of NYC, both the tourist-heavy areas and not-so-touristy. I've been to Boston quite a few times as well, thanks to my maternal uncle and cousins living up that way. But, I still don't know US cities very well. I have a finer mental handle on Manchester, Norwich, London, Oxford, Inverness, and Glasgow. So, the solution then was to blend what knowledge I had of US cities with a light peppering of UK cities and dump it in the big bowl of my imagination and invent a fictional city. At the moment I have a name I'm using for it in my MS, but I'm still grappling as to whether I want to use the name I'm using now as a placeholder, or if I want to use another name.
As for the characteristics of the protagonist…I was thinking about the hero and knew basically what I wanted him to look like, how old he would be, etc. When I write, I picture actors in my head, performing an audio drama, because I used to be ghost writer for audio drama, and honestly I find audio drama the best form of entertainment (and so, so criminally underused these days). So I didn't have an actor for a while. I just had an outline of his body, and no actor was coming to me from that. Then one day I was watching something, I forget what, and there was an Irishman who was a bit of a deadpan snarker, and he just seemed so, so perfect for the role of my hero that I was like YES! And from the thought of my hero being an Irishman came all of the other characteristics. Although how his being Irish lead to my thinking of him as a great, hulking bear of a man who looks slightly overweight but his girth belies his strength is beyond me. His personality had more or less been there from the beginning, and has just been developing naturally.
Long post is long, so I'm forced to break here and continue.
Nick says
And continuing from where I left off:
As to my villain, I knew I wanted to do something with this character vs a serial killer. I wasn't sure I wanted to use it as the first novel, and indeed I may even hold off on publishing this one, or publish it first and if a series comes out of it, like I hope one will, just state that this one takes place later than other ones. But anyway, the only other thing I had in mind was I wanted the killer to change his MO from kill to kill. Target type, method used, everything. But the story stalled from there, because I was trying to think of good, fun ways to kill people. And I was also setting up my Big Board (yes, I keep a big cork board like you'd see on a cop show; it's hanging beside my bed presently).
During that stall, I opted to watch Manhunter, just 'cos I was curious as to what Brian Cox's portrayal as the first man to have played Hannibal Lecter was like (after all, I'd already seen Red Dragon and thus knew the plot). Read later that Cox based his portrayal upon Peter Manuel. Read the whole wikipedia article on Manuel and just sort of knew that, yeah, I wanted this guy to be my primary basis for my killer. So I've been modifying (although barely) Manuel's killings and peppering in a few original killings (as in, not ripped from Manuel or another killer) to act as his victims. And I've taken the details of the recent, horrible, horrible incident with a sixth-form student named Asha Muneer and applied it as a killing for my killer.
All of the other cogs are just falling into place as I'm writing. Really ideas just strike me randomly, too. One of the "original killings" is done by raping a teenage girl, then dumping her in an acid bath until she's been skinned, and burying the skeleton in a corn field (to which the killer shall lead the police later, post-arrest, as no one is going to find that given the time of year). I was walking down the hall two days ago just sort of mulling over a conversation in the early part of the book and trying to decide how I wanted a specific joke to work, and all of a sudden it came to me and I just shouted "YES! RAPE AND ACID BATH!" and tore off down the hall to my class so I had a hard surface to set down a scrap of paper on and write it down. I have a feeling I may have deeply disturbed my fellow students.
MJ says
Listening to someone's family history. A story she told turned into another story.
Jonathon Arntson says
It's called being observant. Whether you're paying attention to the people on the street, your dreams, or another writer's voice.
StrugglingToMakeIt says
A past experience + "what if" = current WIP. I don't remember when, where, or any of that, but all of a sudden, the "what if" came to me one day while I was working on another project and I wrote out the question. And that's how what I'm currently working on started.
Nick says
Oh, and not so much this current WIP, but I have a habit of snooping in everything. Medicine cabinets, desk drawers, manila folders. Anything and everything that can be opened, gazed at, read, studied, and so on, I will. You can learn more about a person from what they keep on their desk or in their medicine cabinet than you can from weeks or months of conversation. Invading another person's privacy is really one of the greatest tools you can have, I think.
attackfish says
After a close friend of mine committed suicide, I deliberately set out to think of a new novel idea. I kicked around ideas with another close friend in the same situation, and got a proto form of my current story.
Grimmster24 says
I am PROUD to say that my idea for my WIP, "The Protectors" came about purely because my good friend Laura wants to be an animal cruelty investigator for the ASPCA. My character is a lot like Laura, and that's not an accident, of course.
Other daily inspiration I use often are quotes about writing that I come across. Then I post them above my head next to the computer. They're surprisingly helpful on those days when the words don't come easily. 🙂
Ant says
Standing in line at Barnes and Noble behind a very vocal middle-aged mom. She was attempting to return the first book in a super popular vampire series written by a Mormon mother in Utah. AHEM. She ranted and raved about the inappropriateness of the series for her fourteen year old daughter while the embarrassed teen stood by, face crimson and looking like she'd be thrilled if the floor would just open up and swallow her whole. My first thought as I listened to the hysterical mother was "WOW…I wonder what it would be like to live with such an overbearing (w)itch!" VOILA…my new WIP was born…
Karla says
A random thought I had while sitting in the drive-thru line for coffee one morning. I went home and wrote it up as a flash, then it grew.
Gary says
Strange as it may sound, I often browse the pages of–dare I say it–Wikipedia looking for odd and curious entries. This usually sets the brain a simmering; at least for me it does. This is how I came up with the idea of my most recent novel.
coffeelvnmom says
I was lying in bed one night, trying to fall asleep, when a scene came to me. Green light, and… go.
Heidi Thornock says
I'm a dreamer. My best ideas come from dreams, some more defined than others.
But that also means I don't have an endless supply of worthwhile ideas, which is frustrating when you wonder what the next WIP will be.
Ed Miracle says
It was the voices.
Tell me, Ed, do you often hear little voices?
Yes, I hear them all the time.
Well, what do they say?
They say, "Tell me, Ed, do you often hear little voices?"
Anassa says
I've always had imaginary worlds that I set my daydreams in, and I experiment with tropes, situations, and dumping characters from one world into another. One day I hit on a combination of young adults, superpowers, the future, and a teenage superhero mentoring an older newcomer, with lots of relationship-based irony. It said "write me!"
Heather Wright says
My current WIP came out of an exercise I gave my high school writing class: Start a story in which your character finds something small. I wrote along with them and my character found a sword. 34,000 words later it's still getting him into trouble and I'm enjoying every minute.
Kristin Laughtin says
I don't want to spoil mine either, but it was one of those "What if X group of people were afraid of Y scientific concept and did Z as a result?" moments that came out of the blue. I then had to wrestle with whether I had just had a conceit or an Idea before finally deciding on the latter. Then I had to convince myself I wanted to write about that group of people since it's been frequently done. I think and hope my take on it is original enough, though.
Since I'm (hopefully) almost finished with this one*, I'll also just say that the idea for my next project came from a character's face and general background just appearing in my mind one day. I still haven't quite got the plot figured out, since I'm concentrating on the current project, but she was so strong in my mind that I knew I had to write about her.
*(Current WIP is taking far longer to write than I've anticipated, and really should be 2-3 books no matter how much I want to whittle it down to one.)
Moira Young says
In 2006, I had a short story published. It was told from the perspective of a healer's familiar, a cat, who helps his human with day-to-day magical affairs. Everthing changes the day a little girl comes to town, fleeing from someone who wants her dead. When her adult escorts die, she winds up living with the healer and the cat.
Turns out that little girl has a big secret. And even though I never intended it to happen this way, her story niggled in the back of my mind for about six months. I decided to try to write it for NaNoWriMo, but I was in school, and it never happened. I picked up the story and put it back down a few times while working on other projects, and then in August of 2008, inspiration finally struck. I finished the first draft last June, and the second back in November.
Now that I've had a chance to relax and get over myself, I realize that it has a lot more work, and that the story was too complex to fit into a single book. The challenge won't be splitting it into three (that's fairly easy), it will be making three cohesive novels, the first which should stand alone enough so that I can sell it. Oh, and avoiding trilogitis, where the middle book is bland filler with little bearing on the first and third books, and the villain is some no-name hack.
D. G. Hudson says
My idea for the work-in-progress came from a conversation about science fiction, and some of the well-known SF authors.
I've also researched the finer details via NASA and picked up a few ideas from that as well. I've always been a spacer at heart.
Another WIP came about because of a stolen weapon. That one just grew on its own.
Sarah W says
I became really, really frustrated at work one day and wrote a short story about armed (and well-paid) librarians who can enforce the rules with 32-caliber Hushmasters–and library materials that explode if they leave the library without being checked out. Revengefic, pure and simple.
But then I started thinking about the circumstances under which such a library system would have been created–it would take a complete paradigm revolution . . . and then I realized that I was writing the thesis of my MC . . . and then I realized I had an MC . . .and a WIP.
Nikki Hootman says
An image popped into my head for no particular reason: a smallish guy in a long black wool coat and wire-rimmed glasses reclining on a lounger on the deck of a cruise ship in the fog.
I realize that's bizarrely specific, but it happened. I wondered who that dude was and why he was on the ship, and a short story was born.
And then I thought, the more interesting story is really how the dude ended up on the ship in the first place. And a novel was born.
Wanda B. Ontheshelves says
What a delicious question.
The idea for my, let us call it, revision-in-progress (work-in-progress is too depressing), came to me at the park, among several very large evergreens on top of a hill, planted in a staggered fashion, so you wound your way among them – so there I was, winding my way, batting at the branches, because it was spring, and the trees were full of yellow pollen, and I could release huge clouds of pollen that way.
Anyway, my MC wears a gigantic yellow dress – there was just something about the juxtaposition of those huge evergreens and their ephemeral yellow pollen – a story in there – the tension between winter and summer, embodied in the person of a Snegurochka – Mother Frost – which I now wonder, may share some mythic geneology with a Yuki-onna, as mentioned by Dara.
Anonymous says
Years ago I was writing a pretty generic fantasy story and really hating it, flailing about trying to make it something with some merit. Inspiration came from a TV special about drug addiction. I though hey that's an interesting issue – how can I use it?
Well, you take away heroine and replace it with magic and you have something worth writing about…
Ink says
Story ideas come from a variety of smaller ideas. Images, mostly, but sometimes lines, or titles, or words. Characters, sometimes, or sounds, or situations. These little fragments sprout from experiences, things I see or overhear or read, or they simply appear on their own.
But the story idea almost always comes from more than a single fragment. Rather, these fragments circulate around in my head for awhile. Things percolate, the fragments bouncing around on the bubbles, and then one day, all at once, a few of these fragments will bump into each other… and stick. It's the sudden fusion of these disparate parts that forms the eureka moment for me.
Current WIP was:
– an image of deep fog slowly filling the valleys of a series of rolling hills.
– the head of a wolf
– a character hurdling a fence
– a white crow
– the line "dark hills dreaming of the dead"
– a rotted barn at night
– dust churned off a dirt road by marching soldiers
– a barren patch of earth beside a little lake on the high shoulder of a mountain
– a giant mushroom
Somehow that all fits together, trust me. Needed a lot of glue, though.
ramblingsfromtheleft says
Nathan: I think by the time you find this you will have heard every conceivable way to find an idea … but what the heck. I take this from a journal of crazy notes I save, sometimes use on my blog.
Enjoy:
Characters:
Around and around they run in the hamster’s wheel, stuffed into a trunk from the Belasco or the Majestic. Depression musicals, old black and white melodrama or the innovative and hilarious humor of comics and variety shows from fifties and sixties television.
Listen to them at lunch counters.
Watch a husband and a wife, mid-seventy to eighty argue in a supermarket. “All right already, Ethel, get the damn brisket.”
Hear that annoying couple as you stand on line at the movies. (Woody Allen’s, Annie Hall)
From books you read, newspapers or magazines, a news flash or broadcast journals, early HBO Comedy shows, adult animation, early animation, the antics of Bugs Bunny or Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Bull Winkle or Natasha.
You’re a kid, so no one listens to your opinion. What do you do? You zone out. I must have zoned out for about fifteen or twenty years.
The best part of being a neurotic is it’s all in there. Like computer chips, the sounds and images never go away.
Characters are amalgams of all the people you’ve known, heard or saw somewhere. When the time is right, dig into the trunk, dust off the old costumes and have fun playing dress up.
For you,Nathan, like my son, there are also the wonderful memories of the first time you read The Hobbit.
Love the process, it's worth the aggrivation.
sherrah says
I really don't have a problem coming up with ideas; anything could be a story or go in a story. The problem is weeding out the lame ideas and then figuring out which project the good ideas belong in, and then cultivating the good ideas into something sustainable.
For my current project, I read an article that had a phrase in it that I thought would be a great title. The title evoked an image, and from there, I started asking questions…who is she? what is she doing? why is she doing it? what's going to happen next?
And the question WHAT IF always sparks ideas for me.
maybeimamazed02 says
Manuscript #1: an unrequited crush + my background in community theatre.
Manuscript #2: a dream. Cliche, I know, but the two main characters and how they met were in my head when I woke up.
Manuscript #3: a reality show I really liked, then didn't like so much.
Another big cliche, but listening to music does wonders for giving me ideas. I also walk to work almost every morning, which is awesome for mulling over characters, situations, etc. I grew up dancing, and I still do my best thinking when I'm in motion.
Great question!
patlaff says
Real life.
I started one story after hearing about one guy killing another guy because Guy 1 cut off Guy 2 on the highway. Another story started with my general disappointment with both the government and organized religion. The story I'm working on now is about a frustrated novelist who turns to non-fiction as his key to getting published. Truth is stranger than fiction.
As for how developed the stories are, I have a general sense of who the players are, what the main conflict will be and how it'll get resolved, but I let the characters figure out all the details.
Sean Patrick Reardon says
I was listeneng to the radio on the way to work and a story came on about abortion. On the ride home I was listening to Heart, and when "Mistral Wind" came on I throught, "What if an adult had to go through an abortion?"
Charlene says
I don't remember which came first: the idea of the story, or the first scene, maybe they both happened at the same time.
That's usually what happens to me, a scene or a piece of dialogue will pop up in my head and I'll end up building a story around it.
Brash Bessie says
Well, I actually have three things in the works right now. The first one started out as a short story for a writing forum I belong to and the second one just popped into my brain. The third one came to me while I was thinking about some of the trendy YA novels that are out on the shelves and what I would do different and then WHAMO! I was running up and down the street yelling EUREKA!
Sarah says
I told my sister the first half of a story I knew she'd like. I wrote the rest of it, and realized much later that I had a YA novel buried in there.
Some of my ideas come from fixing stories as well. I'll hear or watch something and not like a portion- so I fix it.
Jaime says
My idea kind of came from a thought I had as a teenager – what if your soul mate dies before you get the chance to meet him/her? Would Fate really screw you over that badly?
When I sat down to write a novel 12 months ago, it wasn't going to be a romance. It was going to be a completely different idea. But this soul mate idea wouldn't let go, and I'm glad, because I've had such a great time writing it 🙂
Brandi G. says
I'm easily inspired I guess, but what inspired my current WIP was a very vivid dream.
The novel I just finished revising for the FINAL time (I swear) was inspired by a certain, troubled part of my life and twisted into a fantasy love story.
Music is also a big inspiration for me. There are so many stories in songs.
Amanda says
It started with my obsession with Halloween and SLOWLY developed from there. Now, I keep a list of interesting places, news, and characters to pull from for future stories.
Anonymous says
i've had an idea file going for years now. everyhting's in there from 1-liner snippets from internet articles to 3-page pseudo-synopses of potential story ideas…it's now 35 pp. altogther.
When an idea goes into what I think of as "production mode" it gets its own named folder, and in that folder i have a Notes doc, an Outline doc, and, if all goes well, eventually a ms. doc.
Jil says
I had a short story published about an abandoned child and when my "aunt" in Bermuda read it it affected her so deeply she wrote to reveal the fact that she was really my half sister. She had been left with my grandmother in England when Mother came to Canada to marry my father. This desertion haunted her throughout her life and I wondered how any woman could abandon her four year old, send her photos of me to put in a scrapbook, yet forbid her to ever reveal our relationship. This set me off on , A Life Deferred.
Other novels have been instigated by an obituary in a very old English newspaper, a man talking about his work with Juvenile delinquents,a small hunchbacked spinster who lived with her father in a large house, a trip my photographer husband and i made across the US with a trailer Caravan of foreign diplomats. That turned into a mystery. Most anything can give me ideas but where is the time?
shelley says
Divorce, death, depression and eating disorders–Oh My!
Empty Refrigerator says
My idea was inspired by a novel I read. It is strange to admit this, because I'm afraid it comes across as though I just copied someone. I didn't – my WIP is nothing at all like that novel. But it did inspire the idea; that's just the truth and I can't pretend it isn't. Here's the weird thing — there's some synchronicity going on. I have had some odd news today, news that is actually good news but quite disconcerting too, and actually it even disturbs me, for reasons I won't go into. It is to do with my family of origin, and it's something I just found out. And then about 10 min after finding it out, I logged into google reader and saw this post, and it hit me – what I found out today, and the feelings that it brought up for me – THAT'S my WIP (what the main character in my WIP is going through – different circumstances, but really the SAME). It's weird. So maybe the story was waiting for me all along? I don't know. And one more weird thing – I got a novel from the library yesterday which I picked from the new book shelf in a rush because my kids were with me. I didn't look at it first, just grabbed it. It turns out that the second chapter discusses a very specific (medical / science) topic which ALSO relates to what I found out today AND my WIP. The whole thing is freaky and Truman Show-ish, and it makes me wonder about coincidence vs. synchronicity. I don't understand it. Maybe ideas come from the collective unconscious, or the spiritual realm, or both.
mesmered says
I read an article about Japanese shifu cloth where the samuria would write secret messages on paper, tear it into strips, weave it with real thread and contrive this fabric that could then be worn to convey important intelligence. Loved the idea dnt hus began The Shifu Cloth, as a fantasy.
A Thousand Glass Flowers, another fantasy, was inspired by a son's gift of a Venetian millefiore paperweight. The Stumpwork Robe and The Last Stitch (Amazon.com) were inspired by the enthralling skill of stumpwork embroidery which is three dimensional enough to hide secretive miniature books underneath.
veela-valoom says
This will sound really random. There is a waterfall near my town (a huge one). Down on the beach below the waterfall there is this old cement staircase, just about 4 or 5 steps, sitting in the weeds. It looked so odd and out of place. Logically I knew that they used to have a nice cement staircase and bathrooms down by the beach but they were swept away in floodwater. Creatively it captured my imagination. Where did the staircase go? What if it did go somewhere?
There is no random staircase in my story but nonetheless it started the wheels turning.