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?
LindaBudz says
At a kid-lit conference almost two years ago, author T.A. Barron made an offhand comment about how the distinction between heroism and celebrity in our society is terribly skewed. It struck a chord, and I developed the theme and premise of my current WIP that afternoon, on the drive home.
KM Fawcett says
My current WIP came to me in a dream, which ended up taking a trip into this fantasy world. I decided (after waking up) to change the world to sci fi rather than fantasy.
Actually, a couple other story ideas I have on file also came to me in dreams. I just wish my dreams would be more helpful when I get stuck somewhere in the middle.
Cheryl says
My daughter inspires me every day. It is because of her that I am even writing. I feel the need to get things down on paper, she reawakens the innocent child-like part of me. My current WIP came from one of the pet names I use on her, then I started thinking of more pet names, and viola, my story was born. I know, sounds like a cliche, but she is my light and my inspiration.
Breeze says
An old love died…tragically…we'd ended suddenly and without closure..and I wondered..what if we hadn't..and I made two new characters and wrote our "what if?" story and it's being published this year.
My next one…two words came to me..and I don't know why, I wrote them down and they haunted me..so I wrote an outline and it's to be my next novel.
It's a strange thing…I wrote 10 sentences for a writing assignment..each one became a story on its own.
In spirit…inspiration…
Breeze
Amy Cochran says
Inspiration came from everywhere for my WIP. Some of it came from my beliefs while other parts from mundane things; silver snowflake ornament, leaves, flowers etc. After a brief simmering in the idea tank, the characters, general plot and even a few scenes came in the way of dreams.
NickerNotes says
The subdivision newsletter had an article(?) about the neighborhood teens breaking into the clubhouse/pool area and drinking/causing mischief. So immediately, I wondered what would happen if one of the drunken teens fell in the pool and drowned. Voila – Exit Point, where Mimi has a surreal adventure that takes place while she's drowning and the success or failure of which determines whether she lives or dies.
Karen Amanda Hooper says
I was walking my dogs around my mom's neighborhood and came upon a house that had a disturbing number of worms along its sidewalk. Hundreds, easily.
Through six degrees of mental separation (made more vivid by a couple cocktails) I had the spark that created my WIP mermaid/sea monster story.
Yup. It all started with worms.
Karen’s Blog
RLS says
I had submitted a collection of essays to a handful of agents and kept hearing the same feedback: turn it into a novel. I thought they were being polite, but several weeks later, one top agent followed up to ask if I had given thought to her suggestion. I started my novel that day.
I had a few goals:
To depict a long term committed marriage with a problem that didn't involve fidelity.
To show how the heroine's childhood influenced the mother she became.
To answer the question first posed by Woolf: what do women artists need?
And finally, (because I'd had a publicity niche) something involving Craigslist, nannies and New York City.
The rest unfolded from there; however, I wrote every day, whether I felt like it or not. Often I wrote out of the home, and occasionally for only twenty minutes (while my kid was getting his braces cranked …) but write I did.
Being able to type with my eyes closed helped a lot. And at the risk of sounding like a zealot, prayer worked a few times as well.
And guess what? Last week I sold my book.
sex scenes at starbucks says
While hanging around my church, an old gothic building, I "saw" a guy walking across the churchyard in futuristic body armor and a long black cloak and I wondered what his name was and why he was there.
The Editors says
Most of my ideas are random moments of "What if. . ." But my current story started out with me complaining about things I didn't like with a few books that I had been reading. From there I thought about what I would do different, and after 300 or so changes to half a dozen characters I had someone completely different, who oddly isn’t even the protagonist of the story. She and the other characters came along when I thought about what situation I wanted to put him in.
Darin says
Take a misspent youth reading comic books and watching scifi/fantasy movies, throw in 15 or so years of marination, and then stick the writer in Iraq for the better part of 2003 with nothing to do but bang away at a Panasonic Toughbook and voila! First novel. Seriously, my WIP started as a story I had always wanted to write based on an idea I had as a teenager, and over the last 6 years, it has grown to a trilogy sized story, the first book done, the second one approximately 1/3 done, and the third just waiting to be started. Ok, back to writing…
Barbara Marshak says
On a mission trip to Central Mexico…a trip I "wasn't" supposed to be on. It was a construction type trip, building a church, mixing cement (concrete–whatever) by hand, mostly a guy thing. (I'm a 50 yr old female with pencil arms.) The leader from our church needed 1 female adult to go and no one else could, so at the last minute I went. Every morning members on the team shared a life story or testimony. On the last day, a man who'd been real quiet all week shared his story. As soon as he finished I knew exactly why I was on that mission trip–and it had nothing to do with cement or concrete–whatever. That was Feb '06 and I just finished the "novel" in Dec '09. Tagline: A beautifully moving story of courage, love, and the transforming power of forgiveness. It's an amazing story and now the search for an agent has begun! 🙂
M.R.J. Le Blanc says
Mine all kind of come from all over the place. One came from a dream I had, full story and characters. My vampire novel came from a desire to see another vamp who actually enjoys killing people and has a wicked, sadistic sense of humour. Two other wips were inspired from four years of playing World of Warcraft 🙂 The newest idea I had came from the Norse and Celtic history and mythologies. The one thing they all seem to have in common is everything came together at the right time and inspiration struck. I was just there to get it.
John Hazen says
I have to give credit to my grandfather for providing the spark for my most recent novel. He took a business trip in 1920 to Calcutta India. A while ago, I stumbled on a diary he had written during that trip. While the diary itself was rather dry, it provided a great setting from which my novel has sprung.
mulligangirl says
I happened to drive past my former residence and noticed it was within a stone’s throw of a cemetery – something I was aware of but never really thought much about at the time. About half the story formed by the time I got home. The next 30% was plotted and the last 20% sprouted from my fingertips while writing. Those last bits are my favorite.
Al Teter says
Dreams.
Waking up from a dream of interacting with a memorable person in a rather odd situation.
Waking with the memory of just a brief but significant moment in the dream.
And then imagining how we could have gotten to that moment, or where we could go from there.
j says
The characters in my latest WIP came from a need to give my characters individual voices. To strengthen that, I started studying English dialects. I started a story set in the Ozarks but with a character from East Texas. Eventually scrapped the story but kept the Texas character since I discovered I love writing that dialect.
Becky says
The beginning of sm current work-in-progress was inspired by C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. However, I tend to get ideas and inspiration from just about anything. Besides reading, one of my favorite past-times is sitting and making up stories. I even play a game with my children, where they make up the characters and then I make up a quick story about those characters.
Sanna says
Looking for a parking space in NYC. I took to praying to the patron saint of parking, Saint Cabrini (Saint Cabrini, Saint Cabrini/Help me park my little machiney) during a wretched year when I commuted from PA. When the prayer worked, I thought of my novel's device: a desperate woman who gets everything she prays for, courtesy of the patron saints, until her relationship with them goes very sour and the saints behave very badly indeed.
The Pollinatrix says
My work in progress is inspired by my experiences of brushing up against "the most photographed church in America" and the individuals, culture, and flora/fauna connected to it. I moved into the neighborhood of this church last June and have been writing about it ever since, from a fascinated outsider's point of view.
In general, inspiration often comes to me through a theme that begins to approach from multiple directions at once, often through conversation.
AchingHope says
My ideas come from the most random things, and usually it's an accumulation of various strange things. (Like reader an agent blog, reading a book about Pixies, eating pumpkin custard, and realizing I am a bit like a ditz.)
Although sometimes my stories come from dreams, and then it's just weird, weird, weird.
Cathe Olson says
Pretty much the same way I've gotten ideas for my cookbooks. I wrote the book I couldn't find. On my current one, when I was homeschooling my daughters, all the chapter books were about kids in school so I decided there needed to be a chapter book series with homeschooled characters.
Dominique says
I was watching Ocean's Twelve, and a wisp or two of an idea floated past me. I ran after it screaming, "Oh no you don't! Get back here!" I found most of an idea and started working from there.
Alleged Author says
My children's book that is in the process of being published by a company as I write this was inspired by a dog that bit my butt. After being quite angry about it I decided to write about an unloved dog with a temper who becomes a loved dog with a heart. My butt still hasn't fully recovered but the publisher loved the story. 🙂
Sage says
The novel I most recently finished was inspired by the novel before it. For that novel, I had many POV characters, each with one chapter of their own. One girl stood out from the others, and I loved writing from her POV, so I gave her her own novel. This character was inspired in the first novel by the Owl City song "Fireflies" (before it got so popular that now I'm tired of it)
Tambra says
I get my ideas from everywhere. Books, songs, television, articles, mythology.
I've started a books for the middle grades and I'm polishing a YA paranormal romance which the inspiration came from my love all things Celtic and Middle Ages literature.
I never know what will ignite my imagination.
Best,
Tambra Kendall
Cassandra Bonmot says
My inspiration comes from thinking back to the tragically boring hick town I grew up in during the 70s. It was about as exciting as a Hee Haw rerun playing on TV Azteca. However, there were many characters and stories. And, as I watered the worms in my dad's worm farm, I dreamed about these people, dressing them up and forcing them to talk differently. It was entertainment. In second grade, I drew maps. But, they never went anywhere. The highways never connected, and I always added a ‘treasure’ on my idyllic island way on the other side of the ocean. Fictitious of course. I thought, why the hell not. That treasure is mine. I drew it, goddamn it. When I’m old enough to purchase a Snow White backpack at the Wackers department store, and not have to let mommy and daddy know where I ran off to, I’m going on a treasure hunt. This was how I survived — creating, dreaming.
bettielee says
For some crazy reason, I wanted to write a story where people had titles instead of names. I don't know why. Then I wondered… why don't these people have names? I just sort of… unhinged the thinking part of my brain and followed my imagination. I get "visions" all the time, ie: scenes, but they are never the whole story. I have to sit and ponder for the whole story, and sometimes I'll see a movie or read something, and it clicks and all of a sudden I'll have it.
Don says
I dreamt the core of my novel, mentioned it to my wife and she told me to write it as a novel.
wendy says
The kernel ideas for Winter Roses Never Die emerged and transformed over a long period. I'd always liked vampire movies (this is pre Twilight) and enjoyed reading Interview With A Vampire. I belonged to a Yahoo group for composers and decided to co- write a stage musical with another composer from the States. He was from Orleans, and so we thought we'd do a musical vampire story (featuring ethereal and Goth rock) around this kind of setting. But we fell out and decided to co-write with another group member; this time from Israel.
The vampire based musical gradually became a para romance; and although I finished the written part, he never composed a note for the musical side. So I decided to do the music as well. Over the years, as I became more into Pentacosal Christianity, I incorporated an inspirational/spiritual warfare element into the story, and it grew into a novel. The main character is based on myself and the vampire character (who gradually morphed into a creature from another dimension who was initially benign, but had been cursed) was originally based on my friend from Israel. He had such clever and original ways of expressing himself that I incorporated some of the content of his emails into the dialogue.
So my inspiration came from life experiences and influences from the entertainment media of the 70's, 80's and 90's. However Christanity and vampire has never been combined AFAIK, but I'm not sure why. A vampire/creatures from more ethereal dimensions are already in a spiritual vein (pardon not intended), so why not continue that focus?
wendy says
Above, I meant to write *pun* not intended. 🙂
Ruth says
I was bored waiting on line somewhere and I started daydreaming. I don't know how it started but all of a sudden I was watching a scene unfold. When the line moved forward, my reverie ended, and the daydream faded.
I thought nothing about it until a day or two later when the same characters were talking to me as I was going to sleep.
They became a bit insistent. They began to speak to me in the shower, on the train. I wasn't safe! I thought I was going senile. (I am an older writer). This wasn't too bad. At least I could remember their names. Overtime, I found I looked forward to our visits and realized I really like them. Some were better than people I actually knew.
Last year I just started to write it all down. The characters still talk to me. I am amazed how they disagree with some on the things I have them do or say. They actually argue with me but they are an even handed lot, they let me know when I have gotten it right.
The daydreams and characters have now accommodated and pop up at more appropriate times. I remember one business meeting when just the right scene popped into my head. I had to write it down before I forgot it. But that's a story for another time.
The Pollinatrix says
It occurs to me that 3/4 of the comments here today (including my own, probably) could easily land their authors in an unsavory institution if told to a mental health professional.
Avery June says
I found a tiny ripe piece of history that I didn't like, and I'm making it right(ish-er). He he! What fun!
Becca says
Actually, 95% of what I write, comes to me when I'm lying in bed, slipping into delirium! I jump out of bed, reach for my blackberry and begin typing. Then, I set it down and lay back down, then think of something else, pop back up and type again. Generally, the next day, I look at it again, and the ideas begin flowing (Generally over a cup of coffee).
And when I start to talk about it, well, that's when the best ideas come to me. That is how it happens for me.
Nathan says
I read a book and thought, I should do that.
Three years later, unpublished, should I be worried? 🙂
Jonas Samuelle says
Scotch.
Helen says
The WIP I'm working on currently was sparked by the lyrics of a Counting Crows song, mainly the line about a bunny suit in pink and white.
It's a gay erotica…
Elie says
Landscape: images of characters appear, doorways open to different realities.
Words: the act of writing generates new pathways.
Listening: to a group of children, their own ideas for stories, and how they react to mine.
Themes: ideas that resonate act as magnets for more.
Simon says
Nathan,
was JW the book you wanted to write, or the book you thought could sell?
Melissa says
The idea for my current project came about when my husband and I were driving to his parents house for Thanksgiving on a highway that runs through a gray, desolate, poorer part of upstate New York. I imagined a young girl getting stranded in the middle of nowhere with no cell-phone reception and nothing around for miles. Two guys come along – one not so nice-looking, and the other a seemingly nice guy. Which one does she trust?
Linda Adams says
For the one I'm just getting started on: My father called me up and said, "There's a major drug bust! You'll never guess where!" Since my father lives in L.A., where drug busts are a daily occurrence, I took a guess at the place in Central California that we visited often and where my grandparents lived for many years and never locked their door. The place has a murder rate of three a year. I guessed right, and that location became the idea for my story.
For my previous one, I came up with a fight on an island and auction, and that eventually led to the story.
G says
I was in the process of redoing some terribly written short stories for a concept book, when I decide to do some thinking out loud on my blog for one of my short stories that I just finished posting on my blog.
I got to talking about how I wanted to rewrite that particular short story but keep it in the same context that the original was in (a ghost story of sorts), when I came up with the idea of re-writing it as a narrative in the similar vein as a few movies (most notably "Defending Your Life).
Nick Travers says
I had a vague idea and while conducting research on the story structure and fantasy world I came across a u-tube clip of the most amazing transport design being tested in model form. This design turns all previous designs on their head. Suddenly, my mind latched onto this innovation, expanded it to extremes and the whole fantasy world just fell into place giving me a unique world setting for my story.
All I need now is a transendant story line and my children's fantasy thriller is on its way.
That's the hard work done – all I need to do now is write it.
Kim says
I have a part time job driving people with developmental disabilities to and from therapy.
One of the women I drive has schizophrenia. One night, while listening to her music through her headphones, she started crying really hard.
I asked her what was wrong and she said, "The Moody Blues told me I was a retarded girl." I felt so bad for her, and we talked for awhile until she felt better.
That sentance still rings in my head, and I'm thinking of writing a non-fiction book about the people I've met through this job. Or maybe fiction.
Carrie says
I needed an idea, so I sat quietly one morning, opening my brain to the fairies, who decided not to sprinkle me, but to leave one lovely gift. And like you, I just started writing. If I know too much before I begin, the writing feels more like a chore.
Limari Colón says
I read tons of non fiction, and every time I read something that makes "click" in my head; BOOM! an idea.
After I decided I wanted to write, it just started manifesting in dozens, upon dozens of Post-It notes all over my room.
By the way, awesome blog! I discovered it yesterday 🙂
JosieJodiBaby says
Like many of my ideas, it resulted from a dream. I have very vivid dreams and since most of them are quite surreal, even terrifying, I often wake up with the thought, "That'd make a great book." I keep a notebook beside my bed so I can write down my dreams (which usually make no sense after I awaken) and/or the impressions and feelings I received from my dream.
Nelson Leith says
I was part of a writing workshop and starting to feel really fed up with the Eurocentric cliches of fantasy. (Someone had submitted a barely tweaked One Ring story with elves and dwarves…) But, instead of grumbling, I asked myself "What would a fantasy novel based on American imagery and sensibilities look like? What if Tolkien had lived on the US East Coast instead of the middle of England?" Having an affinity for myth and language like Tolkien (and, later, formal education in both) this thought locked into place like a well-placed Tetris piece and set my imagination racing. And that was that.
Kristine Overbrook says
I usually get a idea, thematic or situational, then brainstorm where to take the story there. The more books I write the more I realize I prefer to outline my books.
I'm currently outlining three. All of them came to me in an eureka type moment.