I'm genuinely curious because I have always had the idea in my head for my story. I recently expanded my world and have been writing it more in depth.
Conversation with a co-worker, discussing civil war. I didn't know jackshit. He challenged me to write so that people would understand. I said I would. Now it's four years later and I still write this story—and will for a long, long time.
A dream. I was actually sitting up on Xbox late one night, talking to a few people. One guy kept talking about his baby daughter, and I dreamt that night of him living a double life as an assassin for a company that don't like to let go. And a novel was born. But most of my ideas come from prompts. If I'm given a picture or a word and told to write an opening, I can almost always produce. Every short story I've ever written has come from a prompt or phrase. A lot of writers don't like to do it this way, but if I don't, I'm creatively stunted. I can't recommend this enough. Sometimes I like to walk, and force my thoughts onto this word I'm going to build a story out of. In an hour's time, I'm itching to start.
It was originally me trying to rewrite the Secret Garden. You know, for the modern fantasy fan, because that's totally what the world needs: Another re-imagining of an already beloved story. Yeah, I learned pretty quickly that you can't rewrite perfection. Thankfully, there was just enough original characters and ideas that I could rewrite it into an adult fantasy. And that's what it turned out to be. Same characters, but completely different story.
I'd like to think that all my stories are the best stories, but the truth is, it's just not so. The most recent one I came up with, which I also think I might be able to go furthest with, happened when I got lost looking for my little brother's school late at night because I thought he might have been kidnapped but I also thought he had a school function (He wasn't kidnapped, but I had no way to contact anyone to find out). The basic premise was another author screwing with my worlds. I think it's a great idea, I get to mesh all my concepts together without struggling to reconcile the different systems involved.
I don't know if this is my "best" story, but it's the only one I've written to the point where I'm (personally) pretty much happy with all of it. My current story was born after I posted a bio of an OC for a show I like. It got positive feedback, so I decided to try and make a story about said OC. I realized she didn't fit well as the protagonist, despite it ultimately being about her, so I reworked the story around a new protagonist until I thought it was good. Even though I still think it's pretty obvious the story was originally about her, the new protagonist has (in my opinion) a better personal journey to go through than she did. Also, my OC isn't exactly the same character any more (like, almost at all), but I'm pretty sure that's for the best.
It was purely accidental. I decided to try writing my first novel and since I'd enjoyed writing thriller short stories the best that was my genre of choice. I ended up on a youtube journey (you know the ones). I started watching a video on one thing and ended up 4 hours later watching something totally unrelated. I came across this old lady talking about a traumatic experience in her life. And that inspired this book which is a fantasy/dystopian.
The idea for the WIP I just finished (the only full-length novel I've ever finished, and therefore the best by default) originated from the combination of a dream, and the germ of an idea I'd had in mind for a long time. I'd always been interested in sci-fi and wondered what my hometown might look like in the future, and after having a dream where the view from my house was replaced by a huge city, I decided the idea was worth pursuing. I tried to imagine how a small resort town might explode into a giant metropolis, and what sort of people might live there. From that initial mess of ideas, Bay City was born, along with a cast of characters to inhabit it.
I'm not sure that's my best story, but it's the craziest... I have no clue of how it came to me. It's like a revelation. Sometimes I feel like it didn't come from me, because I absolutely can't explain where it came from. (Subconscient stuff, some might say... Even I could say so, in my skeptical mood... But I can't really admit it's just subconscious matter, I don't know.. it feels like from somewhere else.) Now, as I'm making new efforts of writing in a more regular basis, and more reallistic things, not fantastic matter, I've been asking myself what it is that interests human beings as human questions. What this or that character's purpose is, and what he's pursuing. How lost he is, and how he's in route (or not) to find his purpose or happiness, or whatever else he's searching (or not searching, but stumbling onto (...)). I still have come with another more fantastic line of work (that is very similar to my main line, which is plain reallistic and supposed to be so), and I'm trying to figure out how to write fantasy in a way that is interesting as a human thing. I'm not sure yet what to do of this, but I've been trying to answer myself that question...
Originally thought of my story as just a stupid play on words: Lou Skytalker, some crazy guy that talks to the sky and roams around like some methhead asking about the Force, a well-known street drug. I wrote a couple pages where I was going to make a complete parody of Star Wars, realized it'd be hard to do without copying Spaceballs, and just made-up my own plot. Changed the name of the character, read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and loved it, then decided that that is what my story needed: British narration. The end.
Honestly, every story comes from experience. The last trilogy I wrote, the basic idea came from a book I was reading. I thought one of the concepts was cool and reworked it. The book I wrote after that, the main character came from a role-playing game I played in 30 years ago where I had to create one in just a few minutes and he became the hit of the table and the backbone of the group. Ideas are out there everywhere if you just work to take advantage of them.
night dreams and day dreams and an over active imagination (and family that added to it). My aunt interprets dreams. I once had a dream where the setting was "old-timey" and my aunt had me look up the names of the people in my dream because she was convinced I had a memory of a past life and the people might have actually existed (they didnt... but I wrote it all down in a notebook somewhere). Most of my stuff are just dreams that linger. I feel like the dreams I have and forget about, aren't really worth remembering. but the dreams i have that persist, are the ones that i write down. Sometimes I look at a picture and get inspired. Like, for a current WIP, I saw some really cool Steampunk cosplay and thought "imma write me a steampunk story"...... well that "steampunk" story evolved into something else that is not steampunk related at all. But the the picture was a jumping point. Likewise, on another story, I had this dream about 1950's poodle skirts and a jukebox in a diner and i thought when I woke up that I was going to write something about the 1950s. nope! that was a jumping off point. I really kinda turned it into a retro futuristic sci-fi. But really, a lot of my earlier work, im convinced, was because I was depressed. I was never diagnosed as depressed, and i never remember "feeling" depressed, but reading through my old work now? I'm pretty sure I should have been hospitalized. it all focused on death and dying or the possibility of dying, or wandering around aimlessly lost and confused. Drowning. shooting. people going crazy. people in forced isolation of self isolation. 3 of these were published. I wrote something this year about an immortal man contemplating mortality and wishing for his own death as he buried the body of his daughter in a grave site in the woods where he's buried the bodies of his past children throughout the years. soooooo.... i guess you can say i'm a mixed basket of weird.
Inspiration from a bunch of random happenings from TV shows and movies, all mashed together into a fanfic. I was trying so hard not to plagiarize, as I tried to write them in my own words. I was just starting out as a writer, so back then, I had no shame. Then some of my ideas came from my mind wandering during work, or listening to music while I worked, so I quickly wrote them down and used them when I got home. Now days, I'm home all the time, and ideas are harder to come by, no matter how much TV I watch or how much I read.
I've always been very attracted to stories about an outsider entering a fairly isolated or closed community and making a life-changing difference to all involved. So my novel developed in that direction.
My first and so far only completed novel, of which chapter 1 is currently posted in the workshops forums, came from my personal life experiences. Writing those experiences into a novel, a mixture of real-life and fiction has been a healing experience in itself. The book is written and completed in its first draft, if it never makes it further, so be it. The experience of putting the words down is what matters. For me, just that act has been worth all the hours, all the tears, and all the mental struggles. I'm glad I did it. After finishing that first book I started writing a short story. It was just something that occurred to me, why it did I have no idea. I have two sons, both adults. I've never raised a daughter. But the short story that came to me is about a group of 18-year-old girls in their last year of high school and eventually moving on with their lives. It follows one of the girls, the protagonist, through a medical emergency and how it was resolved, successfully. After finishing that story, maybe a month or two later, another short story occurred to me, with the same main character. Then after that, another with the same group of girls. I now have an almost complete novel about that little group of 5 girlfriends and the adventures they have during their final year of high school and the gap year before the separate and go on to different universities. And I have 3 chapters written in yet another novel. How does this happen, anyway? All my life I've been a musician and a cyclist/runner. I've never been a writer other than a few songs. This only started a couple of years ago and I don't know why, other than getting my first story, mentioned above, written. I'm finding writing, good/bad/otherwise, to be enjoyable and relaxing. I'm glad to have it as a part of my life now.
My book began when I read about an actual Roman mission by sea to China in 166AD in 1995. My carpool partner and I began discussing this trip, what they would have thought of such a strange culture, and what the Chinese would have thought of Romans. Since the two emperors knew each other by name, this was obviously not the first. We talked about the first mission, when it might have happened, why would they make such a long dangerous trip, how it would have gotten there, what they would have encountered along the way, From that skull-session, while parked in a Washington traffic jam, in a few weeks, the first few chapters and vague outline of The Eagle and the Dragon was born, though it would take twenty years to mature into a finished novel.
I wouldn't say it is the best, but I would say it is a functional piece of written entertainment. It is hard to say that my best Novel idea so far is mix of things, and then cobbled together into messy trek from one end of the solar system, and then back again. Mind you in part it was also inspired in part by a need for control and stability in my life after things fell apart between my now ex-wife, and dealing with the depression and feelings of being useless and unwanted, with no real sense of direction. So oddly it was an escape to feel a bit more empowered with a small sense of order and purpose within Sci-fi War story. On this newer WIP I have started, after being convinced that I shouldn't continue writing a sequel that I had fallen into a lack of interest with. In part is from the need to explore something a bit more mellow in terms of tone and action. Perhaps from a lot of deep internal reflection, to be able to fit into a subculture that on some levels, I simply did not fit at all. As well as cope with being unable to actually share in said subculture in any meaningful fashion. Suppose in a way it is about being accepted and accepting of things that are not considered 'normal' by most, and have fun playing around with the oddity of it all in a few ways, while not making it over the top and comical. I'm just some weird awkward loser at the end of the day. But, I can say with some air of pride, that I am in fact not the worst writer of all time (as I often jest). Though I like to think I come up with some neat ideas, even if many of them boldly go absolutely nowhere.
I haven't started to write the best idea I've had, but I started dreaming it while bored at work one day. My boss had to wake me up twice that day.
It's a very appealing kind of story. I think it's because resonates with an instinctive need of being beneficial for the people around, opposed to the risks of being irrelevant or inconsequential, or making the wrong kind of influence. It's thrilling to see how those different can, or can't, grow from interacting with each other. It's hard for me to even conceive a good story that hasn't that element in some measure. On the issue, my best story so far is it from a technical sense. It was a challenge. I wrote a lot in 'dog English' before, without any formal or even amateur research until getting to write this one. To write that idea made me realize I need to learn more for writting better. So, it was the need of having a milestone, a sense of improvement, what pushed the idea forward into a story, and made it the best I have had until now. I hope to do the same for older ideas in the future.
From what I've read of your writing elsewhere (including in the Workshop), your 'dog English' is lively, readable and the images you create are unique and clever—and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, for the right reasons. Interesting dilemma. Do you perfect the English and lose the 'voice?' Or do you risk people not wanting to read it because the English isn't perfect, so you edit the life out of it? I know which one I'd choose.
I had a vision: I saw the whole family of characters pulling out of the port of Calais. They were all in a Leyland DAF van and about to go on an adventure.