Hi all, I am curious about this because I have had help expanding my next series ideas from an unlikely source. Have you had any unexpected places or people help you with idea expansion? My ideas are actually coming from the children I look after, there is a 6yr old and an 8yr old. I have told them about my upcoming project that I am planning to start writing after my werewolf story and they wanted to act it all out. So for the last week or so we have been playing this medieval based game with knights, kings, mages, etc. It has been helping me to come up with ideas for the entire series not just the 1st book. Mine isn't too strange but I thought I would share and see if anybody has had any stranger sources of ideas Amanda
I wouldnt say I'v had the most freakiest sources for ideas, but one of my more fancier origins is my dreams. I sometimes have very creepy or surreal dreams, and I manage to remember them, they make for some very interesting plots. For instance, I once dreamed (as a child) that I had been replaced and my parents didn't know. Voila XD Sometimes doing something I like helps too, like cooking or putting makeup. And of course, sometimes song lyrics inspire a story, and vice versa.
Videogames are the usual culprits. Mass Effect made me want to write a sci-fi. My protagonist's appearance was actually borrowed from the appearance of my Commander Shepard. The Legend of Zelda made me want to write fantasy. I'm honestly surprised Resident Evil hasn't made me want to do supernatural-horror. Other times, they're non-fiction books. A biography about Louis Braille made me want to write a historical mystery about a blind detective, because there was a chapter where he and his (maybe made-up) girlfriend went all over Paris looking for a general who had devised a coded message for his men to read at night. It felt so much like reading a mystery novel that the idea to do that was coined. Amos, my initial detective, was basically Louis Braille transplanted to the American Colonies and given a new backstory. He was still French, though. As of now, reading The Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan is giving me ideas for a story set during that period of Greek history.
dreams & nightmares a couple of youtube videos showing how to make my two favorite non alcohol cocktails.
I've had a few ideas inspired by music, sometimes a song creates a certain mood so well that you can picture settings and characters.
My second novel was inspired by a bizarre stress reaction I observed in myself one day on the job. Not so much the reaction itself, but the visual simile that arose along with it.
A small portion of a creative writing assignment on Friday asked me to make up a fruit that was a combination of two real fruits. This lead to 663 words about a sweet-tasting apple thingy with white stripes that contains something akin to morphine or oxycodone in function and comes from a really tough plant that shoots nuts at people and produces said morphine-like substance in doses that can very easily kill you. It is now officially part of my setting.
I was half way finished with my fourth novel which involved divers in the Yucatan who discover an ancient shipwreck. Gold fever sets in as this inexperienced, average couple find themselves the target of a ruthless drug lord who collects antiquities and wants it all. I ran into a doctor I know who is also a diver and ex special forces in Home Depot. I asked him what he had been doing and he replied "Tech diving". I asked him how deep, he replied ""300 feet plus." I said, "Wow Robby, that's almost Newt Suit depth, what is it, a wreck?" He smiled and said, "Yeah, and that's all I can say." This threw the book on it's head as I contemplated "What is an ex special forces member doing diving a wreck 300 feet deep that he can't talk about?" In the middle of all of this mess with a drug lord wanting to kill them, they are approached by a man who claims to be CIA, which in fact, he is. He needs a trained, ex special forces member to retrieve an object from a sunken sub just off the coast of Mexico. The object is live Ebola virus which rogue agents planned on releasing into the water forcing the closing of the border once and for all. Add to this, a category 5 hurricane is approaching, threatening to spread the virus naturally, and live nukes on board.
Said plant delivers its projectiles through buds that are capable of precisely aiming at people and animals. It even has enough intelligence to conserve its ammunition when someone does not pose a threat to it. My teacher said I couldn't put any illicit drugs in it, but he didn't say I couldn't make a fictional substance that acts like one!
well, actually, my one came from a spawning of a "thorin oakenshield" character type and well, 10 months later, i have a good portion of an epic fantasy on my hand... (i will admit that the first Hobbit film had some help in initial character creation, but the character itself is now totally different)
You know that commercial for the Shaw TV on demand commercial? Where the two little robots grab all these little disks and insert them in people's screens? Yeah.. Epic fantasy tale of witchcraft, corrupted education, and false gods...
Not sure if it's considered weird or not but I get a lot of inspiration from video games. A while back I played a game called Thief, which neatly encapsulates the steam-punk environment I'm trying to create for part of my current story. So sometimes I like to flick it on and just feel like I'm walking around inside my own novel. I pay attention to small details, like how buildings are attached to eachother, and use it in my own stories. I also sometimes get inspiration from my wifes dreams that she insists on telling me about. Freaky stuff...
I was lounging around a swanky 5 star hotel in Bali the other day. Watching fire dancers as I picked at tiny delicacies from the restaurant. A waiter came by and spoke French at me. I don't know any French so I have no idea what he said. A 1,000 guest wedding had encamped for the week and I sat back feeling like I was in the middle of a foreign palace and all the nobility had descended upon us. I'll make use of that one day.
