What inspires you?

[Keita]

So where do you go for inspiration? Do you meditate or go for a walk or jump out of an airplane...or do ideas just come to you?

When you have the idea, how do you develop it? Or does that just come to you too?

For me...sometimes an idea might pop into my head but it can be indistinct...just a single disconnected scene with no flesh or even bones. Sometimes I see something done on TV or in a book that I think might be done differently...Twice now I even found a story to be told in music, an instrumental Jazz piece that opened whole vistas to me! The song was "The nighthawk's dream" by Keiko Matsui and since then, I found inspiration in her music for a whole series! :roll: The other music-inspired story also came from her music.

Has that happned to you?

[AnnMarie]

Insperation. I get it from day dreams, things I see around me, something someone says, a single word that jumps out from a page...

Music doesn't usually inspire me directly to write a given scene, although if I have a certain mood I'm going for, I may pick certain music to listen to while I write that scene.

[Harper X]

my insparation comes from the media in general

[Monkeysrule]

I get most of my ideas when I'm walking home from school.

[Anareth]

I really don't know any more why something goes from just...something to spinning off into writing stuff. I'm at the point where I don't remember what it is NOT to be thinking about nonreal things so I suppose I'd ask how do you not get inspired?

Reality bites.

[McClance]

What inspires me?

Pern and Dragonheart (for the Dragons in my sci-fi series) and Babylon 5 & Star Trek (also for my sci-fi series). :D

On our world, though, I'll go for a walk or play with the cats. Some times, ideas come up as I write, too.

Mostly, I store these ideas in my head. Though, I've been thinking that I should write the stuff down, especially the really complicated stuff--like the race of marsupial lizards and their society that I have in my series.

Oh, and speaking of my marsupial lizards (called the Noreen), observing or reading about lizards serves as inspiration. As well as whales, birds, insects, and many other forms of Earth life, which I model some of my races after. :ok:

[TamTam]

Bad books inspire me, actually. I read them and think that I could write better than that. :D

[SFAHarper]

I actually had a dream inspire a story I once read. Also, paintings have several untold stories bottled up in their colorful depths.

:note: SFA :note:

[queenrider melody]

Books in general inspire me. So do fan fics, pictures, paintings, drawings, tv shows, movies, and taking a look outside.

[Ghyle]

A lot of things inspire me. I like daydreaming, and getting ideas from reactions to stories and events. Often I extrapolate from them, and imagine all sorts of possibilities.

[Brenda]

My fanfics have all been inspired by "what if" - what if we could see what Mirrim was doing during that Hatching? What if we could see Elgion return to Half-Circle with the news that Menolly is alive? What if there were a ghost in the hold, and only a little girl and a fire lizard could see him? What if Jaxom had walked out of the Hatching Ground with Lytol and Felessan, and Menolly was the only person there?

I have some even bigger "what ifs" percolating.

[Shalyn]

I'm trying to go beyond the "what-if's" of Fanfic to "what-if's" of pro-fic.

But most of my ideas are ones that I've literally dreamt. Or come to in between that sleeping/waking state that people get.

Or, one inspiration is my three-legged cat Christopher. He's going to be the subject of a children's book soon.

[Ghyle]

The best of all my wishes to you, Shalyn. May I suggest that you invest in the requisite writer's markets, and that you use them as the starting point for your marketing. If you're specifically interested in speculative fiction, you may consider cracking , say, the semi-prozines first, then the prozines as your writing ability improves. I've a few websites whose URLs I can pass on if you're interested.

[Shalyn]

The best of all my wishes to you, Shalyn. May I suggest that you invest in the requisite writer's markets, and that you use them as the starting point for your marketing. If you're specifically interested in speculative fiction, you may consider cracking , say, the semi-prozines first, then the prozines as your writing ability improves. I've a few websites whose URLs I can pass on if you're interested.

Thanks! Certainly, send them along. I always appreciate help and suggestions.

[Feena_bronze_rider]

It comes to me when I'm reading old stuff I've written, or thinking about stuff I've though of writing.

[Vyon]

My ideas take a lot of time to hatch and time to myself is something I'm not getting right now. Then they develop when I'm walking, preferably along a nearby harbour beach. Almost anything can get woven into them at that stage, from old family diaries to Uni lectures. Or, occasionally, the lecturers themselves. That's how I invented Professor Albion of Gateways (magical) University in 'Something Weird about Gran.' "Gateways" is actually Brisbane University which really does have gargoyles of its founding professors on it.

I like bouncing ideas off people too, that usually happens at first draft stage. Older stories came from dreams, but more recent ones have more mundane beginnings, since it's a long time since I had that type of dream. "One Dark Night" was simply the challenge of writing in someone else's world. Not particularly successful, stince the story still isn't finished. That hangs around a passage in a family diary. :wave:

[Elianth]

I can be inspired by random things people say, certain words, certain words that come to mind when someone does something, something someone does, the weather, facial expressions, body language .... just about anything. Not usually from media or music, though.

[Anneli]

Sometimes it's simply in my dreams :) But then on waking up I find myself madly trying to catch on to the plot before it disappears... Which is literally the definition of frustration :(

[Bane]

My inspiration seems to come from...nowhere. It smacks me upside the head and says, "Write me! Now! Before I lose you!" I can daydream on something like that for days, and when I do, I've lost it. I have to write it down immediately or I lose it. It just doesn't work any other way. The fan fic I am working on in the FF is my way of taking a great leap of faith. Normally, when I'm writing, I can't have someone read what I'm working on. I've deleted pages because someone read them and made a comment. I don't know if it's their reading it, or the commenting that gets to me, but great passages have gone down at a delete keys punch because of it.

[j_mercuryuk]

I get my inspiration from EVERYWHERE, going for a walk, watching tv/film, music. I think music may be the biggest input, but there it may just help me write a scene. I go by: inspiration can be found anywhere.

[Vyon]

Sometimes it's simply in my dreams :) But then on waking up I find myself madly trying to catch on to the plot before it disappears... Which is literally the definition of frustration :(

I keep a very spasmodic dream diary. Otherwise they just fade out before breakfast. Sometimes they fade out anyway.