So you've got this lovely little storyline going. My question is, what inspired you to write that story? Is there anything in particular that happened to you? Did you see something, hear about something, wonder about something? Is there any lesson that you're trying to convey, or theme you're trying to explore?
:) Looking forward to some interesting answers!
2012-04-15T01:06:04Z
I've heard of Skyrim, haha. I agree with you, games are really inspiring ^_^ I had a character whose role was greatly influenced by Ezio Auditore. Different game, of course, but the epicness is there.
?2012-04-15T12:51:51Z
Favorite Answer
Lots of things inspire my story. First and foremost, I'm writing what is unavailable in the epic and high fantasy genres. I'm writing what I want to read. I'm trying to take the prescribed "Tolkien" fantasy beyond what it's become because fantasy is too broad to try limiting to one type of story structure.
News also inspires me. I read an article about a black family in my area whose son was shot dead and the police did nothing to solve the homicide because of their race. Or how another family whose siblings hate each other, didn't tell the hated sibling that their parent died. So that sibling missed the funeral, didn't get to say good bye and was completely excluded. Or how another family adopted a foreign child and ended up shipping him back to his country with nothing more than a sign taped to his shirt b/c the kid was psychologically unstable. etc.
History and nature inspire me mostly in terms of world building. You wouldn't *believe* the stories behind some of the historical structures around the world. These stories are so touching I've cried. So I incorporate similar aspects of these things into my own stories. And since I'm trying to make my fantasy world completely unique and unlike anything done before in high fantasy, I mix and match aspects of nature in ways that are unexpected/impossible on Earth.
All the themes I address are those that I want to shout at people on a daily basis. I drop my daughter off at school, for instance, and hold the door for all of these parents and their kids. Not ONE of them thanked me. Or how this snooty "mother" kept pinching her daughter's side and telling her to stop complaining when her daughter said her new shoes hurt her feet. The mother cared more about appearance (nice named-brand shoes), over her child's comfort. This **** gets me going. I have a lot to say and the themes in my stories reflect this. I intentionally write allegories to point fingers at the jerk offs in our world who behave in these ways.
Well, for my newest story, I was inspired by tv. Normally tv inspires me anyways. But this one is different.
I was watching Terra Nova on Tv, and even though it wasn't that great of a show, I still saw the potential in it. And then I decided that writing a novel with dinosaurs would be so cool, and something so unlike anything I've ever done before. So then I launched into all this planning with all these different characters, and it was going to take place in the jungle with dinosaurs. Then I continued the planning process and rewrote outlines. Then I started, and wrote a terrible beginning I ended up scrapping.
And now I've got the idea down. And the funny thing is, dinosaurs aren't even a part of it anymore. So the thing that really inspired this novel, doesn't even exist in the novel anymore. It does still, however, take place in the jungle, but the idea is almost completely different from the original inspired idea.
The big demon, the peculiar eyes, the great power erupting from your body when the demon is present. Pretty epic to a thirteen year old, enticing her to do just the same!
Of course, four years one, it's barely anything like Naruto but the elements above are still there^
I also wanted to show that just because someone's your biological mother, doesn't make them your mother if they don't act like one - a friend at school had trouble with her mother, and people didn't like her father taking care of the children because they still had it in their heads that only their real mother could do it! Well, I'm writing Maiyah to tell them they're wrong!
Hmmm.. there are also some elements of Avatar: the Last Airbender. With the whole element-manipulating and spirit-world thing.
The spirit cycle concept in my story comes from the reincarnation theory in Hinduism. When people die, they are reborn as something/someone else.
Also, physics. Real-life physics inspired the way my magical system works!
Plus, historical events, international relations and real figures in history have inspired some of my characters (e.g. Moroth and Teddy Roosevelt), and so has real-world cultures inspired the races and languages that appear in Ore in my story.
The song Europa has pushed me to work harder on my international relations of Ore and current-event-inspired events that drift in and out of my story and manipulate the background :3
And the Hobbit x) It drove me to putting dragons in my story :D
EDIT: also one or two elements of Disney's Treasure Planet and Teen Titans are in there, too.
All the rest is my imagination and story-development, of course :D
When I was twelve or thirteen, I was going through a rough time. I've always been fond of islands and tropical places, so one day I found myself thinking "What if I sailed away to an uncharted island and never came back?" The more I thought about it the more I liked the idea, so I started playing around with it, adding other elements, creating characters, making it into more of a fantasy story. I've played around with this idea for about six years now, always improving it and adding to it. It's my greatest adventure, my fondest daydream. Finally, after years and years of creating a story out of that question, I started writing it. I've been working on it for about a year now, and I only have two chapters written. See, I spent so long imagining the world that I've spent a year almost completely on world building, character profiling, and creating the language, and I'm still not done! I love world building though, so I've enjoyed it.
I'm kinda working on two novels right now, one which I'm finished and am in the process of editing and partial rewriting, and one I've just begun! So I'll briefly go over both, since this question seems like a fun one!
My first one is based off of a collaboration of different things. First there's the movie "Let Me In," which affected me very deeply for reasons I'm not entirely sure. The love between my two characters is based off of the story in "Let Me In," but thankfully took on a life of its own so it's not too much like the movie after a point, haha! Then there's a few real life events which really got me going. They were at my school. One was where a reasonably good friend of mine kinda had a mental breakdown, and was out in front of the school screaming, wanting to fight, getting pissed off. Another was of a girl I know who went into one of the bathrooms during class, and was gone most of the time. Someone found her there, crying and barely able to walk. These turned out to be basically normal happenings, one involving girl problems, another involving a problem with medicine, but they became a basis for my story, haha!
The other is based off of three prominent things. One is the song "Alone with the Sea," by Hurt. A very unheard of band, but absolutely amazing, and that song really struck a chord with me, so part of my story is based off of those lyrics. Another inspiration was the movie "The Village," the idea of an isolated small community. And the third thing is a concept I've always thought would make an amazing ghost/horror story: where the main character, rather than be the typical character, is someone who is half insane, someone who knows horror in his life and who is a writer, and therefore isn't actually afraid of the things which are happening to him.