How do you get your inspiration

[DirtyHaven]

To tell the truth, I have no idea where I get the inspiration for some of the stuff I write/draw. The idea for my Yoruichi x Soifon fan fic just came to me all of a sudden. Out of nowhere, I got the idea to write an erotic story about those two and I started developing the idea in my head. The next day, I got to work. Although it's rare a sudden idea like this actually becomes something concrete.

I'm sometimes inspired by the music I listen, but that usually applies when I'm drawing. With writing, not so much. I guess music can give me some image in my head that I then try to copy on paper. Either it end up being something like what I saw in my mind... or then not.

[Windrider Shiva]

Two main inspirations: video games and music. Music for the thematics or basic ideas, video games for the storytelling, pacing, and action/adventure/fantasy sides.

Though both are somewhat interchangeable. I recently got into Scandinavian folk/Viking metal, which sparked ideas for the whole Norse warrior idea I'm exploring with my new original story. Moreso than video games on this one: I just put a battle-themed song and there we go, bloody fight scene. I could get that from games easily (cue Skyrim) but nope, music is the way to go for me, at least for this story.

Same with the fanfics I'm writing to on and off - couple songs from the band is all it takes. Also not hard to write slash when the band is renowned for being very comfortable with each other.

[Aysha c.c.]

If it turns me on it motivates me, if it makes me laugh it motivates me, if it has a great story it motivates me.

Right now I am writing a Transformers Prime story as I am sure many of you know. The story is so erotic and funny I spend half the time I'm writing it turned on and the other half laughing my ass off!

Beyond all of that It has what I think will be a great story line with what I hope will be a great OC that won't be "Mary Sue"

Well anyway I am so well motivated that the story is practically writing itself.

I write in complete silence, no music, no tv, nothing but my imagination and my keyboard!

That's me.

Edited October 8, 2012 by Aysha c.c.

[Cuzosu]

I get my inspiration pretty much everywhere. Sometimes it's from a story or book I've read, sometimes it's a movie, sometimes a video game.... Often it's a conversation with friends or my bf, too, and music I think is a given. And randomly I'll look up quotes on a subject (just one word, any word, that stands out to me at any given time, and I'll find either a quote book or a site for quotes and search that one word). Strange and motivating things I find....

To a degree I write to please my readers (reviews inspire me because they're awesome), but at the same time I have this quirk: I cannot make myself write any character in a way I see as OOC. It's like dragging fingernails down the chalkboard of my brain; it just doesn't work, it makes me wince, and I wind up erasing it all and then patching up the resultant mess.

One particular bit of inspiration was a combination of hilarious and unfortunate (I curse myself because originally my story Soaked supposed to just be a one-shot for a friend who'd recently gotten back in touch, and it's so far from that it's not even funny).... Anyway, I was writing my Final Fantasy VII story Soaked for a friend, and Reno decided he wasn't getting enough attention so he had me add a few bits about his antics. Well, one of them was a list of disasters that made a mockery of "The 12 Days of Christmas" - song, not movie - and when the two friends who read that series first responded, both begged me to write something with that parody. So I was trying to find a way to connect the two stories - and let the guys flip who topped for once - and Reno sticks his head in again and mopes because he's not in a relationship and therefore isn't getting laid regularly. So now what had been intended as a one-shot is a chaptered story in 3 series, one of which includes Christmas music parodies (Reno's version of "Jingle Bells" is explicit; he started singing it to me in my head while I was in the shower)...and there's going to eventually be a side series of one-shots to connect into this trilogy, all about a different threesome. It's insane.

If you're interested, some of the quotes which have inspired me recently are as follows:

"I've got to follow them - I am their leader." - Alexandre Ledru-Rollin

"I was born modest; not all over, but in spots." - Mark Twain

"My specialty is detached malevolence." - Alice Roosevelt Longworth

"In Chinese, the word for crisis is wei ji, composed of the character wei, which means danger, and ji, which means opportunity." - Jan Wong

"No one provokes me with impunity." (Or, in Latin, "Nemo me impune lacessit." It has the translation in my quote book, too.) - motto of Scotland

"(Courage) a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it." - William T. Sherman

"I am not absent-minded. It is the presence of mind that makes me unaware of everything else." - G. K. Chesterson

"When the mind is thinking, it is talking to itself." - Plato

"It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes. It takes more gut and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own." - Jessamyn West

"It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half-rude." - Norman Douglas

"Lord Birkenhead is very clever but sometimes his brains go to his head." - Arthur R. M. Lower

Also thinking of searching for quotes to do with 'hangman' recently...have yet to get around to it. (Ehh, so I'm morbid.... It makes the dark side of life more entertaining.)

[banesraver666]

I usually listen to music that I think would relate to the story, or I stew about the idea for a day or two, and if it's good enough, I'll write it in a (untouched) notebook.

[Dr_Jackal]

I get inspiration from the strangest places. Well, okay, the places themselves aren't strange, just the circumstances, I guess.

For instance, I'll end up seeing a movie or tv show with a friend that I'd never normally watch, like, something I don't think I'd be interested in. And then a particular character, setting, situation, etc. will become a muse.

Music, of course, is a given.

In situations where I feel a lack of inspiration, I've found it quite helpful to just start reading other authors works. Many times, I've read someone else's fiction and thought to myself, "Yeah, that's an element I'd like to incorporate in my work, I just never really knew how to go about it." Or, "Hey, that's really cool. I'd like to include something like that in my work, but maybe take it a step further." Taking a break from your own writing and getting into someone else's can aid you in overcoming those nasty blocks.

Last, but not least, seventhsanctum.com can help you churn out some interesting ideas. I found that link in another post somewhere in the forum--I can't recall who posted it originally, but to that person I give thanks, shoutouts, and much love.

True. I feel the same way a lot of times. After reading Deep Sleeper by Jawelik I was instantly hooked and that made me wanna write/keep writing an ATLA fanfic I had started around the same time. It may have actually inspired me to write it, but I can't recall for sure now.

Unfortunatly i got some sort of weird bug in my brain and almost never manage to get ideas to come out, often they just keep rolling inside my skull and eventually fade in the sands of time; but often what leads me to work (as much as you can call "work" just planning everything out without ever producing anything physicly) on story ideas is when an idea for a RP start getting too complex and plot driven to work as an RP and i "promote" the concept to a story, that and when repeating fantasies get structured and start sprouting histories and all sorts of non masturbation fodder details; a few times though it also happens the classic fanfic way, while watching/reading some original material or afterwards and realizing openings for adult situations, or simply feeling aroused by the looks of characters or the situations they are in etc.

I'd written some things after watching The Hunger Games and inserted a character I'd made into their world, but I recently moved and left the notebook with those stories in a friend's basement. It's weird how stuff can just come to you "randomly."

Edited December 30, 2013 by Dr_Jackal