Well, it is hard to explain. For the most part, they just come to me - I think of a character, I see a picture, I have a dream, I watch a movie and think things should have been done differently next thing you know I have a totally different plot.
When I am feeling really inspired it is more like someone is telling me the story and I am typing it, rather than creating it. It is like I'm hearing the story for the first time, the twists and turns can even surprise me.
These types of stories are mainly possible when I just sit down and start writing, the more I have planned out before I start the less smoothly it flows.
Though, while it may be more difficult when it isn't planned out when it gets later into the chapters, the biggest challenge with not planning is the potential to go off on tangents that are hard to come back from.
Inspiration can really be found anymore. One of the story ideas I recently came up with is about a mermaid, who hates humans. She sees them as killers and doesn't want anything to do with them, especially after her little sister was caught in a fisherman's line and killed. Until one day, a child from a ship wreck falls into the water. She happens to come across it, if it was even four feet in a different direction she may not have even noticed. She rescues the baby girl and takes it to the surface of the water. But when she gets there and sees it, the child reminds her of her sister and she cannot bear to hand the child over to the human barbarians. So, she leaves the water and goes on land. In this, my version of mermaids, when the air touches her tail they start to split apart, until she has two legs covered in a scale-like pattern of purple and blue. She covers her legs and raises the child as her little sister on land. All goes well until she meets a pirate, the pirate claims to know the little girl's family and says that he can take her and the little girl to them.
This is all I have for the story idea so far, but it is entirely inspired by my just playing around with Create-A-Sims with the new Sims 3 Island expansion. That is all it took and the story just started to unfold in my head.
Now, as time has passed I have discovered that I have a tendency to give my characters darker histories. Perhaps because it makes it easier to explain there strength of character, as well as their faults. But also because darker backgrounds tend to be more interesting.
Not all my characters have dark pasts though, and they vary in degrees. Another story I am writing the girl has a very light back ground. So light that she is ignorant and naive to the dangers of the world.
Where do you get your ideas from?
What inspires you?
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