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The most random thing to inspire you
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It's hard to say. Inspiration comes from so many places. I like to use situations or events I've experienced to help add realism to what I'm writing, which I think helps sometimes.
While I don't have any interesting story origin ideas, I'll share this one of how Stephen King came up with the idea of The Mist."King, in the Notes section in Skeleton Crew, says The Mist was inspired by a real life experience. While there were no strange creatures, a massive thunderstorm much like the one that opens the story occurred where King lived at the time. The day after the storm, he went to a local supermarket with his son. While looking for hot dog buns, King imagined a "big prehistoric flying reptile" flapping around in the store. By the time the two were in line to pay for their purchases, King had the basis for his story: survivors trapped in a supermarket surrounded by unknown creatures."
Per: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mist...
The only thing I think of when looking for hot dog buns are, "Where are the damn hot dog buns?" : /
What made you ask the question Bisky? Have you had a random idea from a random place ?
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I always get my inspiration from random places. Random places or dreams. I had an idea spring to mind for a scifi after one of my friend's kids was playing with a biscuit they'd nibbled into a spaceship shape.
Yeah. That's how my brain works xD
Most of my story ideas come from dreams. In fact I had a good one last night. I'm debating on whether I want to make it part of my serial story Grim or make it a seperate novel. Now that I think about it, I can probably do both. Anyway back on topic. I got inspiration once from a ceiling fan set on a slow setting. I was staring at one of the blades going round and round. I got an idea for a scene of another story from a pattern in some carpet. Sometimes I'll repeatedly drop a pen on a blank spot of paper to make random dots until I see a pattern emerge. Then I'll use that as inspiration for a scene or character. I do that a lot when I get stuck.
I was a first year Law student at the University of Adelaide, I drove down to a seaside town called Glenelg to pick up a girl from her private school and take her home, she was doing her final year. The boys from the local high school were taking the piss out of the girls and trying to look good. All the girls crowded round my bike in awe and Julia I think that was her name climbed onto my bike hockey stick and all and we drove away into the sunset. MANNY YEARS LATER that event was the inspiration for my book IN BED WITH JANE AUSTEN.
I was driving down the road once and saw a man standing in the median, reaching out and touching a tree limb. I was passing very quickly, so I saw virtually a still frame of this image and it got my mind going. Was the man communicating with the tree? Or the tree with the man? This became the genesis of a story called "Grassroots", in which all plant life on Earth, which turns out to be connected, decides to make contact with humanity and try to communicate with us. This does not go all that well.
Dreams, pictures, songs, news stories, people walking down the street, swimming in a waterpark. The initial inspiration for the one I am working on right now for Camp NaNo came from a website selling custom made special needs dolls.
What's the most random place you've gotten inspiration from?