Novel Writing Inspiration?

Question

Ok so the wife has asked me to write her a story(not a short one a good long one) since she thinks i have a 'gift' for putting the words down once i get going. She has given me a rough idea horror/romance vampires you know all that good stuff, i just want to know where all you get your idea's from.

it's just going to be for her but if i had to say an audience then would be mature since if it's got vampires in then i will make sure there is some bloodshed some where ( i love gore )

Answer 1

The best way I've found to get ideas, expecially for something like vampires, and I have a whole little universe in my head dedicated just to them, is to simply take your notebook, walk outside (grab something yummy and red if you need to for hte extra kick) and close your eyes.
Embrace the night kinda thing, then once you've got it, since this is for your wife, go inside and give her a nibble. It should get your creative juices flowing around a horror/romance sort of thing, and you should get bonus points for all your research and hardwork :)

Answer 2

I would read books and watch movies that are the same genre before I start writing anything. Whenever I come up with a new idea that's the first thing I do for a few different reasons. One...so I don't do the same type of thing...and two, so I can put myself in the right mindset to begin.

I do lots of research, but I'm sure you won't need help doing that. Finding stuff on time periods and vampires isn't really that hard nowadays.

When I'm having trouble, like in writer's block...I'll watch movies of the genre again. Or I'll wok on my fan fiction stories. I love reading and writing fan fics. If nothing else, they improve my writing. You can tell how much improvement I've been threw since the first fanfic chatper I ever wrote to the most recent. It's almost like a different author.

And one other thing that helps me is music that I find inspirational. I have made a few mixes that I call a muse mix. They are songs that get my mind moving on story. Even if it is just instrumental soundtrack...like from Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia.

You will really just have to try things and find what works for you.

Answer 3

Keep a pen and small notebook by the sink, so you can jot down anything that comes to you immediately. Start keeping a journal. Sit with a blank page one hour a day. Try writing your "autobiography." Who was your favorite relative when you were growing up? How did your best friends change over the years? What was it like learning to read? Were you afraid of the dark? What was your favorite color, and has it changed? Put in as much detail as you can. Go from one year to the next, if you can. Just put in everything you can think of. Pick one personal experience from your life-- something that angered or embarrassed you, for example. Track down a copy of Dorothea Brande's Becoming A Writer. This book is full of great ideas on "getting inspired." One thing from it that sticks in my mind is how silence and routine help. You've already discovered this in your dish-washing experiences. You can't wait for inspiration. You have to find it, and you'll find it on paper with a pen in your hand.

Answer 4

A little everywhere. I do both fan fiction and regular writing, and it can be easier for me on the fan fiction cause usually the universes I'm writing the fan fics for gives me an idea where to begin.

One fan fic I've been doing revolved around one of the main characters, someone most folks would have hated and ended up doing the right thing in the end, going on trial to determine if the good they did out weighed all the bad. And I was thinking at the time "You know, folks really didn't care for this person, so what would happen if they were put on trial?"

Another fan fic was based around the idea of a character who was basically a comedy relief character writing down the adventures he and his friends had been through. Here I was thinking "wouldn't it be funny if this guy made himself out to be far more important than he really was on these adventures while having his closest friend constantly correcting him?" The character largely seems to usually be at the wrong place at the wrong time, kinda bumbling his way through things and often having to be gotten out of trouble by his friends. He's also kinda meek, not much of an adventurer, and certainly one who is hard to picture as the hero. So to have him making the outlandish claims about himself, only to have to constantly correct things because his work is being checked, just seemed so perfect.

A couple other fan fics of mine are based off a couple video game series I've played and enjoyed, both series leaving themselves open for a new game in the series that has yet to come. In the first the hero is left stranded at the end of the series while in the second the hero ends up traveling through time at the end of the series. So the natural thing for the first is how do the hero's friends go about getting them back. For the second I'd decided to have the hero end up going to fight in WWII cause it just intrested me to think about how they'd handle all the differences between their time and the war.

That's some of how things go for my fan fiction. But things are totally different with my non-fanfiction cause I don't have an already exsisting universe to play with. I like to do a lot of historic fiction, so I've got a lot of history to give me some ideas. Then there's pop culture to gain ideas from as well.

For example, one work of fiction I've got going is about a Civil War soldier and the reason he's fighting the war. I'm always reading and hearing various reasons soldiers fought the war, the wanted to gain their freedom, they fought because they felt the had to, they wanted to preserve the nation, to protect their familes, etc. I though it would be intresting for this guy to kinda be a little surly at first, refusing to explain anything, then have it come out that he was just trying to impress some girl. I realize now that the story was probably inspired in part by the M*A*S*H episode which Ron Howard was a guest on, but at the time I started the story it had been a little while since I'd seen the episode. Anyway, Howard's character was supposed to be a wounded Marine who'd lied about his age so he could win a medal and impress his girlfriend.

Then there was a story I started for a writing contest for Civil War Interactive but never finished and am thinking of maybe turning it into a novel or a story in a short story collection. I forget what the rules of the contest were exactly (I know it was to write either a piece of fiction or non-fiction, what I really forget whether or not the fiction side was supposed to be based on either a little known aspect of the heavily studied areas of the war or if it had to be based on a fairly unknown battle), but I did some studying and came up with a little known campaign during the war. So I decided to base my story on this campaign. I also decided to intersperse the story with the main character writing his wife. This again is an aspect that in part comes from the various M*A*S*H episodes where the characters write their family (or someone else, depending on who it is and the episode), but it also comes from some of the books and other material I have with soldiers letters home and the movie Glory (I happen to have the book, "Blue-Eyed Child of Fortune: The Civil War Letters of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw," that was used as a basis for the movie but I can't remember if I got it before or after I started writing this story, I think it was after).

Then there's sometimes where I providing the starting point for myself because of background info I've done on a character. I made the above main character an author after the war and had him write several books, for which I created both the title and synopsis for each. Recently I've taken my character's character and actually started working with them. And I've been influenced a bit by Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler, so I'm gonna try to have something kinda like their works, only instead of being set in the twentith and twenty-first centuries (look at their stuff, they seem to start in the twentith century and move on to the present century), I'm looking to set the main character's adventures in the nineteenth century.

Answer 5

First of all, if you don't like writing about vampires and stuff, it's definately not going to work for you. You have to write what you know.

Answer 6

here is a good idea.... its kinda rough but here you go.... look at homeless people find one and stare at them and imagine what they have been though to get that state.... they could have saved the world >from vampires< or whatever without any of us knowing it ....... and we cant even look them in the eyes.... it could be like a unsung hero type deal or whatever ... or you could just get some inspiration for them =)

Answer 7

it depends on the audience you are writing for. And my ideas usually come from dreams, or scenes that I see while I'm on walks and my mind drifts off.