Inspiration for Works

[clannadman]

Where do you get your inspiration for your games and stories from? Do they just come to you as a random idea? Do you listen to certain songs or go for walks and watch the sun rise? What makes your thought come alive and convince you 'This should be written down'?

Also, it's been a while since I've posted here so 'Hi everyone!'

[Applegate]

Do you listen to certain songs or go for walks and watch the sun rise?

Both of these, actually.

I also sleep and then get ideas just as I lie down, prompting me to jump out of bed and write. Very few of these are Visual Novel ideas.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

Where do you get your inspiration for your games and stories from? Do they just come to you as a random idea?

I steal them. By which I mean I take inspiration and ideas from all the art, games, and stories I have experienced, and try to distill the best parts into a greater whole under my hand.

"The key here is to be intentional with what we steal, to look at what the principles are behind the things that are successful, and steal those, rather than just a superficial copy.” ~ Jeff Veen

“It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done – and then try to bring those things in to what you’re doing. Picasso had a saying: Good artists copy, Great artists steal – and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” ~ Steve Jobs

And of course, my favorite quote that describes my "idea process":

"If you steal an idea from one person, it's plagiarism. If you steal an idea from many people, it's research."

Inspiration and ideas are easy really - a dime a dozen. It is the details and execution of an idea that matters.

EDIT: Grammar correction.

[redeyesblackpanda]

I do the same as LateWhiteRabbit.

As for the value of ideas, one of my favorite comic strip writers (Scott Adams) wrote a pretty nice post on it a while ago...
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/the_value_of_ideas/

[LateWhiteRabbit]

As for the value of ideas, one of my favorite comic strip writers (Scott Adams) wrote a pretty nice post on it a while ago...
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/the_value_of_ideas/

Nice article. He's so right. Execution is everything.

People told James Cameron that Titanic was a horrible idea for a movie because everyone already knows the ending - the boat sinks. But his execution of the idea overcame all that.

And there are only really so many story ideas available, and they've all been done. You don't have to come up with ideas. Millions and billions of people have come before you and thought them all up. All you have to do is look through that past catalog of ideas and pick some out. Your only responsibility is now to execute the idea again in the best and freshest way you can imagine.

[Sapphi]

I steal them. By which I mean I take inspiration and ideas from all the art, games, and stories I have experienced, and try to distill the best parts into a greater whole under my hand.

Yep, this is me too.

Why I am inspired, why I am compelled to write or draw after reading a book or observing a work of art, is beyond me. I know I can never replicate the thing I like, because to me the original is always the truest and best, and nothing I do will make it better. But for some reason I get an insatiable urge to do something like it. Maybe it's because I want to somehow share not just the good feelings, but my own personal good feelings I got from a work.

It is a little frustrating to be so easily inspired when you can't enjoy a book or look at a piece of art without restlessly fidgeting and thinking about your own projects though.

Do you listen to certain songs or go for walks and watch the sun rise? What makes your thought come alive and convince you 'This should be written down'?

I do not listen to certain songs, but I do listen to the radio an awful lot, and I tend to "assign" songs to characters or situations that I'm writing about. (If there are no songs that fit anything I'm writing, I'll do it with anime characters instead.) This leads to inspiration because hardly any songs ever really fit the exact thing I'm writing, so I'm forced to look at my characters and situations in different ways. It does not usually lead to new stories being thought of, but it does make me think things like "Wanted Dead or Alive by Bon Jovi is such an awesome song! I'd like to write a Western!" or "HNNGH Bob Dylan! Now I really want to write a story about social unrest and changing times!"

The thing that makes me think "This should be written down" is hard to pinpoint, but it's something like a rush of excitement and a stab of longing. It's a feeling like "I can't forget this! It must live on after I die! Quick, write it down!!"

(By the way, the basis for the story I'm currently working on came to me while I was quietly filing papers one December day. I don't think anything triggered it just then - I can't remember what was playing on the radio. But the main contributing influences were True Remembrance and the film Girl with a Pearl Earring, both for the lovely mood they set and certain tropes they had.)

[Gambit74]

I pretty much borrow a little bit of everything I like and mesh them together. Whatever doesn't fit or doesn't work together, I take them out and continue to hammer away at the big blob until I refine it down to its core basics.

In my case, I came up with the idea of a small secluded area where scary stuff happens to people in that area. At first it sounded plain and unoriginal, but then it turned into something else when I added my own spice to it; like icing on a yellow cake. Remembering a very interesting story I've read awhile back in one of my sister's books about the paranormal, I decided to go on the internet and do some research about the setting of that story. Once I finished, I decided to borrow the concepts and events of the legends surrounding that place and added my own twists to it, which is how I came up with my current setting and the details behind it. For the storyline and plot, I came up with them after creating all of my characters in order to connect them together somehow.

As for what convinces me to write the story down, it's when I get excited about the idea, and things I throw at it conveniently works. I tend to get excited easily at new ideas, so I like to take a week or 2 break from it and come back to it later to see if it's still as good or exciting as it was when I left it. If it is (And it was), I'll continue to throw things at it until I run out of ingredients. Once everything is in the pot, I'll keep stirring it until it all blends in together the way I like it.

[TrickWithAKnife]

I just have one game. The inspiration is strongly based on my real life experiences in Japan. I couldn't make it too close, because my real experiences sound far to unrealistic when written down.

[Hijiri]

My idea cycle basicly goes like this:
1-Play game/read book/watch movie
2-Get iPod and set to shuffle
3- Walk for about an hour

By the time I come back home I have probably cooked up a dozen ideas in my head mixed with everything I may have seen or read.

[Calissa Leigh]

From the idea fairy.

You get access to one from the same place you learn the super secret handshake to getting published.

[Camille]

I learned in one of my psychology classes that people are most inspired when:

1. driving
2. on a walk
3. swimming

And naturally, random ideas for stories tend to pop into my head when I'm in the car on my way home from work or taking a bath. I always have to rush to write them down, though if I'm in the car I tend to use a voice recorder instead. They're usually still a mixture of things I've read/seen/etc before, though, taking the best elements of everything I've experienced and liked.

I usually come up with 3-4 such ideas a day (that are remotely developed), but they almost all get killed/dismissed before I get a chance to plan them out further. XD I'm very good at killing ideas/plot bunnies that I know aren't realistically achievable or are not good enough.

[EternalDandelions]

I learned in one of my psychology classes that people are most inspired when:

1. driving
2. on a walk
3. swimming

And naturally, random ideas for stories tend to pop into my head when I'm in the car on my way home from work or taking a bath. I always have to rush to write them down, though if I'm in the car I tend to use a voice recorder instead. They're usually still a mixture of things I've read/seen/etc before, though, taking the best elements of everything I've experienced and liked.

I usually come up with 3-4 such ideas a day (that are remotely developed), but they almost all get killed/dismissed before I get a chance to plan them out further. XD I'm very good at killing ideas/plot bunnies that I know aren't realistically achievable or are not good enough.

and dreams too OwO

[Dakishimete]

I get my inspiration from three sources.
1. I draw or rather scribble when I'm bored and suddenly a wild character appears. I'm terrible at drawing but as long as I can see where something has hands and legs I can create a story for it. Then I build the world and the plot. When I get this sort of inspiration usually the whole story is centered on the characters.
2. Pictures of other people are great inspiration to me. When I stare at a beautiful painting a whole universum appears in my mind, then I fit a nice plot and create the characters for it.
3. Personal thoughts. It happens when I think about life, death and other stuff and I feel like expressing my thoughts in my work. Then it's the plot that comes first, characters and world later