How did you come up with the idea for your current WIP?

@joy-caroline OOH! Yes! So much fun!

K so my current WIP is Destiny’s Murder, first book in my fantasy series. Actually this idea all started with a single character (well, two actually lol)

Ahem.

I was watching an Authortuber named Savannah J Goins, and she knows so so so much about animals, so she has some mythical creatures in her books that are based off of real animals. So she was doing some animal Q&A videos to help others with their animal characters, and I was like “Aww man it’d be so cool to have an animal character!”

One of the animals she used was a sugar glider, so my brain went to a creature similar to that (this may not be in order lol), and with the little creature came this character.

A curly blonde haired girl, who lived at a circus. I was like “OH MAN I LOVE THIS” But at that time I was currently on a WIP (that is put to the side until further notice *foreshadow at perhaps a future project lol* so I set it to the side, not wanting to get too unfocused on my current project.

So, last year, towards the end (probably after July or sometime within those months after) I realized this current WIP had flopped on me and I wasn’t interested in it anymore. So eventually I decided to take *break* and work on something different.

Sometime after that I was looking at cool names with Pinterest photos (totally suggest that for those trying to come up with a new story idea or names, so much Inspiration, tho some of the pictures are immodest, so discretion advised.) and I found the name Arabella and Gwenyth. So I asked ppl which they liked better for a main character that had popped into my head, and the winner was Arabella.

Thus, Arabella was born. I already had the name November wrote down with some other name ideas I’d discovered to come up with a new idea and knew I wanted to use it sometime so eventually November came about, but I believe I remembered my original circus girl and her pet.

And that was when everything started coming together. (Which the story has changed some obviously) But, the original idea was a girl (Ara) who was in charge of protecting fantasy lands though she didn’t want to, and the first land was a circus world.

And then the story changed into what it is now!!! (And the sugar glider creature became a fennec fox.)

@joy-caroline Oy, that’s a good question. *mind goes blank* How in the world did I come up with the idea for BAD? Or TMNL? Yeah…those origin stories are pretty boring. Let’s seeeeeeeee…

AH! Here’s an opening for me to talk about Daylight, my 9/11 short story.

I actually got the idea from one of my favorite songs, “Sky Is Falling” by Lifehouse. It was written after the events of 9/11 and partly inspired by it…but that’s beside the point. Point is I wanted to write some aesthetic stories based on some of my favorite songs, and SIF was one of the first I thought of.

Of course I wanted to go the 9/11 route, because I feel like there aren’t many stories about that (I may be wrong…) and because I just got this picture in my mind of the sunrise outside a hospital window, casting shadows on the wall. (From the line: “I watch as the daylight crawls/past the shadows hanging on the walls”.) Hence the title, obviously.

From there, I came up with two characters – Sylvie and August – and a plot that could squeeze into 4k words. I’m about halfway done with it now and pretty pleased with how it’s turning out. There’s something about having something tangible that inspired your story, a link to it, stuff like that, you know – mainly since most of my stories literally just came out of the blue or are products of overthinking storylines to the point where I couldn’t even tell you what inspired it in the first place.

@joy-caroline I do like to talk about how I get my ideas. XD

Okay, I’m going to be open here and talk about something that I’ve never talked about with my writing friends before. Most of y’all know about the novel I was writing called Behind the Blade, Without the Wings. But what you didn’t know is that I got the idea for that novel LAST YEAR, and so not much development has been done to the story. So, I’m pausing writing it and instead, working on my old WIP called The Black Cat.

The idea for The Black Cat (as most of my stories are) started with a character. But actually “The Black Cat” was originally a girl. She was a spy and a side to character to an old story. THEN one school day back in the fall of 2017 when I was bored with schoolwork, I started getting an idea for a spy story. But, I decided I wanted the MC to be a guy, and then I was like “what if this tells the story of Cat’s (the girl black cat) father?? Like how he became ‘The Black Cat’?” And that’s where the story started for my WIP.

I hope you get ideas you’ll love, JC!!!!!!!💗 And basically, the only tip I have is to ask questions. LOTS and LOTS of questions. 😉 I’m wishing you the best of luck as you search for ideas!!!!!!!!!!!!!🍀 You ROCK, girl!!!!!!<33333

@joy-caroline It’s so nice to be able to relate! 🙂

You’re very welcome!!!!! Glad I could help!!!!! <3

A lot of times story ideas just pop into my head or are inspired by something I read or watch. But for the current book I’m outlining, I tried a method Abbie Emmons shared on her YouTube channel where she takes inspiration from a bunch of her favorite stories (it’s not copying) and I really liked it! Here’s the link to the video. 🙂