Dec 2018
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Dec 2018
Jan 2019
Maps
Dec '18
1

I feel like I just get ideas in my head because I daydream so much. I've been publishing "Vows of the Sentinel" on Tapas and it's a story I've been writing for about 4 years. At first I just had the idea of the start of the plot line, and then I sort of figured out how their story might end, and in between ideas just come along as I write. Sometimes you just have to take an idea and begin working on it. It will develop as you go. I've literally had chapters that I'd planned out accordingly, and ended up with new chapters filled in because my own writing gave me new ideas. I've also had to research a lot for my story so that what I'm dealing with is accurate (I've got military themes and no military experience. But I've learned a lot about the army LOL).
I've also found it easy to work with dreams. If you ever have a dream where you think "That was really interesting, I wonder how it would have ended." you can start running with things like that. But usually my ideas start and are very unfinished until I begin writing, and my imagination begins to take over.
Or even conversations or things that happen in life. I've added things I've experienced to my own stories.
(I do reach writers block occasionally, but sometimes taking a few days away allows for you to regroup and feel ready to dive back in again).
And as mentioned above, I get influenced by music. I literally have songs that I feel relate to my story and lyrics within those have brought out new thoughts.

GesuGesu
Dec '18

I base off a mixture of pre-existing tropes and work from there. I may follow a formula I already enjoy or throw in some unexpected twists, but I always start by combining 2-3 tropes such as "magical girls, smart-dumb pair, GL" and then build a story.

I know of one manga artist who actually plays a game where she flips through a dictionary and lands on 3 words, then must make a short one-shot based on those words!

alanphabetology
Dec '18
Kittosaurus

I do love it when inspiration suddenly hits like this! Sometimes I find a small trigger like a well worded sentence or a cool sounding name brings up loads of awesome imagery in my mind and from there my mind is just going mad with the possibilities!

alanphabetology
Dec '18
MrSpuds

That's cool, I really do think sometimes the best ideas are ones that 'I'd like to read' or something i'm yet to see! I guess it's true when people say the best ideas are ones that you wish you'd came up with!

Sean
Dec '18

I get my ideas from my nightly dreams and nightmares. I like to put them to good use instead of scaring the crap out of me.

lartianmartian1
Dec '18

I seem to get most of my ideas from listening to podcasts/music, or watching Youtube videos, or in real-life conversations with people. Just random tidbits a person says or does that inspires little things, even if the topic in question has nothing whatsoever to do with my current story (but can certainly flesh out characters and concepts all the more). I get more visual inspiration from shows, movies, other comics and art and stuff. Naturally :smile:

daeofthepast
Dec '18

I like reading/watching anime with unusual plot set ups as they tend to inspire me the most. They usually get my brain thinking “but what if THIS happened instead of THAT.” And I like getting myself into that brainstorming zone >:3

ariOOF
Dec '18

I listen to a ton of different music, and most of it is repetitive for a few weeks until i forget about it.
Why is music relevant to this conversation?

Because my #1 source of characters, scenes and novels themselves comes from the music I hear on the radio or listen for about a week.

My Writer's Camp entry is a novel that branched from the title and song "Natural" by Imagine Dragons. It morphed from an idea about humans in an end-of-the-world situation to a group of robots years after the end.

The characters of the novel were (In story order) inspired by songs such as:
Jonas Blue - Rise (though the character morphed to not suit it in development)
ZAYN, Sia - Dusk til Dawn
Selena Gomez - Back to you (I actually heard all these songs up to now back to back on radio and didn't know this one until i found it on youtube)
Lady Gaga - Bad Romance

As for my other novel, that needs some renovation,, I actually don't remember its inspiration.
Some other of my works have been inspired by mythology (an abandoned BL plot, my current work im going to be likely publishing) or daydreams (an old GL I had on Tapas, Liberosis. Now deleted.).

MK_Wizard
Dec '18

Honestly, they just come to me when I least expect it or when I feel the world of webcomics is missing something. When I get an idea and see everyone has yet to do it, I tell myself "I'm not going to wait for someone to do it. I'm going to be the one to do it". I take pride in this unique approach.

RyzaCobalion
Dec '18

As weird as it may sound but most of my inspiration came from my dreams whenever i went to bed. At first started as something i find weird that was happening during my days in high school then suddenly they kept on coming and coming to the point i found it annoy but then i decided, "why not write it down?" and so i did. and from what i got turned in my hobby of writing stories. Although i didn't immediately published it because whooo boy did it need a lot of tuning before i finally published it. Other inspiration came from listen to music or watching shows. Sometimes from books from classes ....-_- even though i really hate some classes.

NanettesClouds
Dec '18

I just try to think creay tiv lee.

For realzies though I like to try and start off with something thats really really dumb and then fix it up from there until I think it's good, it's always easier to edit something til its good than it is to come up with a great idea.

For example, an initial idea might be something really stupid like "what if flies could talk?" and then I'll mull it over in my head for a good while until it develops into something less dumb. Perhaps in its final version it's a psychological horror story about a guy who suddenly can hear what flies are saying? Or maybe it's a goofy animal slice of life with a fly-person as a protagonist? Maybe I'll do some research on flies to find out an interesting fun fact that could spin off into it's own set of concepts (They only eat liquids! Maybe the fly guy is on a juice cleanse, or they're an alcoholic bartender?)

Eventually after mulling it over long enough I'll have something that I might wanna actually put in the hours/weeks/years to turn it into a real thing, and during that process of making this initial idea into a comic I'll probably come up with even more ideas for it, and for other future projects.

So many people shut themselves down before they even give their ideas a chance to develop, because they think they're dumb or that they can't make a thing about XYZ. The truth is is that no idea is good or bad inherently, it just depends on the execution of it. If you make a comic about an alcoholic fly man it will look really really different from the version that I make. That's just how creativity works.

Aetoras
Dec '18

Music and art are two things that inspire a lot of my ideas.

Rasp
Dec '18

I mostly get angry at the way other stuff does things so I steal all their ideas put my own spin on them rework it til its unrecognizable and try to work it into a project I'm already working on. I also tend to beat ideas until they become gradually less stupid and cringy as others have mentioned.

vfinnigan
Dec '18

Getting new ideas is pretty easy. I get them from people I meet. I got the idea to write The Real Women of the US Military from all the remarkable women near and dear to me whose service has gone largely unrecognized on account of them being... women. Few people shake their hands and thank them for their service. Often, when they wear a tee shirt or hat showing the branch they've served in, people assume that they're military wives or girlfriends, not themselves veterans.

And some times the people I meet do more than passive inspiration. The family of the late Air Force Major General David Sawyer personally asked me to write Tiger on the Storm.

16 days later
alanphabetology
Jan '19
Rasp

I hear ya! The ol' beat it into shape until it feels coherent is a method I often fall into myself :slight_smile:

alanphabetology
Jan '19
MK_Wizard

That is a great way of doing it I reckon! My friend makes games and always tries to make something he wants to see in the world. Gotta think that's doing everyone a service by making so many cool things.