A Brilliant Idea!

 Howdy you Tempestuously Avid Spectators!

Got a question for ya:  Are you a writer?  If so, where do you get your ideas?  ...Ok, I got two questions for ya.  Do you get people ask you that?  THREE!  I got three questions for ya!  Bet ya didn't expect that!  Because NO ONE expects the Spanish Inquisition!  Hey, if you're gonna steal, might as well steal from the best, right?  Four!  I got four questions...ah, never mind.

One of the most common questions writer-types get asked is "How do you get your ideas?"  It doesn't seem to matter whether you write short stories, novels, comic books, sitcoms, plays, movies, or RPG adventures...chances are you've been asked this at least once.  I know I have.  This has spawned this little essay which I like to call:

A BRILLIANT IDEA!

(That's What I Need, A Brilliant Idea!)

Well, I don't know about you, but I can't get away from ideas!  

I get ideas from the books I read, the shows and movies I watch, the games I play...the list goes on and on.

Sometimes, I'll watch a movie and wonder how the story would be different if the hero had made the OTHER choice a half-hour in (or an hour, or whatever).  Suddenly, it's a different story.  

Or, I wonder how the story would be different if the main guy was this OTHER character from this other story.  

Sometimes you get silly fan-boy fantasies like...what if Fafhrd and Grey Mouser met Elric?  Or...what if Conan was let loose on Middle Earth?  Or...what if you put James Bond and Jason Bourne (hey!  They have the same initials!) in the same story?  Would they be working together, or on opposing sides?

Sometimes you get an idea for a situation, not a whole story.  Sometimes you just get an idea for a character, or at least the start of an idea for a character.  Like I said when I was talking about Mutant World, I saw the pictures of those characters and used that as the starting point of who they were and what they were about.

I get a lot of ideas from different RPG supplements.  But then, that's what they are for.  Little adventure scenarios, weird and sometimes cursed magic items, mysterious locations, the barest seeds to spark an inspiration and grow your own adventure.  And they can be re-used and re-interpreted in different ways, even different genres!

Check it out:

A runaway princess learned the secret to undoing the terrible secret power of the evil wizard-king.

This could totally be the premise of a thrilling sword-n-sorcery tale starring Conan, or a sprawling high fantasy epic like Lord of the Rings.  Then again, it could be the set-up for Star Wars.

Sometimes you're forced to be creative.  Some time back in...I guess the 90's, TSR published a gameworld for the Dungeons and Dragons game...the boxed set was titled "Red Steel".  The short version (and probably not the fairest description) is that it was D&D in the wild west.  The land was suffering from a curse (three, if ya want to get technical) that get everyone magic powers...or mutations depending of your POV.  

This sword-n-sorcery in the wild west premise intrigued me...to this day I'm not sure why (I was never really into westerns).  But suddenly I wanted to write a fantasy/western.  Due to copyright reasons, I couldn't use their geography, so I made my own world by doing a sort of alternate-history thing.  I came up with a town called Sovereign, in the Nevada territory, and I came up with a witch named Persephone Bliss to explore it.  It came out pretty well, I think, and it did receive some positive responses from slush readers, but positive enough to make a sale.  Now, the first and (so far) only story, Persephone Bliss and the Journal of Emerson Thrarn, is currently available only in The Adventure Sampler, a free gift given to those who sign up for my mailing list.

So where do you get ideas from?  EVERYWHERE!  The media you consume, the experiences you've had, the places you visit...  Everything and anything can spark a flash of inspiration, and usually pounce upon you when you least expect it.  The best you can do is try to figure out which ones are the Good Ones and try to put them together into a reasonably passable and enjoyable story.  

It ain't always easy.  But that's the goal, and I'd better get back to it or these stories will never get done!

Until then, I wish you all...

Good Adventuring!
Timothy A. Sayell