Where does my inspiration come from? Here’s a few places:
- Music.
Music is by far my biggest muse. It’s so influential to me it gets a mention in my author bio. When I say I obsess over out of control playlists, I’m not kidding. I even have a scale of measurement for how strong, long, or writable a story is based on playlist length. Short playlist = no idea. About 50 songs = decent idea! 100 or more = we have a novel buds! Then there’s epic playlists exceeding that number, like my moth novellas, my Alice in Wonderland retelling, Masks series, and Pyotr book, the latter of which is, no joke, over 500 songs. This is incredibly appropriate to be the longest playlist by far, and I anticipate Pyotr to be a duology with both books exceeding 90k words.
- Media.
Other books, TV, movies, anime, video games. Sometimes a tiny thread of inspiration begins from something very small, a what if, an interesting line, a favorite character. I’m one to draw parallels to the media I’m consuming at the time I’m working on a WIP. Some of my biggest inspirational media have been: Persona 5, The Ancient Magus’ Bride, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, and Twilight. I’m big on retellings, and have several retellings drafted or on the WIP docket, so classic books are also a big inspiration, as well as an easy source of ideas for Easter eggs and other tidbits to include in the story.
- Research on hyperfixations.
Research informs and inspires a great deal of my writing and world building. For example, I love moths and cryptids, so when I’m researching potential stories, everything from animal habits and environment to cryptids traits and lore can influence the traits and character names and settings of my stories. The first bits of inspiration for my Contemporary Cryptids series came from the idea that there are different types of moths, therefore there could be different types of mothpeople. From there, looking into the mating habits of moths inspired the idea of a moth mating festival/rave/party.
There are so many little Easter eggs I doubt any one person could point out every single one!
I think this is one of my favorite things about writing, how it all comes together from little bits to make its own unique thing full of dimension!
What are your sources of inspiration? Anything different from me? I’d love to know! Drop a comment or come interact with me on social media, @AmaraJLynn.
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Amara Lynn 