Where Some Of My Favourite Book Ideas Came From

Inspiration comes from anywhere. Ideas can be sparked by overheard conversations, movies, pictures, questions, or random facts you pick up in your everyday life. That’s part of what’s so exciting about inspiration. You never quite know where it’s going to come from, or what form it’s going to take when it arrives. My inspiration for ideas in my books come from a real variety of places, and have inspired everything from characters, to whole magic systems. Today I thought it might be fun to share some of my favourite ideas I’ve used in my novels, and where they came from.

The Dragon Thief

Have you ever noticed how, in most typical fantasy stories, the elves are always the goodie goodies? They’re always so morally perfect, practically immortal, and have you even seen their hair? This fact occurred to me at random one day, and I got to wondering, what would it be like if instead of being the paragon of perfection, the elf character was actually a thief and an accomplished criminal? And thus the MC of my work-in-progress ‘The Dragon Thief’. She’s a long lived elf with magical abilities, and a penchant for stealing anything that isn’t nailed down, mostly just for the fun of it. Plus it did get me to consider the difference a sentence of life imprisonment makes when you’re essentially immortal, which is a huge part of her motivation throughout the book too.

The Crystal Tree (releasing August 1st!)

Aside from reading and writing, one of my greatest passions is music. I’m a classically trained singer and pianist myself, and have also been known to occasionally make my own classically inspired cover songs on YouTube. This great love of music is part of what inspired the magic system in my upcoming book ‘The Crystal Tree’. Here, everything in the world has a song only the magicians can hear, and when they sing these songs, they are able to perform great feats of magic, such as starting fires, healing people, or sending messages through the wind. It’s one of my favourite parts of the world building in this book. Also it’s so cool to be able to combine one of my other hobbies into my main passion of writing.

Blood Debt

The dystopian world of my work-in-progress ‘Blood Debt’ is based on a currency system where blood is used in place of money. It’s cool and crazy, and informs so much of the rest of the world building in the book. And it was inspired by a random video I was watching on the history of medicine and the discovery of blood typing and the refinement of blood transfusion. From there of course, the inspiration goes haywire, and I started wondering, what would a blood debt look like if it actually had to be paid in real blood, and why is the currency blood in the first place, and why is it so valuable, and what happens if you owe more blood than you have in your whole body? And thus pretty much the whole book came about because I like to watch medical documentaries sometimes. This is still one of my favourite ideas I’ve come up with to date.

These are three of my favourite ideas that have come from the most random of places, and became a big deal in my books. Just writing about these books makes me want to go back and work on them some more. Well, apart from ‘The Crystal Tree’ which is finished and releases on August 1st! But I’d love to hear from you. What are some of your favourite ideas you’ve used in your books and where did they come from? Is there an idea that you’re just waiting to work into a book one day? Let’s chat in the comments down below!

Liked this post? Sign up using the form in the sidebar, and receive all future posts in your inbox. Never miss another update!