Writer's Un-Blocked: Getting the Idea

Where do you get your inspiration? You wanna know where I get my ideas for writing? Simple: I steal it. Well, some of it…

Now, hold on. Before you go calling the cop on me, here is what I mean. I steal things to put in my books from everywhere and everyone. Bits of conversations, personality trait… physical features… like having large ears…

That’s not to say I’ve never had an original thought in my life, just that I believe that an author writes from his or her own personal understanding. If J. K. Rowling had never learned about witched and wizards, as in she was completely oblivious to that concept at all, we never would have had the HAPPY POTTER series.

I’ve heard people say that they don’t like to use “real” people for their writing, while I do. “Real” people are the kinds of characters I want. It’s more believable to me when I use certain traits and characteristic from my friends and family because they are the most “real” characters I know. And it’s those “Mary Sue” characters (for those of you who don’t know what a Mary Sue character is, it’s a character who is very common to others) for example Bella Swan, with her helpless, damsel in distress attitude and having Edward, a handsome superhuman, saving her all the time… it’s characters and events like that which keep us reading, because it those common characters and event with their own twists that makes the story real.

Stealing things from around you makes your writing more believable, because who and what is more real than the things and people you know?

Where do you get your inspiration?