Where stories come from

Sometimes people ask me where I get my ideas from. The truth is, I really have no clue at all; mostly, they just sort of happen.

Quick wisps of ideas come and go almost daily. I encounter something – a news article, a snippet of conversation, a song or maybe just cup of tea – and my head goes: “Oh, wouldn’t it be totally cool if……happened?!” Such ideas are usually immediately dismissed because they’re pretty silly.

There’s never really an absence of stories in my head. My first ever “novel” (In licht en schaduw) came to be because it was my own private bed time story first. And I still do that, making up stories before I fall asleep. Sometimes they’re just fragmentary, but usually they’re episodic, with a cast of characters and different locations and even a more-or-less coherent plot. Most of these stories are still not ready to be novelized, but I often pick a few small things to mix and match. Het Eiland in de Mist has come about this way, although most of those elements are reserved for the second volume.

This is more or less how Het Eiland in de Mist was thought into existence: before it was time to start thinking about my upcoming NaNo-plot, my bedtime story was based on the concept of a girl fleeing into the untamed wilderness with an escaped prisoner. They have all reason to believe that the authorities are chasing him, but along the way they find out that the real target is the girl. Who is she? What is she capable of that the government fears her even more than him?

After many thorough alterations, the girl became Nimue and the guy turned into Wolf. But I needed a reason as to why they were running, and from whom, what she was doing with a man like that and how he had managed to escape the Institution (The Asklepios Congregation, as they’re officially called). All of this slowly turned into the first book of the series, the one that I am currently writing. I also found that there was no room for Wolf in there at all, though Nimue will briefly spot him as an unknown figure in the shadows once she’s inside the Institution and trying to save Arthur. The absence of Wolf left me in need of a charismatic counterpart however, so I created Will, the character who will be key in the unfolding events.

How it all started! Creativity is a weird, weird process.

Fun fact: the whole idea of a dangerous runaway criminal happened because I had watched Kung Fu Panda. The antagonist Tai Lung is kept chained up in a highly secured prison prior to his escape, and I had some sympathy for him (though I thought the rest of the movie was mediocre at best).

Does anyone recognize this at all? Or am I the only one whose mind is a jumble of half-finished ideas, characters and not-quite-useable storylines?