: Re: How to come up with original ideas for stories? I seem to have several ideas for fanfiction novels. I'm working on a long fanfiction at the moment that's quite complex and I'm trying to

@Lengel543

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I’m a fanfiction writer myself who’s trying to break into original fiction, so this answer comes directly from my own experience. I’m not going to talk about how to generate ideas, because I know this has been answered elsewhere (one of which is linked in FraEnrico’s comment on your question). Instead I’ll specifically talk about how to use your fan fiction ideas to get you started on original ideas.

First, find out what it is that drives you to creating fan fiction. Fan fiction writers can be drawn to a variety of thing about the source material: the universe and world, the characters and their relationships, the plot and adventure and loose ends that were never tied up. For me, it’s definitely characters. When I watch a show or read a book, I latch on to a character, or the idea of a character, and my brain starts rolling with my own ideas to create their past, future, or behind the scenes stuff that’s going on within the context of the original story.

For example, one of my fan fics is a ‘how they met’ story about the characters Finnick Odair and Annie Cresta from the Hunger Games. As you might expect, the Hunger Games world is tightly built into the story. The plot doesn’t make much sense without it. In fact, the relationship itself was interesting to me because of this context. It’s what I consider a ‘good’ fanfiction – it cannot and should not exist outside of its canon universe.

Even so, as an exercise you can attempt to strip away whatever makes this idea relevant to the source material. In this case, I end up with what is essentially a doomed romance in the midst of a dystopian future. Now repeat this for all of your fan fiction ideas and compare them. What do they have in common? What are the recurring themes, settings, character archetypes? What do you like about them? What was it about the source idea that pulled your interest in the first place? At the end of this exercise what you have is an idea of the kinds of stories you are interested in writing. If all your fan fictions essentially boil down to star-crossed lovers in post-apocalyptic settings, then (if nothing else) you know where to start brainstorming.

Other times, I have an idea that I’m consciously or subconsciously interested in exploring, and I use the original work as a platform to build that idea. This is my idea of ‘bad’ fan fiction. It’s not that it’s actually a bad idea, or that I shouldn’t write it, or even that people won’t enjoy reading it. But it’s bad at being fan fiction because the idea itself is not necessarily relevant to the source content. It’s bad for me because I could make my own characters and setting to explore this idea– but instead I’m taking a shortcut and using somebody else’s.

As another example, I recently had the urge to write a fan fiction about two side characters from the anime Haikyuu!!, which is about a high school volleyball club. My idea was for a reunion between two of the female characters years later when one of them is becoming aware of her homosexuality. Before I knew it, the story had become more of a vehicle for some things I wanted to write about, in this case a discussion on sexuality and sexual agency. The idea I ended up with was not exclusive to those two characters and the backdrop of Haikyuu!! was no longer relevant. I could take the story right out of context, and it still made sense. It could stand alone as its own story.

It’s at this point you realise that what you have is an idea for a story that could be – but doesn’t have to be – a fan fiction. Have a look yourself to see if any of your fan fiction ideas are really just regular ideas in disguise. It’s taken me many years to get to this point, so don’t worry if you can’t. Essentially it’s the same as my other point: the bare bones of YOUR ideas belong to YOU.

Long story short, you are more than capable of creating ideas. Your ideas may even be more original that you realise. But you need to break them down and find out what stories YOU are interested in telling. That’s your starting point. Good luck!

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