Kia Garriques

I have always held the strong belief that there is no tool more powerful to a person than their imagination. I mean, think about it; your imagination is the one place where anything is possible. It is the point of production for our dreams and nightmares; it can transform even the most boring and banal of situations into exciting and far-fetched scenarios (most of which, we tend to keep to ourselves!). The imagination can transform the ordinary to the extraordinary, as if by magic.

One thing which has always struck me when reading a particularly gripping and powerful story is, just how did the author come up with this material? At times (and I am sure you have felt the same way also at some point) I find myself flabbergasted at how intricate a story can be; how stories are woven together to excited and delight readers and throw curveballs at every twist of the tale.

By the time you have the last page read and the cover closed on some of these books, you feel like you need to catch your breath and have a lie down, they are so exhaustingly wonderful! I get my inspiration for my stories from the characters and the tales played out in my dreams, which many people have found peculiar, and so I became very curious to find out where other authors find inspiration for their writings.

It seems that I am not the only writer to be inspired by dreams. Indeed, Frankenstein came to Mary Shelley in her sleep, and so terrifying was his effect, she knew he could form the basis for one of the most terrifying ghouls in literature. Recalling the moment that she first envisaged him, she wrote: “When I placed my head upon my pillow…I saw — with shut eyes, but acute mental vision…the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together…” The next day she decided she would create the Frankenstein tale around this nightmare, declaring: “I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others…”

Fans of the Twilight series and the handsome Cullen clan won’t find it hard to believe that Edward first came to author Stephanie Meyer in a dream. She recalls how her dream unfolded in a meadow, where a normal girl and a “sparkly” boy were deep in conversation. Meyer was struck by the words and sentiment of the vampire boy, who was explaining to the human “how much he cared about her and yet at the same time how much he wanted to kill her” that she became overwhelmed with inspiration to write their story.

Sometimes, characters just seem to breeze into one’s mind. Indeed, this was the case with one of my favourite authors.

I have always greatly admired JK Rowling and the magnificent world of Harry Potter, and so I was very curious to find out where she got the idea for this famous wizard’s world. It was during a four-hour delayed train journey to London that Rowling says the story of a boy attending a school of wizardry came to her “fully formed”. She was so inspired by the idea of this new world that she began writing as soon as she got home and, driven on by the comfort her story brought her in the aftermath of her beloved mother’s death, she poured every ounce of dedication and hard-work into creating it. It certainly paid off!

One of my favourite inspirational stories is that of Cassandra Clare, author of the hugely successful Mortal Instruments series. Clare revealed that the idea for the first novel of the series, City of Bones, came to her when she accompanied a friend to a tattoo parlour. Observing a set of criss-cross patterned footprints on the ceiling of the parlour, Clare imagined they were the prints left over from “some fabulous supernatural battle [that] had been fought there…” Never having written a book before, Clare decided to write down the story which had been conjured in her mind upon sight of those simple markings, and see where it took her. She then built the story of Clary Fray and the demon-hunting ‘Shadowhunters’ into a series, which is a firm favourite in the young adult fantasy fiction genre.

It is so inspiring to discover where all of these authors got their ideas for what have gone on to become best-selling novels and series. Not only do these anecdotes prove just how powerful the imagination can be but they also prove that inspiration can often come from the most unexpected places. There are billions of stories out there in the world just waiting to be created, crafted and honed, and it is up to us to discover them.