I think I alluded to this topic of ideas generation before but I didn’t have enough material to actually blog about. But I think now I can start to talk about this in light of my recent experience of letting the WIP that I had been working on for about 10 years go and redevote my attention towards new projects.
Firstly, the twin sister story came about when I merged elements from my last WIP- the search for a missing younger sister- and this other idea I had of being kidnapped after getting off at the wrong bus stop. Of course, the later element got overwritten entirely when I decided to set it into ancient times rather than writing an urban fantasy set in modern times. This is the recycling part of this post. The autobiography part for this story came from the fact that I perceive the twin sisters as myself at different times- childhood me versus adult me.
As for the mage mother and daughter story, it turned out to be a strongly autobiographical story that surprised me. Basically, it somehow just felt like I had taken a personal experience and dumped it into a Chinese fantasy world. Also, I was working on both projects equally previously and this project at one time had overtaken the twin sister story as the project that came out ahead. But now, it seems stuck fast. So once again, my dominant project is now the twin sister story.
Moonlake's Fiction Space 