Chronicles of the Dragon Queen

This week Jess poses the following question and like Wildcat, I wondered if I could find an answer, but not for the same reason. I'll explain. First, a recap of the question.

Writer’s Weekly Question #5:

Like I have observed, story and character ideas can come from many different sources. Consider your body of work thus far and discuss the most unusual or cryptic inspiration for a story of character.

I'm not sure if this is cryptic enough, but a lot of my inspiration comes from my dreams. I dream a lot and very vividly so sometimes I'm not sure if a story comes from my dreams, or my dreams are from a story. Reading that line again? Confusing, I know, but I have a tendancy to live in my head most of the time and my fantasy world tends to infiltrate my dreams.

That said, I do remember one dream in particular that I ended up waking from and writing down as a short story. So you could say it was a two part inspiration, the dream whichwas inspired by a chess set that I have. It's pewter dragons and wizards and such that I got for Christmas. I think I was talking about the chess set to someone and ended up dreaming about it.

BONUS QUESTION:

After discussing the most unusual inspiration, tell us how you developed the idea into a workable character or story line. Was the story or character divergent from the original idea, or did you end up staying close to the original source? Did you end up grafting other ideas from other sources to the original idea to create something new?

This particular dream hasn't been changed yet. I wrote it as I remembered it and decided I'd change it later if I had to. Most of my dreams have these disjointed elements, but the premise I think is a good one. It involves a strong female character, a curse and this chess set. Fantasy and it's also terribly romantic, which is why it might never see daylight. I called it Dragon Chess. But then again, who knows?

I get a lot of my story ideas from dreams, the NaNo book from last year, Gryphon Rider as well as the one from this year, as yet untitled.

And speaking of NaNoWriMo, at the end of week 1, I have 12,404 words. It's strange how this free-form kind of writing makes characters and plot twists just appear on the screen. I was writing a scene, not really sure why it was there when this character just popped in. Which ended up tying into the sub-plot that I have going and the past/present parallel story. It all happened in a matter of seconds and when it did, I was like "woah." Talk about a rush.

At first, I wasn't sure about NaNo this year. I wondered what the point was, but I think the book I'm doing this year will be better than last. There are all these new elements that are cropping up that I didn't expect. It's like I'm along for the ride and what a ride it is!

Here's hoping I can keep up the momentum. Regular sacrifises to the Caffiene gods will go a long way to ensuring that.

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