Katawa Shoujo Forums

Jeez I've been away for awhile. Although it doesn't look like the forums haven't changed too much.

Anyway. I somehow managed to find a fanfic I was working on before I disappeared, and decided too work on it again. While I was working on a chapter I kind of found myself asking a question that I couldn't quite answer, but I thought might make a good discussion topic: Where do you get inspiration for your fanfics? Obviously there is KS but I'm more wondering if any of you have been inspired by books, movies, or maybe something that happened to you personally as a basis for your fanfics. This may seem like a bit of an odd thing to ask, but I think it could lead to some interesting discussion.
(Btw. Sorry if there is some terrible grammar here, but I'm kind of stuck on my kindle at the moment, and the auto correct on here tends to screw me over.)

-LS.

Having far too much time on my hands, so just random thoughts which occur when I'm doing nothing terribly important. Randomly thinking out scenes multiple times in order to better examine things from a few different frames of mind.

That is often how I come up with my fics as well, but I'm pretty sure the one I'm currently working on was slightly inspired by the movie, The Miracle Worker. Which is about Helen Keller. Although my character isn't deaf she is blind, and I started the fic a few days after I watched the film for the first time, so I guess it had a hand in it.

Also, my zombie fic was inspired by the walking dead even though it doesn't even slightly follow the rules of the show.

I think of the KS characters as if they were real people, and in my spare time I play games in my head — I ask questions about these people and try to give realistic answers, things like 'what is their favourite food, and why?'

Inspiration is my worst enemy. I've written before, I'm writing a story of short little bursts right now, and I have an OC, but...well, I'm just gonna be honest, he's a wee bit of a Gary Stu. Absurd family situation, near-flawless English speaker, thankfully no grimdark past, not a Hollywood disability or depiction thereof.

He's basically supposed to be somewhat like Lilly, but at the same time somewhat different. Plenty of friendly acquaintances, but few close friends. The plan was to have him basically be Hisao's bro friend, in a minor AU that diverges further over time, where he replaces Kenji in the dorms and is part of class 3-3. I've never been able to decide whether I wanted the route to be an OC love route with one of the other characters, or just have him be Hisao's friend who replaces Emi as his fitness buddy.

I can't figure out what to do, nor can I find the inspiration to sit down and just write anything with this character. I've used him in a Roleplay or two on another roleplay forum, but his character isn't very fleshed out, and like I said, I can't find the inspiration to sit down and write things.

When I do get small bursts of inspiration, it's usually from reading other KS fanfics, actually. And the source material is good inspiration. Looking at the lessons each route tries to impart can give me an idea for a general way I'd have liked my OC's path to go, especially considering Hisao's utter lack of close male friends.

azumeow wrote:When I do get small bursts of inspiration, it's usually from reading other KS fanfics, actually. And the source material is good inspiration. Looking at the lessons each route tries to impart can give me an idea for a general way I'd have liked my OC's path to go, especially considering Hisao's utter lack of close male friends.

This is true. But I like to think that after Yamaku, Hisao maintained his friendships with Mutou-sensei and Kenji. You'd have to ask why and how, and that in turn would lead you to more inspiration...

brythain wrote:

azumeow wrote:When I do get small bursts of inspiration, it's usually from reading other KS fanfics, actually. And the source material is good inspiration. Looking at the lessons each route tries to impart can give me an idea for a general way I'd have liked my OC's path to go, especially considering Hisao's utter lack of close male friends.

This is true. But I like to think that after Yamaku, Hisao maintained his friendships with Mutou-sensei and Kenji. You'd have to ask why and how, and that in turn would lead you to more inspiration...

This idea is what inspired me to create the character of Yoshiro for Developments. Given how brief a time they would have known each other, I think Hisao only really gains any kind of friendship with Mutou on Emi's route, when they start the science club early on. As for Kenji, while there are a couple scenes where something like a bond might be in the process of being forged, I honestly think that evolving their relationship in the direction of actual friendship requires moving a pretty heavy load. It kind of annoys me that so many fanfics default to having him as Hisao's best / only male friend. I see it as more likely for him to reconnect with Shin or Takumi than to keep in touch with Kenji, and there's an extremely high likelihood that he forms a greater friendship than either of those once he's at university (Directions is one story I recall doing an especially good job with that).

As for inspiration in general...really, I'm still working on my first fanfic, but that's as good as anything . For me, my original goal was to answer the questions I had about Lilly's route in general. As I wrote, I continued to ask myself that question: what would/should happen next? What would happen further on, and how does where they are now connect to that? Like brythain, I think of the characters as real people, in a real place, in real time, and once I have both those things in my head the answers come forward. That's why I often say that I have to go into my "Hanako-space" or "Emi-space" for each chapter -- I'm trying my best to take what I know of them and figure out what they would do, or in some cases would have done, to bring them to where they are, and where they're going. I suppose it's kind of hard to put into words, but that's the gist.

For me, inspiration is a rare occurrence, but when it does happen, I can easily write down page after page non stop for hours on end. Sometimes it's completely random, triggered by menial things, like that one song I've listened to hundreds of times, or a mere trip to the convenience store. Others times I just read or watch something, and my brain goes "Hmm. I can see this happening differently".

As for my current KS fanfic, which I may or may not publish, I began working on it last week. Inspiration came from a random song I found on youtube. Within a day I had written a basic plan for an OC, and by now I have at least two scenes done. I don't know if I'll continue it, though. I have this bad habit of blocking up after two or three updates, and my stories usually end up abandoned after a couple of months.

dewelar wrote:As for inspiration in general...really, I'm still working on my first fanfic, but that's as good as anything . For me, my original goal was to answer the questions I had about Lilly's route in general. As I wrote, I continued to ask myself that question: what would/should happen next? What would happen further on, and how does where they are now connect to that? Like brythain, I think of the characters as real people, in a real place, in real time, and once I have both those things in my head the answers come forward. That's why I often say that I have to go into my "Hanako-space" or "Emi-space" for each chapter -- I'm trying my best to take what I know of them and figure out what they would do, or in some cases would have done, to bring them to where they are, and where they're going. I suppose it's kind of hard to put into words, but that's the gist.

I think that's the hardest part of the work: getting into a very distinguishable, very specific character mindset that is consistent and true-to-form. Writing the Rin arc wrecked me for days, writing the Misha arc was so alien that I found myself having to get into Shizune-space to understand Misha-space. I suspect that for some of them, I have been subconsciously inspired by strong female heroines as voiced by writers such as Ursula le Guin and Julian May.

The plot often follows the character, but not always. Sometimes, there's dead space where you have no idea what a character might be doing. This is where a large character ensemble comes in handy, because somebody is always doing something sometime. You can then play off the 'active' character to see how the other characters might respond.

As someone who started to write a fanfic last month and then put it on hold after a bout of discouragement, this thread is a huge help to me. Thank you dewelar and brythain, for the excellent advice!