The first step in writing a book is always the inspiration; the book starts with the author becoming inspired to write their fiction book. That inspiration is what leads to character creation, plot line creation, and setting creation. Now not all books require inspiration for the setting as there are many real places that authors can use as a setting. The question that a lot of people struggle with when they decide to write a book is: how do I get inspired? Unfortunately, there is no easy answer as every single person is different and thus can or cannot draw inspiration from different things. For instance, some people might be able to draw inspiration from their dreams while others would find this area of inspiration not to be inspirational. While there are no guarantees when it comes to finding inspiration, one of the best and most over looked places to find inspiration is from fanfiction.

Fanfiction Inspiration

Fanfiction is when a writer takes the story and/or characters from a movie, TV show, book, comic, or other work and repurposes them in their own writing without making any profit. Fanfiction is a wonderful place for a new author to seek inspiration as there are so many different works of fanfiction that explore many different stories. When seeking inspiration from fanfiction, it is best to read stories that fit in with your intended genre or main idea. For example, if you are planning to write a book about magic wielding cats, then you would want to read the Warriors series fanfiction and the Harry Potter series fanfiction.

Where to Find Fanfiction

Some good places to find well written fanfiction to take inspiration from are FanFiction, Archive of Our Own, Kindle Worlds, and WattPad. There are also other smaller fanfiction sites that are specific to a specific work; for instance there are many smaller fanfiction sites that are only for Harry Potter fanfiction. The smaller archives are best found through the use of Google search engines. All you have to do is type in the name of the work you are looking for 'fanfiction from' and then the word 'fanfiction'; for example: Harry Potter fanfiction, Warrior series fanfiction, and/or Star Wars fanfiction.

Rules to Remember

The important thing to remember when taking inspiration from fanfiction is to only take inspiration - you do not want to end up plagiarizing any authors’ books or works of writing. You may be inspired by a fanfiction about how the war went badly and Harry received a super charged time turner so that he was able to travel back in time to when he was eleven years old and change the outcome of the future.

Then there are some changes you are going to have to make in order to make the concept your own; perhaps in your book your main character came into contact with magical catnip that propelled the character back in time accidentally and, instead of trying to change the future, your character just wants to get back home. In this case, your book would only be drawing inspiration from the fanfiction and not stealing anyone else’s ideas. So just remember, if you decide to use a concept you find in fanfiction, make sure to rework it and put your own unique spin on it.