Shards of a Mirror

Inspiration from many elsewhere.

There are a lot of places you can look for threads, ideas, and seeds to cultivate, to turn into something bigger and bolder. I think it's sometimes something that doesn't get talked around a lot; there is often a line between “inspiration” and…well, ripping off something else entirely.

I think we should talk about that before, to a point. Show how the sausage gets made, so to speak, and pull the curtain back. Let's talk a bit about what's inspired my first novels, as an example.

A story beyond good and evil

The original version of the story of Beyond Good & Evil put together several initial inspirations, sort of sourced from what I was consuming at the time.

• I was in a bit of a period of learning about a number of the repressive, closed-off regimes of the world, like the old Soviet Bloc and modern North Korea. So there was a thread of that, exploring trying to escape that cage and its bars.

• As mentioned earlier, Magic: The Gathering was an inspiration, with the story of the Scars of Mirrofin block at the heart. That thread was mostly pulled, even if the name of the protagonist stuck around.

• The idea of a sea of clouds and archipelagos in the sky was definitely pulled from video games. The two main ones were The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean. Neither one was at the core of the plot, but it was more setting inspiration than plot inspiration.

As time went on, those threads shifted and morphed, with new bits coming into play.

• Dragon Quest VII was a story I got a bit from, the idea of a trapped god being not what people came to expect. Stories shift and contort as time flows, and the truth disappears with enough effort. I suppose the old Soviet-era memory was there, too.

• The religious organization behind Aracoras started to take on overtones of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the Mormons), and I figured leaning into it made things richer and deeper.

• In general, though, a lot of Japanese RPGs tend to question gods and divinities, and that's always interested me. So, a lot of that dogma questioning mixed with my philosopical leanings and learnings.

• There also was a bit of my childhood baked in. I grew up in Europe and got to experience a lot of cultures. I wanted to bring a bit of that adventurous heart to my story, that sense of discovery and adventure.

It's not just about borrowing the elements one story, beat for beat. It's about filtering it through your mind and your analyses, taking that raw material and refining it into something more than what it was.

That said, sometimes you just need a simple skeleton. Writing to market (and quickly) often calls for a more streamlined structure, something to build off of rapidly and cleanly.

I do have a story I’m trying that's more “simple”, so we'll see how it goes. You can still put yourself in there, and I definitely try to, but trying to use too many flavors muddies the final product at times.

For my first story, though, it evolved over a decade, and a lot of different things went into it. So here we are!