A few months ago, I was at a panel chaired by Derek Landy, author of my favourite children’s book series1. He talked about how he comes up with ideas using a metaphor that has stuck with me.

He told us to imagine a child’s bedroom, covered with posters of things the child has read or watched or enjoyed. Books, TV, movies, songs, anything. As the child grows up and becomes a teenager, they add new posters. Soon they run out of wall space, and have to overlap posters on top of each other. Now they are an adult, and the posters are many layers thick.

Sometimes, the posters get ripped, or a corner peels off, and reveals an old poster behind the newer one. And so forms this tapestry of all a person’s interests and influences; and sometimes these interests and influences combine in new, exciting, unexpected ways, and that’s how you get an idea.

For me, this metaphor really hit home. I truly believe the best way to become a writer is to consume a lot of other media. Ideally books, but anything narrative works. I know a lot of authors inspired by video games, or anime, or music, or history. I also know that I will never write anything that doesn’t have just a hint of the TV show Supernatural, because I’ve spent so many hours of my life watching it that its posters take up a whole wall in my metaphorical bedroom.

The idea for my current book on submission came about when I watched the D&D movie and the Netflix How to Blow Up a Pipeline movie in one weekend, and then thought about how Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows changed my life as a 15 year-old. The book I’m drafting is a mixture of The Hunger Games and a non-fiction book I read about the Catholic Church, plus Tamsyn Muir’s Gideon x Harrow (iykyk).

In the publishing industry, we call these influences ‘comps’, and use them for pitching, because it can be easier to sum up a book by referencing media people already know. At the moment, the publishing industry (at least in genre fiction) really loves a ‘high concept’ book, ie something with a unique hook that can be summed up quickly. Influencer Alexa Donne pitches her books as Jane Eyre in space. Tracy Deonne’s Legendborn is pitched as a blend of Arthurian legend and southern Black culture, with a bit of City of Bones thrown in. Bill Wood’s recently released Let’s Split Up is described as Scooby Doo meets Pretty Little Liars.

I’m lucky that I prefer to write these sort of high concept books anyway. I think the more unexpected the combination of influences, the more creative I can be and the more fun writing the book is. Whenever I’m stuck for ideas, my solution is to consume some more media and see if any things can be melded together in a sort of creative Frankenstein’s monster. The more unnatural the combination, the more it might make a prospective reader stop and think, what?!, the better.

I’m sure other writers have other ways of finding inspiration—this is just what works for me. If you feel like it, comment below the last two pieces of media you consumed and think about what story might be created from that combination2…