When You Can't Think of a Novel Setting, Find Ideas from Original Works

If you have a theme or a scene you want to write but can't come up with a setting, why not try using an original work as a source of inspiration?

Adaptation

For example,
Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights"
is reimagined in modern Japan in
Minae Mizumura's "A True Novel".
Changing the time and place of a setting, or modifying minor dialogue and characters, is also called adaptation.
Shakespeare's works have also been adapted into various plays and films.
For instance, the adaptation of "Romeo and Juliet" is "West Side Story".

Writing a Sequel to an Original Work

Minae Mizumura wrote a continuation of Natsume Soseki's unfinished posthumous work "Meian" (Light and Dark) titled "Zoku Meian".

Spin-off

This involves writing about a side character.
Nobuhiko Kobayashi wrote "Uranari," featuring the character Uranari from Natsume Soseki's "Botchan" as the protagonist.

Other Shifts

Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" has a setting where someone goes to sleep in bed and wakes up as an insect, but this was shifted to waking up as a monster in "Kaiju No. 8," which is currently airing as an anime (as of summer 2025).

A work that shifts the title of "Kaiju No. 8" is Kamimura's "Kaiju Hachiko".

Kamimura has also written other novels with shifted titles, such as "Soso no Free Koi".

Basically, by changing
when (modern day, Edo period),
where (in England, in Japan),
who (adult male, young girl, monkey, cat), with whom (with a human, with an enemy, with a monster), whom (a friend's dragon, a subordinate monster),
what (a school, the world, global warming), into what (into an insect, into a monster),
how (through deduction, through science, through superpowers),
why,
what happened,
from the original work, I think it becomes easier to find attractive and different story settings.

This is a bit of a tangent, but
"Attack on Titan," "Kaiju No. 8," and "Dandadan" share the setting where the protagonists transform into what they thought were their enemies. "Evangelion" is also similar. Things like this are interesting.
It might be interesting if a student who was in conflict with a teacher swapped places with the principal. Maybe I'll write that someday.

As a recent trend, buddy stories between humans and strange beings like dragons, monsters, and yokai seem to be popular all over the world.
Regarding works that shift the original, there is already "Bungo Stray Dogs" for a buddy story between Mori Ogai and Elise.

Let's discover an interesting shift, write a super interesting novel, and get the readers excited!