inspiration

[Seth son of Tom]

what are the best sources of inspiration?

 

[Vix]

Haha, it's funny. I just wrote about inspiration (or what I find inspiring) in my blog today.

Anyway, a ton of things I find inspiring for my stories. But I think the most prolific one for myself would be music. I hear a lot of people have trouble writing while listening to music, but wow, I can have certain songs just write whole scenes for me. I love it. Music can capture and dictate moods so easily.

 

[mythique890]

I'm inspired by things that have happened in my life, other people's stories, myths, music, and random brain flashes as I fall asleep. Actually, the thing that helps my writing more than anything else in the world is to grab a friend who pretends to be willing and talk to them about my story for as long as they'll let me (my best friend will let me go for hours at a time, she's great). Talking about it is how I generate (and reject) ideas, solidify characters, create the plot, and find and destroy holes in my plot, magic system, world, etc. I feel bad for my oldest daughter, because I know if I'm still writing when she's old enough to understand more (she's 4), she'll become the person I force to listen to nonsense for hours on end.

 

[Emeria]

I often listen to music (usually without words or only with words in a language I don't know) when I write because it can help me get into the mood of whichever character I am writing at the time. Two things that I do when I write. First, I carry around an old notebook everywhere I go. If I hear any interesting bits of conversation or see something that might go into a story later, I write it down immediately. These things rarely get used, but sometimes it helps make the story more realistic. Second thing I do is I talk aloud about whatever I'm writing to whomever will listen. Usually it's one of my siblings. Reading my stories aloud to someone also helps catch any spelling and grammar mistakes that I might have made (I type with my eyes closed so I can see/hear/feel things better, so I tend to make a lot of little mistakes like that when I'm writing).

 

[Noda]

I always write based on what me dreams show me. I'll change a few pieces here and there because I can never exactly write what I see.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

I get inspiration in two main ways:

1) Brainstorming. I do this by writing long paragraphs of stream-of-consciousness, usually when I'm trying to figure out how to solve a problem, or how to establish what's going to happen next in a chapter/story. As I'm doing this, ideas will come up and I just write them out, then go back and flesh it out by writing possible elaborations of what might happen.

2) Things just come to me while I'm not even thinking about writing/story. I was listening to "Vicarious" by Tool the other day, and something about the song's discussion of our primal need to experience death and destruction (vicariously, as it were) made me realize that one of my main characters needs to have a more brutal underlying core. He's a sarcastic, charming guy on the surface, but when the shit hits the fan he can become really brutal and bestial.

Usually when I write, I do it to music that makes me feel strong emotions. Lately I've been listening to the Inception soundtrack a lot, as well as Metallica.

 

[Hëradïn]

I've been feeling particularly uninspired as of late. I get ideas and such to add to things in my stories, but I just don't feel the drive to write like a usually do. I'm hoping this will pass by November first...

usually I'll be inspired by reading, music and other things. I don't know maybe its the cold.

 

[Johnny Cosmo]

Inspiration and motivation is something I really struggle with. In education, as a musician, and now in writing. I do have bursts of creativity, but it comes out in such a mess that I just can't face sorting it out.

 

[Lord Darkstorm]

I find that after I have been writing long enough, I don't look for inspiration, but good ideas that have potential. Might be that the good idea is inspiration...I don't see it as such. I look for things that would make a good story, and try and make a story of those things once I find them.

 

[JCFarnham]

Inspiration can come from absolutely anywhere as long as you let it.

For example, I visited a famous coastal walled town and castle recently called Conway or Conwy if you're Welsh. Now the main train line into or through the town run directly passed one wall of the castle, to the point where if you're walking around the walls you get some serious rumbling. Which got me thinking of a rich character, the most important person in a city, who happens to have a train line or something equally noisey running mere metres away from his abode. Which I inturn decided to appropriate into my sci-fi setting, as someone like a councillor or politcal representative, who should be important and well loved but is ridiculed for the positioning of his high tech, billion/whatever dollor abode next to such a noise ridden area of the city.

Inspiration ladies and gentlemen. Let yourself be inspired. Let yourself live? Wonderful stories are absolutely everywhere if you're looking for them!

 

[The Blue Lotus]

Well lets see here,

The work I am doing started as a way to voice my thoughts on social injustice(s)
The evolved after my marriage went boom in a fantastic messy way, to me looking for answers in regards to a higher power... that led to college. Go figure!

Once I had found school, and my voice, I decided that a book directed at tearing apart myths from around the world would be kinda cool, that quickly changed however. I have since found that I wish to combine my need to speak about violence aginst others based on misinformation, and my love of Fantasy, as well as my 'oh I can't see it so it is not real' mind frame with my religious studies.

Sometimes music will help me get through a long night of plot work, but usualy it is sleep that helps provide the backdrop for my scene. Dreams asleep or awake are usualy where my tales begin to get woven.

If I find if I am having issues with a section a long hot shower followed by a nap usualy do the trick.

 

[Xavorn]

Hello,

Like Vix & Blue Lotus said, I find music as one very nice source of inspiration - Let it be added, that for me, Nightwish (especially Dark Passion Play -album) 'guides' me to making some scenes, runaway ones for example.

Other than that, dreams (oh if we could remember all of them...) and naturally the 'tweaking' of what others have done... Don't get this the wrong way though.

-Xavorn

 

[KingArthur]

Agreed. Anything from a story from a homeboy or a song, newstory or question posed to yourself that the story would answer i.e. What would happen if?. Things like that would inspire me most days.

 

[julienlegault]

I find music is a blessing and a curse. First, as a musician, I can find it too engaging in itself, instrumental or vocal. Second, I find it impacts your work. I've used that for effect before: I wrote a novella years ago that was only written while I was listening to a particular jazz CD, and the tone carried through. However, if I change music too often while writing I will come back to find it jarring in tone when put together.

For inspiration, all I need is a pot of tea and peace and quiet, and I let my mind go. Somedays are harder than others for ideas, but I always enjoy some free writing to get my mind moving.

 

[Philip Overby]

What is weird for me is that sometimes I find inspiration when I'm writing something else. So I find inspiration from myself, as dumb as that sounds. But other than that, I find inspiration a lot from news, history, TV, movies, all sorts of random things. Even if I go for a walk I may get inspired.

Of course I am of the camp that doesn't believe in writer's block. I think it's excuse. As of recently I only get flooded by ideas. I would say turning 30 has amped up my output significantly. Now that I've started writing manga, I find a whole new pleasure in writing. Of course I like writing other stuff too still, but I honestly love writing manga. I hope to one day go into comic books and graphic novels as well. Loads of inspiration to be found from them!

 

[julienlegault]

Of course I am of the camp that doesn't believe in writer's block. I think it's excuse.

Hear, hear. I've noticed that with age you gain the patience to keep working through it, which is the only way to cure it.

 

[InsanityStrickenWriter]

I think my main inspiration is simply that I want to entertain people. It's that base want that has given me my hobbies- unity web-game design and writing. And if I were any good at singing, stand-up comedy, or acting, I'd be perfectly happy pursuing goals related to them also, (I'm probably not, hence game design and writing). Occasionally I stare at the guitar sitting in my bay window and consider learning to play it- but it's less effort having it exist as a prop.

Obviously there are other reasons too... I like to think up bizarre worlds filled with bizarre people. And I like to take the mick out of my bizarre worlds and bizarre people.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Hear, hear. I've noticed that with age you gain the patience to keep working through it, which is the only way to cure it.

I think there might be two kinds of writer's block.

1. You literally can't think of anything to write. This can be cured by stream-of-consciousness about a character, setting, or topic.

2. You can't come up with a good way to fix a story, character, dialogue, or prose problem. Even if you can unleash torrents of words, you still may not be able to figure out how to solve an issue in a satisfactory way.

I think most people mean #1 when they say "writer's block," but that's the easily defeated one. #2 is the trickier one. Sometimes it requires starting over (if not completely, then across a large portion of what you've written -- e.g. if you've written yourself into a corner). This is really difficult because people get so attached to what they've written, it's hard to throw it all away and start over, even if that's the only way.

 

[julienlegault]

I feel like this kind of block is also workable, though. I'm more familiar in tackling this with music composition, but the more practice you do the easier both of these get. Sometimes there is something unworkable and you must re-write whole sections or characters, but often times it is just a matter of continuing through it. I always wondered why accomplished and practised artists never mention writer's block and I believe it's because blocks of any kind can be defeated with some hard work and determination.

I feel like the getting-too-attached problem is much more of an issue. At the end of the day, you can't be too attached. If you are, you are most likely writing for yourself and not the reader anymore.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

There's a phrase I saw in screenwriting: "Kill your babies." This is the ability to take those "great" little bits you create -- a line of dialogue, a funny situation, a character -- that don't fit into the story, and to ruthlessly eradicate them for the greater good of the story. It's a hard thing to do -- "But that's such a great joke! I have to figure out some way to keep it in the story..." -- but it's necessary.

A good exercise to get used to this kind of thing is to write a whole chapter. Finish it, edit it a bit.

Then delete it.

This is a damn hard thing to do. I haven't even done this, strictly speaking. (Although I did rewrite the first four chapters of my WIP from scratch, but I still had the originals for reference and incorporated many elements from the originals.)

But being able to throw away work you've done -- especially when you think it's good -- is a very valuable skill when it comes to writing.