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Im writing an essay on what inspires a writer, due in two days, and I need some feedback from, well, writers! so this is a chance to open a new thread as well as give me ideas for my essay, any help is appreciated. (just so you know, I ran out of inspirations after page 3.)
Posts: 240 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
I can't say anything inspires me...the ideas seem to emerge out of my subconscious mind and I take things from there. During work hours...out of dreams...out of that hazy state while I'm trying to get to sleep...while I'm working on another story...
They emerge at different stages of development, though. Usually if it comes out of a dream I wind up shifting things around. But, sometimes...Once I was washing out some shirts in the sink and, in between one wringing-out and another, a story popped into my mind, fully formed and ready to be written. Usually I'm not so lucky...
I am an artist, so if a particular image pulls me in, my mind will start to explain the story behind the image -- even if it's completely wrong. A Scene from a movie will stop me in my tracks, and take me in a completely different direction. The countryside, mountians, streams, rolling hills, and sprawling farms of my locale (Maine) will often play havoc with my mind. Sometimes I'll picture these things as battlefields, or hunting grounds, or scenery around religious temples.
Words can trigger my imagination, too. Scythians were a real race, but when I heard the word, a whole society winked into my mind's-eye. The details: customs, blood rituals, religious beliefs, fashion, heirarchy, and rites of passage filled themselves in.
posted
A hard question to answer. In fact, I think the question is crap. (No offense intended to anyone). The reason it's crap is I think it works backwards. If you keep your mind open, and your consciousness alert to new ideas, you'll see them. I've gotten ideas from tv, books, tabloids, real life. I really couldn't pinpoint any certain idea to any certain thing. What I do is try to keep myself in an "idea-collector" mode. I need to be open to the possibility of finding new ideas, then be prepared to write them down when I get them. I have lots of slips of paper with ideas, and I sometimes feel OSC is right, when a couple ideas merge, that's when I can write a story.
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But is the question regarding "where you get your ideas" or is it regarding what makes you want to write?
What inspires me to write isn't the idea, necessarily, and it certainly isn't the source of the idea/story. What inspires me to write is usually the character. When a character becomes so clear and strong in my head that he/she insists on being written about, THEN I am inspired.
dreadlord, there is more than one way for writers to be inspired, so don't just focus on how/where they get their ideas, even if you think that was really what the writing assignment intended.
RMatthewWare is right, though a bit harsh, in that the ideas are the easy part. (In fact, Jane Yolen based a whole Guest of Honor speech on that very thing. I don't know if it's available anywhere online, but she pointed out that for writers the inspiration needs to come in how they develop and express the ideas, not in finding them in the first place.)
posted
I'm a walking example of that. I have dozens upon dozens of ideas that would make brilliant stories if done correctly. Unfortunately, I only have a handful of those actually written down. After I finish my last exam (which is what I should be doing right now), I'll have plenty of time to work on several more.
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I find that stories come from random thoughts and ideas; inklings generally of a “what if” situation. The thoughts and ideas keep nagging during my free time, building and expanding until I MUST sit down and write, sometimes in the middle of the night.
But it’s not always that simple. Some stories flow in a so naturally that I wonder if I’m being aided by a muse -- like my most recent ‘natural’ one: a man comes home after a 12-year absence to find someone with his name living his life. It came so easy I was done in 2 days.
But others, the forced ones, are slow to develop even after visualizing the entire story. I promised a friend to write a children’s story about the adventures of a copper penny. It is still a work in progress even though the outline was finished four months ago. Posts: 147 | Registered: Mar 2007
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Especially Talk Radio and Current Events. Talk Radio is great for doom and gloom scenarios that are great prompters for story ideas while current events lets you know that nothing is impossible as long as it is plausible.
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I've lost two posts already to that wretched "Clear Fields" button, The hatrack was down to long I guess and my motor memory is rusty. Anyways the first post was good, the second was silly involving the Squishy Bearz hurtling towards the sun, let's try again.
Anything can inspire me. Even losing posts. Inspiration I have, what I need is umph. My biggest problem is never finishing a project.
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Everything. The shape of a plant will get my mind wandering onto something totally different that will form into a scene or a dialogue exchange. Particularly, creativity that I enjoy.... I'll like something about it, but take the idea in a totally different direction. Or I'll like something about it but hate X, Y, Z (ex. I love superheroes, but I never liked the over-the-top stuff--the aliens and giant robots of X-men, the flying and powers that have no scientific basis for something that is supposed to be built on genes.... so I wrote Judgment to be what I wanted X-men to be but had never gotten--though the movies ended up getting close to my aim).
Posts: 26 | Registered: May 2007
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I should add that, though my ideas don't seem to come from anywhere in particular, a lot of my own life does get wrapped into what I write. I remember something that happened to me, it seems to fit the story, it goes in.
(I remember working on one story, and remembered an incident from my childhood involving a friend that moved away, moved back, but somehow stopped being my friend in the process. I gave it to the character I was writing about, to try to demonstrate something about friendship---though it seemed less traumatic a thing for me than it did for the character I gave it to. (Maybe it was traumatic.))
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I get ideas from all kinds of places, but most of them develop from characters who interest me. A character will pop into my head and I'll wonder where he's from, what interests him, what's going to happen to him, and then his story will start to unfold in my mind. A lot of the ideas I get come when I'm doing mindless tasks, like cleaning my horses' stalls (I actually do a lot of good "writing" there - thinking through scenes, working out dialog, etc.). I also get ideas, or work on them, in that fuzzy time when I'm about to fall asleep, or when I wake up in the middle of the night (consequently, I don't get a lot of sleep! Working on the ideas is a lot more fun!).
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I get a lot of ideas right before I go to bed when I'm thinking about my day and what I wrote (if I did) and what my next steps are. Also a lot from reading history and biographies and thinking about people's lives. Recently some from reading the Bible in school especially weird Rashi, Ramban, and Midrashic commentary.
Posts: 39 | Registered: May 2007
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90% of what my writing is from is from past drug use. (ho the days) it is not fun afterword.sence i came to afghaistain there is a lot of new things to write about. Gunning the .50CAL or the M240 or even my M249 and you aare rolling through a town and all the kids are yelling at you asking for food water or toys and you have none makes you think of new ideas and new stories. like the one i am working now on werewolf's in the army and trying to keep a low profile. but during deployment they show their true selvs. Rommel Fenrir Wolf II
Posts: 856 | Registered: Nov 2006
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Most of what I want to write about is near-term science fiction. So, most of the ideas I come up with are based on normal everyday life experiences, or things I hear on NPR. Not kidding, NPR is a treasure trove of 5-30 min interviews with people like beekeepers who are working on the problem of the Colony Collapse Disorder that seems to have struck many beehives in the last 6 mos. That's a FANTASTIC start for an apocalypse story, sadly not for the apocalypse story I've just become posessed with since it involves the survivors getting by because they grow their own food. (If all the bees were gone, nobody would be growing anything.)
My everyday life stuff gets me going too. Just that sort of - "Huh. I wonder what it would be like to be doing this 50 years in the future, with xyz cool technology (that I probably heard about on NPR, LOL) and this same group of people."
Because of the kind of thing I like writing about, I often look back to events in my past, situations I've been in, and try to play those themes out in the near future in space.
Truthfully, characterization and plot/storyline are my weak points now - I have ideas that keep hitting me and forcing me to write about them (they're really dictatorial, these ideas) but I can't get them into polished, packaged stories yet, because I still need to work on developing interesting story arcs whereby you can get to know these characters who exist fully-formed in my head, but don't seem to get themselves to paper all alone. Funny, that.
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