Story Inspiration
Well, I thought I was going to be talking about three act structure earlier this week, but unfortunately, a book I’m reading changed my opinion on it, and story structure in general, so I’ve decided to skip it. Instead, I’ll talk about writing inspiration. I’m a little hesitant to discuss this, mostly because I don’t think it is something which can be easily taught. In fact, I don’t even think it is something which I am very good at, since it sometimes feels like I come up with one idea every year, and half of those never bear much fruit. But it is important to learn how writer’s get inspiration, and even if nothing I say works for you, at least you’ll know what doesn’t work.
The first difficult question is where does our inspiration come from? Or, perhaps phrased better, where do our ideas for stories come from? One common answer, and a really bad one, is from story archetypes, which I have mentioned before. You can see these archetypes in play every day, from movies to TV shows to the latest pulp novel which selling like mad in bookstores right this minute. All of these take a common story structure, like the fantasy epic, the sitcom, or the disaster flick, and then add in some different element (“It’ll be like The Day After Tomorrow except this time let’s destroy New York with a massive tornado!” or “Picture House, but it takes place on a submarine during the cold war and the House character is gay!”). Most of these kinds of ideas are very bad, and quite un-inspired. The question we now have to ask, is where do original ideas some from?
This is a hard question to answer, because it’s difficult to imagine a story which hasn’t been told in some form already, and which doesn’t already have an archetype associated with it. So then, maybe this is the wrong question. What we are looking for is a story which will grasp and communicate a new perspective of the world around us, and how humans interact with that world. This at least frees us to use archetypes, as long as we utilize them in creative and ingenious ways.
On the other hand, this pushes the real question back another step, and it is still unanswered. Now we need to know where that new perspective comes from which we want to write about. This, though, is a much easier question to answer. Every day, as a person, we see things that we like or dislike, things which cause us to think about people, places or things, or we see ideas in whole new ways. These insights are the material of stories. What the writer has to do, in order to be inspired, is grab hold of that feeling, and never let go of it until it is on paper, such that someone who reads it can grasp that insight as well.
Thus, we must not only learn how to see as a writer, in order to spot the queer, insane, or mysterious that we witness around us every day, we must also be innocent and brave enough to allow those ideas to retain their magic for the length of the writing process. I sense that I am drifting into platitudes, so I’ll try to state this simply. The writer must possess three abilities. She must be able to see things which spur her interest, she must be able to commit those things to paper in the form of stories, and she must be able to retain her interest in the thing all the way through the writing process. The first is difficult to teach, but can be learned. The second is easy to teach, but difficult to master. The third is something every writer must have, but which no one can give them.
Exercise: Write down in a sentence each, the following things: a) the last place which surprised or inspired you, b) the last time you saw someone change their behavior, and c) the most important thing to you in your life at this moment. You should have a place, person and thing. Which ones inspires you, if any? Why?
