Please, do go on....

[j_cheney]

AKA, yet another note on process....

I'm thinking about inspiration today.

At least in writing terms, I'm never in short supply here. This is the easiest part for me. Ideas just float by and get sucked into my brain when I inhale.

They aren't plot bunnies, though. They are, perhaps, character bunnies, situation bunnies, setting bunnies, vignette bunnies, but not necessarily plot bunnies

So, some examples,
I have a few setting bunnies, mostly related to my reading. I'd like to set stories during the influenza epidemic of 1918 (I wonder why?) or during the Longest Night in London. There are hundreds of character bunnies hopping around in the braincase. And vignette bunnies? I record these when I get the chance, cluttering my hard drive with little scenes that may never see daylight....but that I haven't got time to focus on.

None of those are bona-fide plot bunnies, complete with a head, body, and a fluffy tail. Real plot bunnnies are pretty rare.

So how do I come up with stories?

"The Stains of the Past" was generated out of two character bunnies from The King's Daughter. "A Hand for Each" came from an earnest desire to write a pirate story for Shimmer's pirate issue. Took me two months to come up with a plot for that. "Touching the Dead"? Ultimately that was inspired by a 'science' note that appeared in a magazine about 15 years ago....Glamour Magazine. Don't laugh.

I read a lot of magazines. "Masks of War" was inspired by an article in Smithsonian, "Afterimage" by articles in Popular Science and SciAm. "Taking a Mile" originally came from the book The Physics of Star Trek and a PBS special on transgenics.

I took a different apporach with the dragon stories, wanting to write some stories that had 3 factors.
1) Epic fantasy
2) Contrasting the western concept of fire-breathing dragons (bad) with eastern dragons (generally benificent)
3) that involved a family, not just one or two heroes....a family that fights...evil, or whatever.

I knew I wanted to do those things, but didn't really have anything particular in mind. Then along came this:

In that same magazine, I found this:


I'd cut them both out, and they lay there on the table, looking up at me, side by side. And it hit me. There they are....a little girl and her....aunt....and the little girl is clearly, in this picture, doing some sort of magic. Clearly.

Then it became a matter of figuring out how to get a clearly non-Asian woman into China (yes, I admit I had to get rid of the Mongols and the Tatars to do this, but I'm OK with that...voila, no Golden Horde), and the plot suddenly had something of a body, at least. The details I had to assemble myself from there, but the basic inspiration (not an actual plot bunny) hit me pretty fast.


The point being that for me, at least, the inspiration seems to come from anywhere. Whatever the brain takes in can be refigured eventually, sometimes in ways that I would not have expected (such as the fully-formed plot bunny that erupted from Trauma and Recovery, more than a year after I read it, and worked its way into the dragon line-up).

Anyhow, I suspect that most writers get their inspirations from a lot of different places. What's the weirdest inspiration/plot link that you have?

Comments

[marshall-payne.livejournal.com]

I blogged about my weirdest last year. You probably remember it. When I went outside of my apartment when I was living in Austin and overheard some strange guy talking on his cellphone, "I swear, baby, I'm not into F***ing midgets. I'm only interested in them intellectually." I hadn't written a story in nine months, but that brought me out of my slump and I wrote "Pandering Dwarves." Haven't sold that one yet, but I have gotten some interesting rejections. I considered it a major coup when Mamatas said, "Funny story." Sure beat the sharp pokes in the eye I'd been getting there.

As an interviewer one of the question I avoid is, "Where do you get your ideas?" It's a vague question that writers usually don't have an answer to. But this is a good question, J. I might use it! ;-)

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

"Where do you get your ideas?" is too vague, because I suspect we all suck them in from everywhere.

Cell phone conversations are great (because we have to wonder about the other side, and try to answer for ourselves. I think there was a thing in Psychology Today about that...and why it
means talking on Cell Phones in publisc venues is kinda rude).

Your cell phone example, however, has to be the weirdest. Ick! Good luck with that story, Marshall. (I do sorta remember it). ;o)

[marshall-payne.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I met the guy after I finished the story and he was happy to be inspiration for my weird tale. Turns out he was talking to a plutonic female friend on the phone. She was saying, "C'mon, you're an attractive guy. Why can't you get a date? I'm sure there's a one-armed midget out there who'll have you." And then he launched into the rhetorical jest that he said above. But to just overhear his end…blew my mind! ;-)

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Plutonic female friend....that's an interesting thoug in an of itself ;o)

[snickelish.livejournal.com]

I often complain that when other people impose their phone conversations on me (at the airport, in line, whatever), the conversations are never as interesting as what people would hear if they listened to mine. Clearly, though, there are exceptions. *g* It helps if the person you're eavesdropping on has, you know, the usual funny qualities: sarcasm, intelligence, a decent vocabulary, all of which it sounds like this guy had.

(And hey, I even have an appropriate icon - read the fine print. *g*)

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Oh, Anya... ;o)

I also don't mind so much if they have a lovely accent. I once stood on a stairwell at UTEP to listed to a guy on a payphone. He was speaking Farsi and had a lovely voice. Just magical.

My phone conversations? Extremely short and boring.

[marshall-payne.livejournal.com]

(And hey, I even have an appropriate icon - read the fine print. *g*)

I had to send your icon to my desktop and blow it up in jpg to read it and yes, I'm most impressed with the irony. ;-)

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

And she didn't make it up special for that....she was blogging about it the other day. Talk about serendipity!

[marshall-payne.livejournal.com]

Yep, serendipity. Unlike me who found my new icon just for your themed bunny post. ;o)

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

I am honored...

[snickelish.livejournal.com]

and the little girl is clearly, in this picture, doing some sort of magic. Clearly.

Agreed. *g*

I'm with you on having all sorts of bunnies that aren't, in fact, complete bunnies. I also tend to write intros to stories - I have bunches of things saved on my computer where clearly I know the tone and I even have half an idea about the character and the setting, but no plot whatsoever. Plot is my nemesis.

[snickelish.livejournal.com]

Ooh, and an inspiration story, because apparently spamming your LJ is the thing to do this morning. I once got a piece of spam with the title "Be Myrtle." By the time I'd walked fromt the computer lab to my room, I already had the first page or so of a sort of really weird dryad coming-of-age story that I haven't managed to sell yet. I hope I do, though, because it'll be a great answer for everyone who asks me where I get my ideas from. *g*

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Oi! That's wretched!

I had a spam that I saved:
Subject line: Pork Chop Mastadons defined by 07
Text:
When recliner over demon is unruffled,
around turn signal plan an escape from asteroid over.
And pee on the dark side of her boy.
Where we can inexorably try to seduce our ribbon.
cohere shove sleigh bedside

I've kept that since 2004....trying to discern the deeper meaning...there must be one.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Me, too. Plot's hard. ::pouts::

I once had this thought that when I'm rich and famous, I'm going to pay some secretary (because I'll have one then) to go through all those little tucked-away scenes, remove any that are published, organize them, and then put it out on Lulu....and because I'll be famous, people will actually pay money for it....oh, yeah...

right....I forgot....not rich and famous

[snickelish.livejournal.com]

It'll be like an anthology of zombie plotbunnies! All those disembodied bunny parts...

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

Sticking two or three together only makes a frankenplot, I think...

[kara-gnome.livejournal.com]

I draw from my own experiences, that mixed with desperation to come up with s-o-o-mmmmmm-th-i--ng, anything, now, ple-eeeeeeea-se. Yes, begging is a part of my process, I freely admit it *g*

Triggers do awesome things, as does knowing that I'm in a group and don't want to let the group down, or at least not as bad as last time. Angst and anxiety, I think we can see play an important part, too.

As far as something specific that got a specific story--hm, I can't think of anything like that. It's all cloudy at first and then the story just, I don't know, comes from there. That's about it. I feel it there at the end of my fingers, is all.

I love Marshall's story, and yours with the pictures. I've really tried pictures, I have a file of them, but can't seem to use them as usefully as you did.

[j-cheney.livejournal.com]

But if you think in terms of how long I've been collecting pictures...then I have lots of experience with my particular method madness.

It sounds like you assimilate your ideas more, and then they come out fully formed....which makes sense given your writing method. I can better understand your 2-ish draft thing if yours are born whole.

[kara-gnome.livejournal.com]

Whole but flawed, usually, and trying to get the muses to re-vision them is a bit*! however, I'm working on it, heh.