Inspiration can come from anywhere. As haughty as we writers tend to be, we love telling folks that an idea came from a sunset, or the flight of a bird, or a starry night...whatever makes us sound most contemplative. However, the truth is that inspiration for a story, a character, or a setting can come from just about anywhere, including random offhand comments from a friend while watching a game or drinking.
What happens is the comment fires up our imagination, and our brains go into hitherto unfamiliar places in a story that's already familiar in our heads. I was watching Game of Thrones when one of the dragons incinerated a pair of prisoners, and the person I was watching with said something to the effect of, "I guess they should've worn stronger armor." We laughed, but it got me thinking about what would happen to something that was armored up and encountered dragon fire. That offhanded comment led me to a scene of a dragon melting a recon drone, which led me to the concept of a dragon corps to protect a city, which led me to think that only the strongest realm on the planet would have such a thing. Thus one of the main pieces of my new novel was born.
This has happened multiple times, and only writers can truly understand this phenomenon. Our subconscious is always thinking about writing, whether it's what we're currently working on, or some future project, so that subconscious grabs hold of stray electrons and tries to turn them into something useful. So if you see one of your writers friends get all glassy-eyed while talking to you, remember that maybe you said something that sparked a train of thought. Or maybe they're just stoned - you never know. 😝
No comments:
Post a Comment