Writers are constantly asked about their inspiration for hit sensations. I wonder what it is about the human mind that people are constantly questioning ‘how’, ‘why’, and ‘when’ someone came up with an idea. I’m sure a majority of the questions are from aspiring authors, authors wanting to achieve the same success and hopeful that there is a process somewhere that could just be ‘duplicated’ sort of like an assembly-line process.
But an assembly line is a little too far fetched. Should novels, stories and fiction be crafted by a machine I am fairly certain it would come out reading like stereo equipment instructions. My theory is a good one because machines (as of this date) don’t FEEL human emotions and human connections. So how could a machine retell a human emotion and create a human connection if it doesn’t know how, why or when to create that feeling.
There I go with my own How, Why and When.
Inspiration can come from so many places when it comes to writers. A lot of the time you hear about a subconscious awakening – or in laymens terms: A dream happened and the writer simply wrote it down.
This is one of the best methods. I wish I could just go to sleep – see a ‘dream movie’ and wake up going ‘Gosh, that whole thing is perfect’ and word-vomit the entire thing on paper verbatim without missing a beat. I think that would be the number one persuasion for any drug dealer trying to get me to buy LSD. (I don’t condone drug use – Say no to Drugs – It was meant as a sarcastic, humorous bite and I would never partake in an activity that could damage myself or others)
So the Subconscious Mind is a really big factor for some writers when it comes to writing. For the rest of us, we have to rely on People, Places and Things a lot of the time. We have to rely on meeting people that sparks an idea for a character, seeing a Place that we remember in such a way that it would be perfect to write and describe, and Things that we come across in life that we could implement in the story. There are infinite combinations of variables that go into making a really great story – I’m almost positive about it.
Then you have your Collective Life Experiences. I have to say that this could be a big one for a lot of writers as well. Perhaps the writers that dream, the writers that put live people in their books and writers with traumatic/interesting pasts don’t overlap, but I’m sure you have heard about or read about at least a handful of writers that would fit into each category.
Then comes the adventurer. This is the writer that WANTS to live a certain life but does so through words on the page. There is nothing wrong with that. Create a story, create an experience that so many wish they could experience in real life and share it. Just because a writer writes about a serial killer on a killing spree doesn’t mean the writer has first hand knowledge of being a serial killer, or being a forensic scientist or a detective in a busy Miami precinct. It takes research, a willing to learn and a desire to retell a specific story enough to find out what it is like – even if it is just through a Google search.
All of these things leads to writing a story and providing emotion after emotion on paper to create an overall experience that the reader can relive over and over from the comfort of their favorite reading corner. That is the magic of writing. Weaving words into a sirens story, leading the reader to the rocks to show them death and then giving them a happily ever after – or whatever ending you end up writing.
It is amazing – the Danger portrayed in a story can quicken the pulse and have you sitting straight up in your chair but in another instant the book can be closed, the pages lost and the reader finds they are still sitting safely in the comfort of their living room.
It’s the most dangerous and safest adventure you could offer. It’s a great expectation and a great experience.
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