Monday Musings: Inspiration

Hello,

Here’s a delightfully intangible thing: Inspiration.

What is it? Where does it come from? How can we harness it? How can we generate it?

I had planned to write a very sweeping statement about what my inspiration is, and I was thinking through my previous writing to confirm the statement. However, as I thought back I realised that this wasn’t the case at all. I feel a little like I’ve been lying to people. I had to think more, where DID my inspiration come from? I had planned to say that ideas come to me in a very visual way, often a single striking image that over time becomes a story. Even though this isn’t true in every case, it is where I will start.

It is common that I will get an image of something and work my way backward from there. One such image was of a yellow and red sunset sky, silhouetted against which was a flock of birds that transformed into a formation of military aircraft across the image. For the longest time I didn’t know what that story was, but I was interested in the imagery of it. In time it became a story about a lone survivor of a battle, wounded and going delirious who befriends a young French girl who is playing the in woods. They were not able to communicate with each other but after all the fighting the soldier has witness she was a vision of an innocent future yet possible.

Sometimes I get a particular phrase stuck in my head. My novel stemmed from the phrase “They’re here” and worked forward from there originally as a very straight horror, but it changed over time to be less about who they were and more about how it all effected the central character, Evin. After a considerable period of rumination and false starts I realised that it was a story about Evin asking herself the question we all face at some point in our life: “Who am I?”

Other times ideas grow out of a sense of wanting to look at something from a different angle. I have spoken often (outside this blog) about my apathy toward the Zombie genre. I can count on one hand the works about Zombies that actually interest me, and they tend to be the ones that actually have very little to do with Zombies (TellTale Games video game of The Walking Dead was not only not about Zombies, it was also one of the best pieces of written entertainment in 2012). As I sat listlessly watching another retread of Zombie tropes I wondered how a Zombie would feel about the representation of Zombies in the media. I thought of him being offended by it. This idea grew to be a short film I made a couple of years ago called Dates of the Undead:

I’m the first to admit that translating those kernels of inspiration into salty idea-popcorn goodness is not something I’m very quick at. Those ideas tend to stick in my head and ruminate for a long time before I feel ready to put them on paper. I have got better and have picked up some good writing exercises over the years that have helped. There’s a great one for laying out structure/story/themes/characters that I used recently to start the book and last week for the short story. I thought it might be interesting to share the process of writing the short story, so after it has been published tomorrow I will talk about the process of taking the idea from suggestion to story and I will post this on Thursday.

I think my two favourite writing exercises are to write a monologue for a character stating who they are and what it is they want, and how they are going to achieve it. This will work for all your characters, you will find that with each character you will instinctively give them voices, and their desires and how they intend to achieve them will reveal a lot about who they are. It also means, at least to me, that when I start writing that I already know them, yes they will still surprise in the writing process, but the starting off point is less daunting.

A similar piece to this is to write a dialogue between two characters, if they are the protagonist and the antagonist it will help. Think of yourself as a counsellor for the characters. Let the protagonist state what they want and the antagonist state how they can’t have it. Again, it will be revealing and help find who the characters are. Give them weaknesses that will hinder their ability to get what they want. Not necessarily physical weaknesses, it could be impatience or a short temper.

Finally, where can you find inspiration? I did a writing course a few years ago and was told to choose a story from a newspaper, and write a scene based upon it. I’d found a small story about a couple on holiday who had been tied up and robbed. It was a horrible story and I don’t know why I picked it. Every part of the article made me sick and angry, the couple were threatened with assault and at times separated from each other. I wrote two pages of just utter rubbish, it was full of cliché and didn’t go anywhere or mean anything. It was a struggle to write and I only finished it the night before the next class. Out of those two pages, of all those words, the only thing that sparked any interest in me was five words: “Why do you love her?”

I became desperately intrigued by this. Why would someone take people hostage and demand an explanation of love? What would the answer be? If the people were physically separated from each other would their answers be the same? What if they weren’t the same? What if they didn’t know that? The story became about lies and truth. Lies we tell ourselves, truths we hide, accepting or rejection those ideals. It was a cat and mouse of what do people say and what do they mean.

Out of that article of misery, of two pages of horrible writing, came five words that inspired something much bigger and better.

I guess the point is that inspiration comes from anywhere, the trick is to be able to recognise it and harness it. To take whatever it is and work at it, use any tool available to you to create something from it. Sometimes that it won’t work, sometimes it’s not meant to work. But sometimes something better will come from that failure.

– Andrew

 

Monday Musings: The End

Hello,

For my first Monday Musing I thought I would start with the question most frequently asked of me: “Do you have an ending?”

Endings are regarded as the most important part of a narrative experience. You can afford to start weak if your ending is strong. The ideal would be to have a strong start, a great middle and a fantastic end. I loved Joe Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold because I was instantly hooked from the opening chapter. It’s his best writing and his best characters.

A story simply can’t afford a limp ending that readers feel cheated by. I’ve just finished reading Kate Mosse’s Citadel which I thought had a deeply satisfying ending. Emotional, truthful and, importantly, right for the characters. Conversely I threw David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas to the floor when I finished it. I loved the individual elements but felt no sense of completion at the end.

Those are my opinions on the aforementioned books, you may share them or not.

With my story I actually started with the ending and tracked back from there. The inception of the story goes back about four or five years and has changed a lot over that time. I eventually found an interesting hook for the story and it has grown into what it is now. That’s not to say that the ending I started with will be the ending that the book will have. I’ve been toying with variations of it recently. I’m not locking myself into anything at this point.

I have told some of my closest friends what this ending is and their reactions have varied so far, I think it depends on their personality. Don’t read too much into this next statement, but I like a certain amount of ambiguity in my work. I think it was the director Adrian Lyne when talking about his film adaptation of Lolita who said that he wanted the audience to figure out for themselves how they felt about the characters and what happened, rather than being told what to think. I’m paraphrasing there. My point is that I like to create a story and draw attention to the plot, characters and themes and then go: “And you decide what that means.”

Excuse my horrific self promotion here as I use a short film I made 10 years ago for demonstration purposes. I feel we said everything that we wanted to in the story, explored and re-explored the central theme and left it at a point where the audience has to think how they choose to interpret what has happened and where the character goes next.

There tends to be a 50/50 split between people rationalizing the events and those that want to see something else. I argue that both are correct and both possibilities are accounted for in the film.

Upon explaining the ending of my book, many people nod sagely and say “Yes that makes sense.” Others agree that the ending works but are concerned that there may not be the clarity that they want. I think that is the key to any ending. I can be as vague about the specifics as I like but if people don’t feel that the threads of the narrative are adequately tied up it will feel like a cheat. So, again, I’m sort of catering to different groups.

This isn’t to say that it works with every story. Some stories need to be tied with a bow and pronounced complete. I will write those stories for sure. That’s just not this book. That’s not who this character is.

It’s hard to talk specifically about what the ending is because I don’t want to spoil it, I haven’t told you what the story is about yet (that’s coming very soon), and where the main character ends up may not be where I think she is supposed to find herself. I have explained my intentions of how I will wrap up the story to people and hope that I will be able to deliver. It’s certainly the right ending for the character and what happens to her.

I think what I’m keen to achieve is that I want the ending to be talked about, to be debated, I want people to have different interpretations of the events (all of which, and more will be correct), but for the finale of the character’s journey, of her experiences, of who she is at the end to be satisfying and rewarding.

– Andrew