Inspirations

[W_L]

Is it a Eureka moment or a gradual process?

 

Do you draw upon old stories/novels or do you create something completely new?

 

We're all inspired somehow to write our stories, but where does our inspirations come from.

 

For me, I start off with an idea in my mind, then branch off with things such as characters, settings, and plot. After a while, I introduce themes and maybe meaning into my stories.

 

One interesting element in many of my stories is relative time, whether it is reincarnation or some kind of consciousness that exists forever, there's an element of eternity in all my stories. I have to thank dkstories for giving me that insight about relative time; it doesn't matter who you are today, tomorrow, or in case of time travel yesterday. There is an eternal process. We are the person, we are, because there's an element in us that grows through experience, but remains the same. A Chinese idiom said, "From 3 years of age, you can determine a person's life to 80 years of age", there's an immortality to individual's existence.

 

I guess Do-Over is my biggest influence in gay fiction; it is my favorite story without equal (sorry, CJ, Mark, Myr, Krista, and everyone).

 

Beyond that idea, I draw upon my own thoughts and the concepts of other writers.

 

How about you guys?

[Kev de Cauchery]

Eureka for a particular moment or a theme in the story, and a gradual process in building the story around that moment or the theme.

 

The only novella I had was built around my memoir. It used to be called "the untitled fictionize 'It was a Him' project". LOL.

 

Sometimes, I don't have a particular plot in my head, just several main characters and just write, but that one hasn't been finished yet.

 

I have stopped reading stories these days because I'm trying to come up with some new plot.

[JamesSavik]

every author is different.

 

Faulkner and Hemingway wrote drunk. I just pass out and don't get anything done.

 

The trick is finding what works for you.

[Nephylim]

I'm a storyteller. I get the pictures in my head (yeah I know... scary isn't it )and then I just sit down and let the words flow. I never start with a plan or even with any clear idea of where the story is going. I write until the pictures stop and then I wait for them to come back to start again. i have conversations with my characters and I 'see' things through their eyes. I'm just plain weird. You'll always know if you are sitting next to me on a train. I'm the one with the notebook and pen who mumbles to herself and often stares off into space with weird facial expressions.

[Linxe Termoil]

I'm a lot like Nephy. I see pictures in my head and hit on different scenes. Sometimes I use my imagination to see what else is going on, other times I ask myself "What happened that caused this?"

 

sometimes it's a movie, or someone else's works, other days it's my emotion. I started writing The dragon mage story because I was at a point in time where I felt helpless.

 

I can't remember what set me off on Spider Webs. I just felt the need to write something that wasn't as dark as SA, and i was at a point where I couldn't get anywhere with the dragon mage, so I had to drop that story. Alas, I have so many story ideas that not all of them are even getting written out, though many of them have 'began', so to speak.

 

Regards,

 

Linxe T.

[Dolores Esteban]

It's a Eureka moment usually. I see the whole story unfolding, and then I write it down. I put it aside for some time. And then I often rewrite it.

 

 

[Nephylim]

. Alas, I have so many story ideas that not all of them are even getting written out, though many of them have 'began', so to speak.

 

Regards,

 

Linxe T.

 

 

Hehe me too

[NightOwl88]

I sympathize with Linxe and Nephylim on this. Whenever I think of a story its like watching a movie in my head. Dialogue is where I need inspiration the most, I'm constantly worried that I'm either explaining things too much or too little, or that my word choices for a character are un-realistic or if they go against that Characters, well character lol.

[Guest kayden]

Hm, it's a very mysterious process to me.

[Nephylim]

I sympathize with Linxe and Nephylim on this. Whenever I think of a story its like watching a movie in my head. Dialogue is where I need inspiration the most, I'm constantly worried that I'm either explaining things too much or too little, or that my word choices for a character are un-realistic or if they go against that Characters, well character lol.

 

I suggest you get a small inobtrusive note book and take down snippets of conversations you overhear on trains buses etc. People of different ages and sexes, in different situations. You will see patterns emerging and will get a feel of how different people speak in differnet situations.

 

I have to say though you have been spot on so far

 

Hm, it's a very mysterious process to me. My theory of my own muse is that it's a part of my subconcious that I'm not completely in tune with. Emotions that I don't fully understand or recognize force themselves out through sentences or ideas that I end up putting on paper in order to deal with them. For example, I recently saw a picture of a boy throwing a skateboard straight out over the edge of the Grand Canyon. The picture touched me deeply in an uncomfortable way that wasn't unpleasant, but was indefinable. The toe of his shoe hanging an inch over the precipice, his outstretched arm having just released his skateboard, the skateboard still traveling horizontally, the backdrop an endless panorama of canyons a mile deep, the sky seemingly more shallow than the canyons with its low-lying dark clouds. The whole picture evoked something in me that ended up in a pretty amazing unfinished story. It had absolutely nothing to do with anything that happened in the picture, but instead the emotion it evoked in me. I guess the picture represented something to me that I couldn't quite fully understand until I wrote a story that involved that same emotion. All of my stories are emotion-based, and I guess that's where my inspiration comes from. It's never a literal "Eureka!" moment, it kind of just flows out of me and then when I go back and read what I've written I find myself saying, "Wow, that's really good!"

 

 

Yes I absolutely get that