Writing Prompts: Reading for inspiration
A writer needs to be a reader.
Immersing yourself in a range of writing helps:
- - to hone your craft
- - learn how a genre work
- - learn writing techniques and
- - know what a particular journal or publisher accepts for publication.
Another important reason for reading is that it can inspire you to write. Reading Trudi Canavan inpsired me to write my Fantasy novel, Sakhira, for which I am currently trying to find a publisher.
There is another side to Reading for Inspiration, and that is finding inspiration in news stories, and stories that you read online. As always, you have to be careful not to use real people, names or events directly (unless writing non-fiction!) to avoid libel suits.
- Pick up a newspaper, or go to your favourite news sites.
- If you like to write crime, then look at the appropriate news stories. If drama is your thing, look for the human interest stories; Science fiction, look at the new technologies sections.
- Read the articles that pique your interest, take notes or bookmark the places so you can come back to factcheck (essential even in fiction!)
- I like to give the stories time to percolate, before starting to write, but sometimes you're inspired to start writing immediately, and then off you go.
- Once you have a story you like, then start thinking about the 5 Ws and the H: Why; Who; When; Where; What happened and How.
- Work on fleshing out your characters, and the circumstances that led to the situation. Think about how it could have gone differently - try to find a twist, take the story in a different direction. What would you do if it happened to you?
- What else do you know about the topic - what other kernals of information do you have that you could use.
Looking at this morning's BBC news there are a couple of pieces that I could turn into a story:
- Chatty cockroach gets Greeks talking on Athens streets
- Could an algorithm help prevent murders
- The street built to bring back memories
So, how does it work? Here are some examples:
The first story is about a piece of installation art, but I'm familiar with the poetry by Archy the cockroach. We usually despise cockroaches, but these two stories make them interesting. Perhaps there's a children's story about friendly cockroaches. Apparently cockroaches can survive a nuclear blast - perhaps the story is about a world where nuclear war destroys all live, but the cockroaches. There are so many dirrections to take this kernel.
If police use algorithms to prevent murders, perhaps a serial killer uses his / her own algorithm to identify victims. Geographic profiling is already a recognised forensic procedure. Wild Bill, the new TV series talks a lot about algorithims in policing.
The third story is about rebuilding a street for Alzheimers patients. But, I would start thinking about alternative worlds, Terry Pratchett's 'Trousers of Time' where time forks, and quotes like 'the past is another country.' What if you remember the past differently to how the street is recreated?
Slowly, what you read starts to come together, combined with a healthy dose of imagination, and the knowledge of how to write a story, there is so much you could write.
If I'm experiencing a dry patch in my writing, then reading helps me get going again. I hope it helps you too!
Happy writing