Inside My Head
One question people ask all the time is ‘Where do you get all those ideas for stories?’ The best answer I can give seems incredibly trite; they just come to me.
Let me try to give a better picture. Since I can remember I’ve had movies playing in my head. It happens all the time. For example, I’m planning to have a serious conversation with someone. Most people will think over what they want to say. I see a movie playing out what I want to say, how they’ll respond, how I’m standing and my gestures, what we’re both wearing. It plays out, stops, picks up where I want to change something, continues. By the time I actually talk to the person, I’ve had the conversation a hundred times.
The movies play for all kinds of things. When I was an angsty, over-dramatic teen, I wrote a truly awful gothic romance based on a line from the song If You Could Read My Mind by Gordon Lightfoot. No one ever read that cliche piece about a ghost in a wishing well, thank goodness. I wrote what played out in my mind and there was a ‘misunderstood’ girl, overbearing parents, an arranged marriage, an impossible romance and a suicide to be with her one true love. Be thankful you were spared my mind as a teen.
Another idea came from reading a news article about the volcanic eruptions in Hawaii and the shifting tectonic plates that make up our planet. I started wondering how it would affect our societies if the plates shifted and brought the continents closer together, destroying some countries in the process. I managed to outline how I thought the plates would shift, what we would lose, and how our world would look afterward. All in about fifteen minutes.
So, anyway, pretty much anything can trigger the creative process. It can be a song, a news story, an overheard conversation, anything. It’s a very crowded, confusing place in my brain and some of the movies demand to be written down, playing over and over until I get it done.
That’s a brief look at how my creative process works. I’m sure it’s different for every author, but I can tell you it’s a scary place sometimes in my head.
Let me try to give a better picture. Since I can remember I’ve had movies playing in my head. It happens all the time. For example, I’m planning to have a serious conversation with someone. Most people will think over what they want to say. I see a movie playing out what I want to say, how they’ll respond, how I’m standing and my gestures, what we’re both wearing. It plays out, stops, picks up where I want to change something, continues. By the time I actually talk to the person, I’ve had the conversation a hundred times.
The movies play for all kinds of things. When I was an angsty, over-dramatic teen, I wrote a truly awful gothic romance based on a line from the song If You Could Read My Mind by Gordon Lightfoot. No one ever read that cliche piece about a ghost in a wishing well, thank goodness. I wrote what played out in my mind and there was a ‘misunderstood’ girl, overbearing parents, an arranged marriage, an impossible romance and a suicide to be with her one true love. Be thankful you were spared my mind as a teen.
Another idea came from reading a news article about the volcanic eruptions in Hawaii and the shifting tectonic plates that make up our planet. I started wondering how it would affect our societies if the plates shifted and brought the continents closer together, destroying some countries in the process. I managed to outline how I thought the plates would shift, what we would lose, and how our world would look afterward. All in about fifteen minutes.
So, anyway, pretty much anything can trigger the creative process. It can be a song, a news story, an overheard conversation, anything. It’s a very crowded, confusing place in my brain and some of the movies demand to be written down, playing over and over until I get it done.
That’s a brief look at how my creative process works. I’m sure it’s different for every author, but I can tell you it’s a scary place sometimes in my head.
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