Whenever I do my writing panels as anime conventions the question that seems to come up year after year is “How do you find inspiration?” It can be either for a scene to write or an entire story. Often I get asked this by writers who are suffering from writer’s block or stuck on a particular scene in a story they are writing and having a hard time finding their way from plot point A to point B.
The answer I usually give them is not a clear cut cure all for writer’s block. One doesn’t exist. Writing is like visual art, it’s very personal to the writer and every writer is different. There is no one single way to write a story, an article, or whatever, so there is no single way to become inspired.
The best answer I can give them is that they need to look within themselves and find what inspires them outside of the story they are writing. What are things that work for you. Do the people you know make you think? Does the music you listen to put you in the proper mood to create what you set out to make? Do you take cues from the stuff you watch? That’s for you to figure out. No one can really tell you how to come up with an idea, only you know what you write or create and what ideas would work for you.
However that doesn’t mean you are out there flailing helplessly trying to come up with ideas. No one can tell you how you think, how you imagine, or how you create, BUT you can certainly find example from others and see if they work for you. That’s part of self discovery. The point is not to copy, but to plant a seed and make that seed grow in it’s own garden.
For me it’s a mixture of things really. A factor that comes up sometimes is need. In the commentary for his review of The Purge, The Nostalgia Critic talked about somehow factoring in the Pinky and the Brain bit he filled at a convention into the review, thus we got the basis of the cartoon duo splitting up as commentary for the shaky and unrealistic premise of the Purge. My first released book came from a need of two things really. The most pressing was I wanted something that I could use as a tester for online publishing. I didn’t want to submarine the novel I’d worked years on because I had no idea what I was doing. That tied into the “need” for me to write a story of this character that I had created around an ever changing costume I wore and cons and such. I accomplished both with the first kRaveings story. Even if the need is a personal one that has no real affect if you don’t fulfill it, it is still something that can foster creativity in your work. If there is something to accomplish, it can inspire something you may not have had before.
Sometimes the reason for writing is therapeutic. Writing is a good way for people to get out their emotions and get them out of your head. I wrote fan fiction for a long time, and still do today. Even if the stuff I write now never goes beyond my eyes I still write it a lot because it helps get feelings and thoughts out of my head, especially if they aren’t very positive ones. Even if i don’t fully realize it at the time, writing has helped me clear up some lingering issues that had been inhabiting my mind for a while. Even if you as a writer don’t think what you come out of this with is good, or even if it isn’t finished, it’s still worth it to write and you never know, you may take something out of your produced content and find a use for it later on. Your writing doesn’t have a shelf life. There is always something that can be pulled from one of your creative doodles that can be pressed for a cause at a later date. Nothing you write, or draw, or create is ever a waste of your time, especially if it helps you through tough times or strong emotions.
Sometimes creativity is just a matter of being observant of the things around you. I watch a lot of pro wrestling, which if you are writing fiction can be a real goldmine for me. Obviously the idea isn’t to copy what you see on TV word for word, but I have a feeling an over the top character like The Undertaker, Kendo Nagasaki, or the Moondogs had to inspire a character in a comic, book, or film somewhere. Even if the medium has nothing to do with what you are working on it can still be useful. The key in that case is to adapt. Make this idea you have found and adapt it to what you are doing to make it your own. Going back to the wrestling them, I think of a star in the 50’s named Ricky Starr. He was able to take his training and love for Ballet and turn it into a money making and headlining persona that people still talk about today.
These are just personal examples from my experience, there a bunch of other ways you can draw creativity to you. If it’s your next great work of fiction, your shtick in a web series, or just that little something you need to get over the hump and passed writer’s block there are a lot of different way to get you there, the key is to know what works for you and trying new things to see if they connect with your creativity. Once you start finding methods that work, you start finding ways to get by writer’s block and stagnation.
And if ever in self doubt, remember, someone looked at the board game Battleship and thought it would make a great movie.
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