Inkabout L. Darby Gibbs

Science Fiction & Fantasy author

ideas

Creativity: the art of the accidental inspiration

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Rules of Magic

A couple of years ago, a fellow blogger and I discussed writing guest posts for each other. She writes in the combined fantasy/urban legend genre and hoped I could write a post about magic or how place contributes to a story.

I decided to do it on how every story has rules, and how rules of magic effect story development?  I thought I would come up with a set of rules of magic and show how these rules would govern the flow of the story.  Great idea, huh?

So I begin asking myself a set of questions:

  1. Who is allowed to use the magic?
  2. How is the magic performed?
  3. Is there an age requirement or limit?
  4. When is one eligible to perform magic?
  5. How is one recognized as a performer of magic?
  6. What makes one especially good at magic and therefore a respected provider of magic?
  7. What/who determines quality, strength and usage?
  8. Are there social rules governing its use?
  9. How does economics play into its use?
  10. How does social standing play into it use?
  11. How does one learn or is it innate?
  12. Can one be employed as a magic provider?
  13. Are there any personal costs to performing magic?

My post never was sent to my friend because in the process of answering the questions so that I could show how they would govern a story, I ended up with a great idea for a short story. A case of accidental inspiration.

Perhaps these questions could generate a story for someone else.

What unexpected inspiration led to a story, novel, poem or what-have-you idea?

#magic
#inspiration
#creativity

Creativity: round robin brainstorming can lead to strong writing

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Talking the story into life

Partner and group brainstorming: I use this technique in my creative writing class. We gather around the table and discuss ideas. After we settle on one, I step back and write down each plot point or character decision as they work through them and build a consensus.

Now and then I read through what they have so far, and then the group is off again revamping, adding, changing.  Epiphanies fly about their heads, like those crazy fireworks you set on the ground and dodge as they zip off in random directions.  My students ram through half-baked thoughts as quickly as their mouths can speak them, making connections and changes to enhance emerging motifs.  And each student adds more flame and fires-up another idea.

Brainstorming

That’s brainstorming for strong writing.  That is the achievement of more than one mind reaching for development, precision, cohesion. I love those moments because they don’t just make for great writing, they make for the truly creative moment. If you have ever been a runner or done any kind of exercise that demands individual focus for more than half an hour, you may have felt the sensation that makes you feel as if you could go on running forever; the pace is perfect, the weather, the degree of breathing.

You float along without really feeling your feet hit ground or the sensation of running at all, almost an out of body experience. Time seems to stands still.  When two or more people are on the same run through an idea, it’s like that glorious running experience.  It feels as if you could create forever and you do not want to stop.

Very recently, just this past weekend, I felt like that.  I shared an idea I have been mulling over for a few months.  Soon my writer pal, Marcy Peska, and I were digging into the characters, their concerns, histories, families, questions, possibilities and my idea took on more life, seemed to breath a few halting breaths each time Marcy or I sent off another email between us.  The characters that had been slipping into my creative moments stopped being just skin deep. 

Sharing with Marcy and gleaning tidbits from her knowledge and experience made for development I would have taken much longer to come around to by myself.  What I love most about brainstorming with Marcy is that her questions are framed so that my characters are real people.  “Does Joan have Alzheimer’s in her family?”  Now I have to sit down with Joan and find out about her family history and for very good reason.  Colleen in a matter of seconds became even stronger because she is the type of person Marcy likes.  That alone added considerable depth to what was already a strong-minded woman.

Brainstorming with another writer or an interested friend is my kind of idea development. I am sure many of you use this same process. Is it a major factor in your process?  What others benefit idea development?

+Marcy Peska
#creativity
#brainstorming

Creativity: How do you gather your bits and pieces?

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Organize the bits and pieces.

I’m brushing my teeth and an image comes to mind. It’s intriguing, and I feel the need to race for my computer, but I have to get ready for work. There is no time to pursue this image and the possibilities it offers.  So I head for the library catalog box I bought on eBay and take a blank index card out, and scribble the image and the beginnings of what I thought it was opening up to. I throw it behind the label marked with an “I” (for “idea”: I’m into simple).

Next day I’m putting on makeup.  A conversation begins in my head (no, I’m not crazy. They’re characters in a book I’m writing). Another card tossed behind “I.” Then I’m getting ready for work again.  Back to the study, the index box, a blank card, scribble, toss behind “I.”  Sure there is a pattern showing up here:  I ridiculously creative when I’m getting ready for work.

But you get the picture.  It’s getting pretty full behind that letter. When the weekend comes or grading lets up and there isn’t a multitude of todo’s on my list, I’ll rifle through that stack, see who has been partnering up with whom.  I’ll work on a story or develop another scene.

I decided to gather these bits and pieces of subconscious rendering into something more searchable.  I have two sets of organized ideas in that drawer, those used and those waiting to be used.  My old habit was to write them in notebooks, record them to my memo app, fit scraps of notes in a pocket folder or a manilla file in a rack on my desk, wherever I could find a place to mark down my moment of inspiration.  My ideas were all over the place (some still are).

The new ones and a number of those already noted somewhere are now landing in one place ~ that old library card index box.  I have to admit I did not come up with this idea.  It is Robert A. Heinlein’s.  When I read his biography by Patterson, there was mention of how he needed a system to keep track of his ideas and his published works. So he and Ginny Heinlein came up with organizing the index cards he scribbled on. He would wander around with those jottings for his current book on cards stuffed in his pocket. He’d take them out and shuffle through them when he sat down to write.

I thought if it worked for him, I might try it. I am a reasonably organized person and this simple approach fit my style. So far, it seems to be working out.  One description of an end of a story went in to the drawer.  About a week later, I went in search of it and added some details. Then two days later, I was able to sit down and work on the story.  The original note had been residing on my phone on the notepad app for more than two years.  I would recall it now and then, and forget where it was.  Gathering the bits and pieces and writing them onto the cards to place in the box dug up lots of scribbles I had forgotten, mislaid or remembered but had not been able to find. But now they are gathering in one place.

I could have entered them all into a digital organizer, and I am pretty computer savvy, but I like the tactile effort of going through them.  There is something much more intimate about the shuffling of the cards that inspires my creativity so much more than the occasional digital attempts I made to record my creative tidbits.  And my squirreling them away in all manner of places wasn’t helping.  My card file seems to be working.

Do you have a way of keeping track of your inspired bits and pieces. If so, please share it.

#creativity
#Heinlein
#organization

Creativity: get it in capture mode

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Be ready to pounce on the writing moment.

So last week I blogged about how creativity can be dependent upon routine.  I do use this to a degree during the summer months, but I am just as likely to use the capture mode.

This is when you sit down to do one thing and inspiration hits.  It stops everything: “I have to write now” time. This happens to me fairly regularly. It is not that I have the kind of life that I can put things off any time I want to sit down and write. I don’t, far from it. But I have learned that when I feel the need to write, I better look around and see if I can arrange it without delay.

I teach English, probably one of the most planned, graded and time-consuming subjects to teach. I happen to enjoy teaching it, but it is a life eater. So if there is a moment free, the first thing I do is sit a quite moment and see if anything has been waiting to bubble up. There will be a rise of excitement in my chest, much like when I know there are only three more days before I am heading out on a long-awaited trip. I listen for a stream of dialogue running through my mind, look for an image rising out of the silence and words playing bumper cars between my ears.  Time to sit down and write.

This is capture mode. Grab it while the grabbing has a chance at nipping at the heels of a plot, post, character sketch, etc. I once stopped my husband mid-drive to a bicycle race to buy me a notebook and pencil. I needed to write that moment and had potentially hours of quiet writing time ahead of me between driving to the race and back over the mountains to and from Eugene’s Tandem Classic (the Burley Classic, I believe now defunct, and before you ask, this is before the invention of the laptop).  When the urge is there, take advantage of a ready mind.

This is writing on the run and has the likelihood of being intensely productive because the time could disappear at any moment, so there is no room for sharpening a row of pencils, finding the perfectly flat piece of paper or the cozy niche no one is likely to stumble into. You may have to sit in the stiff- backed wooden chair with the tippy corner; ignore the seat belt, blasting radio and kid kicking the back of your seat; lean against the wall, hair whipping in your face, paper leaping up where your fingers can’t stretch to hold it down while you write. Yup, you don’t even have time to hunt; just pounce and land on the scittering, scattering words, grab with straining claws, pull them to your chest, and start laying out one word at a time (though if any one knows of a way to simultaneous set out words in lumps I want to hear about it).

So that’s capture mode. What examples of capture mode have you experienced?  I’m sure you’ve had a few wild writing stories you could tell, so share them here.

Next creative post: building desire to write.

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#creativity
#writing
#inspiration

There are stories everywhere

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Yeah, it’s a horse, but why is it in my front yard?

There is a road I drive down every day to get to work.  It is not a popular part of the highway system, so there are few businesses along the way.  One site has changed renters numerous times.  It has been a restaurant half a dozen times, a used clothing store, seamstress business and is currently a donut shop.

Usually, at about a year and a half, the business just closes up and goes up for rent again.  The donut shop hit its one year mark back in May.  So I expect soon to see cars in the parking lot one day and the next the day find it as empty as an old shoe box, tissue crumpled and little packets of granular stuff maintaining a dry but useless environment.

That is a story just waiting for the telling. Why does that store never hold a business long even though they seem to be thriving?  Who owns it?  Are they nothing but trouble to their renters?  Is the highway itself unwilling to take so much traffic for too long and has its own agenda to push through despite human desires to succeed?

There are stories everywhere waiting to be told.

  • Why is that little girl sitting in bored meditation on her porch stairs, chin balanced on her hands?
  • Why did that family throw out a perfectly good couch?  It hasn’t any tears, slumping of cushions, or broken frame and is still in style.
  • Why is that fellow standing behind the tree talking on his phone and swatting at the bugs clearly annoying him?
  • Why is that horse wearing a blue cover over its face when the horse beside it isn’t?

You don’t have to beat bushes to find stories.  Write about the bush.

Where did you find your last story or did it find you? 

Wrapping up Narrative Modes

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For the last thirteen weeks, I have been presenting the various modes one can design a story or novel around.

 

Using strong foundation stock.

Some are common traditional modes, such as the Heroic Journey, Faustian Legend, Cain & Abel, the Christ Figure, Coming of Age, the Dream Vision and the Frame Narrative.  There are others which are more directly related to authors’ well-known works: Hemingway’s Code Hero, Heinlein’s Three-stage Character and Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  Fairy tales had a few to offer, and several more than I mentioned:  Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast the most common.  The prose essay format is a new form, most notably first used by Virginia Wolf.

The purpose in bringing them up and outlining them as I have, is to remind any writer that our readers often enjoy a tale as much for the author’s unique style and the genre as they do for the return to a format we love to read again and again in its traditional form or a modified version that surprises us with a new twist.  These narrative modes make great bones for our imagination to flesh out and clothe in fresh linen.

And mixing them up is not such a bad idea.  Throw together a Heroic Journey with Cinderella or write a Coming of Age novel in the form of a prose essay.  Those too are out there (take a close look at Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn), and those mixes add increased complexity to the story and still maintain familiarity for the reader.