Inspiration

Where does inspiration come from for you? For me, it starts with a single scene, a single moment within a story  I want to tell. Think of it like a single cell in a reel of film (am I dating myself?).   I picture the main character and another frozen in that moment: what they’re wearing, where they’re standing, the mood, the environment, everything. From there I start to imagine what they’re discussing, why they’re discussing it, what the ramifications are.  And hopefully, I can then write a story from it.

Of course, it doesn’t always work.  In my Divine Potentials series, I had originally written Clarity as a really long story. Eventually I split it into two parts, one that became Clarity and another I rebuilt as FarSight, which will be coming out next. However, prior to that split, I wrote a continuation on the original Clarity premise, which would eventually become the initial iteration of book 4 in the series. But after doing the split, there was a major gap in the story. The character was not where he needed to be at the end of book 2 to justify his location at the beginning of book 4.  So I needed to write another book.

It was a struggle because it was and wasn’t an organic decision. I knew it needed to be done, it became necessary because of what I did with book 2, and I knew I wanted to do it, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t have that single image inspiration (yet).  So I joined an online writing forum, posted the question and fielded ideas. From those, I was able to finally envision that single moment in the story and subsequently created book 3.  I’m happy with the way it ended up, but it sure wasn’t easy.

What about you? What do you do for inspiration?