Tag Archives: inspiration for writers

This month we’ve discussed great games that inspire, games that highlight effective storytelling, or that identify pitfalls in the creative process. We’ve also discussed some of the dangers of trying to port game scenarios directly into book form (review that excellent post here).

I’m going to visit that topic from a slightly different angle and discuss the effectiveness of finding avenues for creative input. It’s hard to build a great story, and harder still if we try to do it in a vacuum. Utilizing creative input sources can prove effective in developing foundational concepts for your story. The goal is not to try writing a book directly from a game scenario, particularly if it pulls in any material that may be copyrighted elsewhere. However, it is possible to utilize a RPG or other creative input source to explore some of the general concepts you might be kicking around as the foundation of a story.

For example, if you want to flesh out a new magic system, inviting your gaming friends to utilize that magic system in a game scenario can really help. They’ll try to break the rules, and they’ll try to use it in ways you never expected. The experience will force you to think deeper and broader than you might have on your own, and lay down rules and boundaries you had not realized you needed. This is particularly useful if you don’t have someone who makes a good sounding board to brainstorm ideas and plumb the depths of your new concept.

You can also explore other aspects of the world building in a game. What are the nations and races that exist in this world? Do they get along? What motivates them? What do people eat? What kind of money do they use?

In my family we play a customized RPG that utilizes only one 20-sided die for all decisions. It removes a lot of the technical hassle of similar games and relies more on the storytelling skill of the person leading the game. It’s also an excellent creative workout routine. I rarely plan out the details of a game beforehand, so am forced to come up with each element in a just-in-time delivery sort of way. I’ve found it helps break down creative barriers and triggers some exceptionally creative moments.

I’ve used this process as a way to explore multiple story concepts. Many of them prove mediocre or uninspiring, so we drop those and try something different. A few have resulted in ideas with lots of potential. Those I set aside for later exploration, or launch secondary game scenarios to consider further.

Once I’ve got what I need, I throw away the specifics of the game, including the characters, and start building my story from scratch – drawing upon the foundational concepts we explored through the game.

Storyteller — The Boyhood of Raleigh by Sir John Everett Millais, oil on canvas, 1870

But RPG gaming is not the only creative input I use, and it’s not even my most productive. Even better is good old storytelling. In our family we tell a lot of stories, and I’ve used that verbal story time to develop magic systems and explore plot concepts with my kids. It’s proven highly effective. Kids (2 of mine are teen-agers now) provide instant feedback, and they are brutal critics. If an idea isn’t working, I know about it instantly. On the other hand, if a story generates lots of enthusiasm from them, I might be on to something.

The danger there, just as with using RPG games, is to recognize that the novel you write will not be the same as the game (or verbal story). A couple years ago, I spent a lot of time developing a story line with my kids. They actually came up with the original magic system idea, which I then fleshed out and used to launch into a series of stories where we explored many other aspects of the world building. The resulting story proved so engaging that I decided to write a book based on all the material we produced.

At first I tried to follow the story line we’d developed, since we were all so enthusiastic about it. However I quickly ran afoul of the hazards lurking down that road. After those hard-learned lessons, I threw away that unproductive plotline and made a hard break – the story would not be a novelization of our hours of storytelling. Instead, I would craft a novel from the ground up, building upon some of the foundational elements we explored in that storytelling, but the plot and characters were entirely new. The resulting novel is a YA fantasy titled Set In Stone, which is now in the hands of my agent. Hopefully we’ll find a home for it soon.

Take Away: Use any creative avenue available to you to explore creative ideas, but remember the limits of what you can accomplish. Take the foundational elements, strip out the rest, and go build a great novel.

Where else do you turn for creative input to explore story concepts as you begin working on a new novel?

Werewolves and Vampires – Classic Monsters of Myth and Legend

June 5, 2013

Frank Morin

Frank Morin 4 Comments

Werewolves and Vampires. Two favorite monsters that have scared and fascinated the world for centuries.

First: Vampires – we have poems, stories, and plays dating back to the 1700’s, based on legends that date back even further. (one list claims there have been 197 vampire movies)

Some well-known stories and/or movies:

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997 – 2003)
Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files (2000 – 2011)
Interview with a Vampire (1994)
the Blade series (1998 – 2004)
The Lost Boys (1987)
Salem’s Lot by Stephen King (book: 1975, Movie: 1979)

Why so much focus on vampires, and why do they continue to appeal to generation after generation?

Anciently, vampires were always seen as creatures of gothic horror, little more than animated corpses often preying on their closest loved ones. Then, starting as early as the 1800’s, vampires became sensual, seductive creatures, the living embodiment of forbidden lusts. The classic Dracula by Bram Stoker is a great example of that transition period that dramatically impacted the entire field.

Later Vampire stories continued to evolve, many focusing on vampire hunters (Blade, Buffy, Monster Hunter International), and eventually portraying vampires less as evil incarnate and more as objects of desire (Twilight).

I find the transition interesting. It’s rare these days to find a classic vampire that just sneaks around at night looking for virgins to bite. Far more often, the vampires are depicted as cool, rich, sexy, and desirable, with a hint of danger thrown in that only seems to increase the appeal. People today seem to want to flirt with the danger rather than destroy it.

Then there are the Werewolves (or lycanthropes)

Werewolf legends are some of the oldest and most widespread of all monsters, with stories from all parts of the world. Werewolves are shape shifters, the living embodiment of the beast caged inside of man, released to savage across the world without restraint.

Early werewolves were often depicted as witches, who used various potions to turn into wolves, or required intricate rituals to affect the change. The full moon, connected with madness in people for millennia, is generally associated with werewolves too. Some werewolves can voluntarily change shape, others are cursed, usually after being bitten, and face a terrible fate of changing against their will and losing control.

Werewolves in the past century have generally been depicted as being vulnerable to silver, but highly resistant to other injuries. Stories about werewolves abound, all the way back to Little Red Riding Hood.

Many movies have been made about werewolves, including notables like:

Werewolf of London (1935)
The Wolf Man (1941)
The Howling (1981)
Silver Bullet (1985) – based on a novella by Stephen King
Dog Soldiers (2002)

Unlike vampires, far fewer werewolf stories depict them as anything but horrific creatures. We love to be scared, to see the face of destructive evil.

Then there is the awesome juncture where vampires and werewolves meet:

The Underworld series (starting in 2003)
The Twilight series
Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter International Series
Van Helsing (2004) – one of my favorites
Even Abbot and Costello

So what continues to drive the fascination? I remember years ago people saying, “Don’t write any more vampire stories. That market is saturated and dead.”

Then Twilight took over the world, and spawned an entire new genre of paranormal romance. Vampires and werewolves are still everywhere.

I think part of the allure is the fact that people know these monsters. Sure, different stories twist facts around some but, for the most part when someone says “vampire” or “werewolf”, people immediately get a sense of what they’re talking about.

For vampires, they’re always tied to seductive evil, and audiences get a thrill flirting along that forbidden line.

Werewolves, savage and hard to kill, offer great power, and the loss of all restraint, all social norms. They’re the animal we all hold within, the face of what happens when we cross the line and step to the far side of chaos.

Although I have no interest in writing a vampire or werewolf story any time soon, there are lessons to be learned by the great ongoing success of these stories, and the myths that give them life. Are the monsters in our stories sensual, tempting, and savage? Do they terrify and fascinate in equal measure? Do they reflect the darkness lurking within the characters, and by extension, the readers? Is there a risk the hero may fall to that darkness, even in their moment of victory?

If so, your own myths might prove to be legends in their own right.

Coming Late to Wonder.

May 30, 2013

Nancy

Nancy Greene The Writing Life 2 Comments

I “discovered” Science Fiction and Fantasy later than you might think. Sure, I read all the Dr. Seuss books, Magic Elizabeth that included a doll who may or may not be magic, and The Bridge To Terabithia, and loved its magic. I read the Lord of the Rings series and The Hobbit as a hand-me-down book from my brother. I read Vonnegut as a hand-me-down book from my father. In fact, I still have most of those early Kurt Vonnegut books on my shelf.

But when high school rolled around, I fell out of love with fantasy. Why? Well, my brother is six years older than I am, and I definitely had younger sibling syndrome. Paul read Stephen King so in sixth grade I picked up my first Stephen King novel – Carrie. I read almost exclusively horror (I made exceptions for the Star Wars books – little knowing that I would one day be friends with a number of those writers) until my sophomore year of college. I think I read every vampire story published at the time, and those vampires weren’t ones you wanted to take home and cuddle.

I wrote until my sophomore year in high school. By then I had written a novel to help me move beyond some bad things in my life., and four fan fiction – Battlestar Galactica and A-Team – romance novels. Yes. Dirk Benedict was dreamy. Le sigh!

Anyway . . . Campfire of America had published one of my short stories. Writing and drawing was part of who I was. But after a bad experience with my then English teacher (which is a topic for another day), I gave up writing. After all, an adult – my English teacher even – had told me that I couldn’t do this.

So, fast forward four years. That college summer I was fortunate enough to work at Bush Gardens, Williamsburg in its Live Entertainment Department. What does that mean? I worked in the theatre running a spot light. One of my friends there was an avid fantasy reader. There’s a lot of downtime between shows. So, he started lending me books. The first one was The River of The Dancing Gods by Jack L. Chalker. If you don’t know the series, it’s well worth checking out. In brief though, Joe, a truck driver, picks up Marge, a hitchhiker. Throckmorton P. Ruddygore–a stranger who met them on a road that wasn’t there–tells them they have 19 minutes before they die in a car accident or, they can come with him to another world over the Sea of Dreams. They chose to go with Throckmorton and get to chose their new forms from, essentially, the Dungeons and Dragon class list. Then things get interesting. From there I dove into Terry Pratchett’s DiskWorld – The Light Fantastic and The Color of Magic.

The other thing that happened that year to reintroduce me to the fantasy genre was I watched The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle on VHS. For lots of reasons that story became very important to me. When I was checking out the fantasy novels from the Williamsburg, VA public library, I found The Last Unicorn as well. While it’s not my favorite Peter Beagle book – that distinction goes to A Fine and Private Place-, it and River of the Dancing Gods were the one changed how I thought about fantasy novels. Not only could these novels entertain, but they had meaning outside the pages. They could touch the heart and change lives.

I was lucky enough to purchase some of the original animation cels from the movie version of The Last Unicorn from Ebay and other sites. When we moved into our current house almost 13 years ago, I used those cells to paint a mural from the cel of the unicorns running on my sons’ bedroom wall. It was a bit heart breaking when they were no longer “babies” and we had to paint over the unicorns.

Still, it took me some time before I started thinking, “I can do that” again. But the desire to write again took root. I’d find myself day dreaming about worlds that didn’t exist anywhere except my head. While I had a job offer from Bush Gardens for the next summer, I had to turn it down because Mom had moved to Florida for a job needed surgery which would render her somewhat helpless for a few weeks, and Dad’s job kept him in Massachusetts. As life worked out, Dad quit his job and moved to Florida so my help became unnecessary. Dad’s move did let me take the evening shift at Universal Studios, which had just opened. I think I read every science fiction and fantasy book in the Dr. Phillips branch of the Orlando public libraries that summer. Slowly, I was putting together my fantasy world from bits I liked in this story or that one and what I didn’t without even knowing it. To write in any genre, you have to read extensively. Both inside your genre and outside it. I was doing my research.

It would take years after that summer of Dancing Gods and Last Unicorns before the seeds planted burst into a riot of colors, and I would start writing again. My first magician born a strong resemblance to Schmendrick. My first heroine confronted the same lies to herself that Marge did – what you said you wanted to be versus what you knew in your heart you were.

When I look back and ask myself why I’m a writer, I always come back to that summer in Williamsburg. The epiphany from it was slow in coming, but it did come.

Lovin’ Every Minute of it

May 29, 2013

Frank Morin

Frank Morin The Writing Life No Comments

I’ve really enjoyed the posts this month – the insights into the history and motivation behind why we’ve all chosen such a difficult, time-consuming, and not-yet lucrative focus for our time. This month provided a rare opportunity for self-reflection, for looking back, and for reminding myself why I enjoy writing so much.

I love a good story.

It all boils down to that. As early as third grade, I began devouring books way above my grade level in search for great stories. I read widely, but gravitated toward science fiction and fantasy, reveling in foreign worlds, alien technology, and boundless magic. Many of the great stories mentioned this month are ones I enjoyed too, but I thought I’d mention a couple of other favorites from my early days as an avid reader.

First there’s the classic Sword of Shannara, epic fantasy from before it was clear what made classic epic fantasy. It’s one of the early greats ones. It had everything: the mysterious, powerful mentor; the young hero hopelessly in over his head; the faithful sidekick; the experienced fighter friend; and an ancient evil no one really expected anyone could defeat. It also included spectacular battle sequences, terrifying monsters, magical talismans, and memorable moments of wonder and horror. What’s not to love? Many of the sequels were good, but for me, none of them surpassed the parent story.

Another of my all-time favorite series was The Mallorean by David Eddings. The magic system was fairly simple, yet consistent, and the world well-developed. Most importantly, the characters were awesome. I loved how they interacted, how they each had a distinct voice, how even the minor characters had some interesting arcs, and important roles to play. For me, this was a series that showed how to manage and utilize a big cast of characters.

There are many other stories I still cherish to this day, but these are a couple of classics that helped cement my love of fantasy. I read so much, it became a problem in school and at home. However, it wasn’t until I started role-playing games that I really started recognizing I had a talent for spinning my own tales.

As a youth, I played a spin-off version of D&D with brothers and friends that minimized the use of dice (everything was done with a single die), and focused more on the crafting of great adventures. Through that effort, I soon discovered I had a flair for inventing great stories, for adapting quickly on the fly, and holding a group’s interest.

It was about that time that I started writing my own stories in earnest. In high school, I plotted out a couple of complete novels, although I never finished writing any of those ginormous epics. I wrote many short stories, some of which were actually pretty good. At that time, I knew I wanted to be a writer, to craft long, epic tales that would thrill me, and hopefully a few readers too.

Unfortunately, I went to college and fell in love with computers, which were just becoming mainstream, and shifted focus to become a computer programmer. That’s what became my career, what supported my family for over a decade until the desire, the need, to write began consuming me again.

Now I write as much as I can, and I’ve arranged my schedule to allow more time to write. I’ve written and thrown away well over half a million words, and have completed three novels and a novella that are viable properties. It’s a long road to become a competent writer, but it’s a road I’ve loved. Soon I hope to reach the next big milestone: publishing something, but that’s a different topic.

And I still play role-playing games, now with my kids and their friends. I still find it one of the best ways to exercise my creative muscles, to keep my mind sharp, nimble, and focused on what’s important in stories. It helps me stay in tune with what makes stories fun.

Because a fun story is a good story.