Tag: Inspiration

Is it possible to get inspiration from music?

Why, of course it is! And, in fact, it can sometimes be hard not to be inspired by the music in our lives. And we may even, consciously or not, try to emulate videos in what we write.

Just don’t out and out steal, okay? But an homage? It should be fine.

Inspiration from Music

Music is a rather common pairing with writing. Some people cannot write without it. Others are inspired by it. Still others are haunted by it.

Lyrics

Sometimes, it’s the lyrics. For me, personally, I pay a lot of attention to lyrics. As a result, I have a lot of trouble listening to tunes while writing or even editing. I have to shut it off, as I am unable to concentrate.

But I do listen when I go outside or offline. For a fan fiction piece, I created a kind of bad girl character. However, she did not come to life until I listened to Amy Winehouse’s You Know I’m No Good.

It’s not just the words, though. And it isn’t just the video. The bass line did it, too. As a result, the character snapped into sharp focus. I could not stop listening to the song until I finished the piece.

The Sound of Music (The Von Trapp Family and Others)

For a genius character addled with ADHD, I wanted his mind to be going about a thousand miles an hour. The best way to do this was to listen to fast-moving songs. Therefore, this one was a must.

The song itself is kind of silly. The words are somewhat nonsensical. But the beat is fast. It’s not rap, although speed rap could have worked as well. Either way, the sound was discordant. And that was the idea. With so much clanging going on his head, the character was simply incapable of concentrating.

A Constant Companion

So, when I was writing Untrustworthy, Pompeii by the group Bastille was in very heavy rotation on a local college station that my husband and I listen to a lot. That song embedded itself into my mind and it became the song for that book. And to this day, I can’t hear this song without thinking of the book. And, for the most part, vice versa.

When Things Go Wrong

With the character of Peri Martin, a lot of her essence came to life when I started to listen to an older song I love—When Things Go Wrong, by Robin Lane and the Chartbusters. But for the romance, it was Squeeze’s Take Me, I’m Yours.

So for the successor Time Addicts trilogy, most of the playlist was songs about time. But two of them stand out: Time Waits for No One by the Rolling Stones and Got the Time by Anthrax (a cover of the Joe Jackson tune).

The Funky Ceilidh

Of course, Ceilidh O’Malley had to have this song by Black 47. In 2022, when I was writing a prequel to Real Hub of the Universe, I also listened to a lot of Irish music. But the song that really brings me back to her is always Pure by the Lightning Seeds.

The Whole Shebang

For Mettle, I saw the separate point of view chapters as episodes in a series or miniseries on television. And much like the TV show Murphy Brown used a lot of different music, I fell in love with the idea of giving each chapter or at least each character their own tune. But since the book mostly takes place in Boston, the characters would have their own song with some form of Boston connection.

So, here’s how that shook out.

This list is set up by character, song title, and artist.

• Eleanor Braverman – I Do – J Geils Band (I may change this one)
• Noah Braverman – Roadrunner – Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers
• Craig Firenze – Shipping Up to Boston – The Dropkick Murphys
• Dez Hunter – It’s a Shame About Ray – The Lemonheads
• Elise Jeffries – When Things Go Wrong – Robin Lane and the Chartbusters
• Kitty Kowalski – The Queen of Suffolk County – The Dropkick Murphys
• Minka Lopez – My Best Friend’s Girl – The Cars
• Nell Murphy – The Wanderer – Donna Summer
• Olga Nicolaev – Train Kept Rollin’ – Aerosmith (I may change this one)
• Mei-Lin Quan – Voices Carry – ‘Til Tuesday

So then, for the love scene, it would be Boston’s More Than a Feeling. Of course, there are a thousand others I could add.

Because, do I want to leave out State Radio’s Counting All Crows? Or The Pixies’ Monkey Gone to Heaven? But at some point, you have to put a bow on it and say, “That’s it. I’m done.”

Enigmans and Others

So, I don’t tend to use a playlist for short stories. And The Enigman Cave never really got a song attached to it, either.

Creation

For those who need songs to write, playlists are a must. And you can find several on YouTube by searching on writing playlist. However, that might not work for a lot of people. Because writing is a personal thing, just like musical taste is. If I prefer disco, and you prefer country, we’re both right, so long as we keep writing.

So one great thing about YouTube is the ability to create private playlists. If your inspirational music of choice is BTS or the Bee Gees or Britney Spears or Beethoven or The Beatles or Bobby Darin—then that’s fantastic! And no one need be the wiser.

Music and Writing: Takeaways

If you need it, then by all means listen to tunes while writing or editing. If you don’t, then don’t. And don’t let anyone tell you their way is somehow better. It’s hard to find anything more subjective than this.

For everyone who has ever received medical care (which would likely be all of us), the idea of putting it into fiction should be a natural. After all, not all of us have careers or families. But virtually everyone has gotten some form of medical care, even if it was just someone putting a bandage on a skinned knee.

Is it Possible to Get Inspiration from Injuries and Medical Care?

Of course it is!

Medical care matters in our lives, so it should matter in fiction, too. Because unless your setting is a magical one, somehow, some way, any hurt characters will need healing. And they may even need it in a magical setting as well.

Injuries and Medical care

Medical care might not seem like an inspiring subject. However, doctors and nurses naturally witness drama on most days. And some of the most compelling stories can be about that, such as Coma.

Injuries

So, have you ever broken a bone, or suffered a sprain? And if either of those things happened to you, what happened next? Did you faint? Or seek medical attention? Was it fast? Or maybe did your injury linger, even with an infection or complications. Did you need to have surgery?

And even if you were not the injured party, maybe a friend or a family member was. Surely, somewhere in your past, you signed someone’s cast, yes?

Illnesses

So we all know that illnesses, of course, can run the gamut. They can be mild colds or HIV. And they can be chronic, like diabetes is considered to be today, or a death sentence, such as Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s is even more compelling and heartbreaking due to its gradual theft of the self.

And then there are pandemics, like Covid-19. What happens when medical care is rationed, or people just plain believe conspiracy theories which end up hurting—or even killing—them?

We may think of cancer as the worst of all possible diseases, yet treatments are better now than they ever have been. However, if you are writing historical fiction, that was not the case, even as recently as the 1970s or so. And if you aren’t squeamish, look up the treatment for breast cancer for John Adams’s daughter. Yes, that John Adams.

Childbirth

Of course these days only women and transmen give birth (although medical science may change that someday!). However, anyone can always witness it, not only the actual event but also everything leading up to it.

And don’t forget about how it can even be a bitter fight as to who gets to be in the delivery room. Mothers in law, I am looking at you.

Death

Of course death comes along with the territory. Consider the impact not only on the patient and their family, but on the caregiver(s). How do home health aides feel? And what about doctors, or even researchers trying an experimental treatment? Losing a patient is tragic, yes, but researchers can learn a lot from that.

Plus, naturally, the end can bring with it an autopsy. Or maybe the organs are recovered, for transplants or for medical research.

Malpractice

Let’s face it, it exists and it is troubling. How does it affect the patient’s family? Or the medical professional(s) who screwed up? Lawsuits and sorrow and guilt can all happen. Does anyone apologize?

Medical Care: Takeaways

Characters slip and fall, or they get battle injuries or just a cough. The medical care they receive matters.

Are YOU Getting Inspiration from Science?

Science is one of the cornerstones of our existence. So are your characters scientific? Do they f’ing love science? And even if they don’t, it can still inform what they say and do.

Discoveries and Science

First of all, there is an enormous amount of inherent drama in trying to discover a cure for a disease. However, sometimes things go another way, where a seemingly serious breakthrough ends up having a rather different application. So consider minoxidil, which is used to treat baldness. Its original development was to be a drug to treat high blood pressure.

And research, with all its successes and failures, can spark drama.

Chemistry and Physics

So chemist characters can do everything from creating potions on the edge of magic to working in pharmacies. And your physicist characters can study the cosmos. Or maybe they build nuclear weapons, and experience all sorts of doubts and moral crises due to that. Furthermore, any of these characters can teach at the high school or collegiate (or graduate school) levels.

Biology and Geology

Maybe a biologist character could unleash a plague or study alien creatures. And a geologist character could warn of an impending volcano eruption (this would be a vulcanologist, actually), or maybe help find fossil fuels.

The Art and Science of Medicine

Beyond finding cures, doctors also handle people at their most vulnerable. And they see the weak, the sick, the dying, and the naked. So some physicians find humor in the absurd, like in M*A*S*H. Psychiatrists can work with the insane or just the troubled. And that can spill over into marriage counseling, or helping people figure out how to come out of the closet.

And, of course, there is caring for people who (currently) have an incurable disease, such as Alzheimer’s.

Takeaways

So whether your characters are blinded with science or just need to get a sprain treated, scientific observations and pursuits can often inspire great writing.

Let’s Consider Speculating About the Future

Speculating is fun. However, future predictions can be notoriously inaccurate. I’m still waiting for my flying car, for example.

However, some predictions have been eerily on the nose, such as cell phones, which are a lot like Star Trek’s communicators. So here’s a few idea on how to essentially build your own crystal ball.

For writers, this kind of speculation can be helpful, either to set a scene or to spark some other idea. While science fiction and fantasy are natural genres for this, probably just about any genre could work. Maybe the couple in your romance are inventors. Or the victims in your horror are dispatched with cutting edge (pun intended) stuff.

Extrapolation

The easiest way to speculate and predict is to take what currently exists, and then extrapolate from that.

Transportation

For example, consider transportation. Your car gets a certain degree of fuel efficiency and it has a particular top speed. It holds a certain number of people. And it has a particular styling. So what happens when you stretch those characteristics?

And so you can consider a car that can go faster yet safely. Maybe your futuristic vehicle is self-driving, or a robot ‘drives’ it.

Since parking can be a pain in a lot of places, why not think up a car which can park itself, or can fold up so it doesn’t need a conventionally-sized parking spot? Maybe your new car is partly powered by solar or nuclear fusion. And how sleek and aerodynamic should it be?

Communications

And you can consider other basic areas of life. Let’s look at communications next. Because nearly all of us already have smart phones, think about the trends. Sometimes, phones get smaller, and are more lightweight and compact. However, at other times, they become larger and almost could be thought of as tablet hybrids.

What do your characters need? And what are the limitations on either scenario? How small can a phone become? How large?

Can it be embedded?

Speculating About Feeding the World

So what about food? People still starve. However, that’s usually due to distribution problems rather than growing enough crops or the existence of enough arable land. Hence how do your characters (or your setting) solve this problem?

And so you can look at any basic area of life, from finding love to consuming entertainment or buying clothing. See where extrapolation takes you.

Employment

When I graduated from undergrad, in 1983, there was no such thing as social media. In fact, I well recall cutting and pasting paragraphs in papers by literally cutting and pasting. Sorry, rain forest!

While computers already existed of course, they had not made it to the mainstream yet. But once the price started to drop, in the late 80s, mid 90s or so, computers started to become more ubiquitous. So, that year, the prospects for employment using a computer were really just programmer or someone who taught programming.

Now, of course, many of us use our computers every day at work. And this doesn’t even get into how often we check and use our cell phones. But back in that year, would any of us have come up with so many varied uses for computers in work?

Off the Wall

And then there’s the somewhat pie in the sky, kinda crazy stuff. For example, let’s think about the second Back to the Future film. Doc Brown uses fusion power to make the DeLorean go, but one of the things he grabs for fuel is a discarded banana peel. What a brilliant off the wall idea!

Off the Wall Fashion

So let’s look at, say, fashion. Maybe it’s the opposite of today, where everything is covered up but genitalia. But what kind of a society would support that?

Or maybe everyone wears a uniform, but the uniforms look really odd.

Consider hair when you consider future fashions. Does the mullet make a mainstream comeback? Or do we all just say to hell with it and shave our heads?

More Speculating Out of My Overly Fertile Imagination

Cars could be six stories tall. Communications could be facilitated with chewing gum. Maybe you vote telepathically. The sky, as always, is the limit.

Takeaways for Speculating About the Future

In short, thinking about our future, you may want to consider today, back a few decades, when today was the future. How did everything change? Was it gradual or radical? Did celebrities and influencers steer the ship? Or did it come up from grass roots?

Depending on your genre, and how much room there is for humor, your ideas about the future can go in any number of directions.

Decide on how plausible you want everything to be. And don’t forget to take into account professional predictions like Moore’s Law when speculating about the future!