Tag: Inspiration

Do you need some new sources of writing inspiration? When I first started to write this blog post, I sure as hell did.

But did I really need 500 of them? Well, maybe we can just say that things got a little out of hand.

Okay, a lot out of hand. So be it.

My Sources of Writing Inspiration May Not be the Same as Yours

And that is… okay.

In fact, it is a lot more than okay. It is downright necessary. For, you see, there is a difference between you and me, gentle reader. And the dissimilarities between us that translate into different stories should also translate into new and different forms of inspiration.

Do You Have to Have Actual Writer’s Block to Use These?

Of course not! And now, on with the list.

1 – 100 Inspirational Nuggets

So, let us start with something that may sound a little bit off-beat.

The English alphabet has, of course, 26 letters. But let’s nix X for the moment. Er, sorry, not sorry, Elon Musk.

Find four words for each of the remaining 25 letters.

But not just any four words. Oh, no. I want you to find four words which have multiple meanings. The weirder and more out-there the different meanings are, the better.

Behold, an Example!

Here is a totally free example for the letter G. The word is, ta da!

Grind.

Er, what?

This word has tons of meanings. When it is a verb used with an object, one such meaning is to crush. When it is a noun, one such meaning is the rat race.

And when used as a verb without an object, it can mean a kind of burlesque or dirty dancing.

Keep in mind, too, these are not the only definitions. And, there are even more variants when you look at variations of this word, such as ground or grinder.

How to Use these Sources of Inspiration

Use any of your hundred words (or their variations) as part or all of the title of a short story. And then just write whatever you feel. And if you do not like grind, then pick sit, or apply, or bit, or any other word you come across which fits the criteria.

101 – 200 Inspirational Bits

Now, what happens if and when you run out of your hundred words?

Time for a remix or hundred!

Here, you can use your hundred words or use a short story or novel or universe you have already created or are in the process of creating.

And, much like rap in the 1990s, sample one within the other.

Another Example

When it comes to universes, probably my best-realized one is the one for the Obolonks. So, we can grab, say, Peri and Charlie and toss the word grind into the mix.

For a pair of near-future cops who are on-again, off-again, as is his marriage, the dirty dancing definition will fill our requirements nicely.

Maybe they go on a stakeout and get in some recreational dancing on the side. Or maybe they embarrass everyone at the holiday party with their antics. Bonus points if his wife is there. And maybe more bonus points if his kids are there, too, or her boyfriend is.

Would this short story ever see the light of day? Not necessarily. It could, though, become a scene to slip into a larger storyline. Or a memory. Or it could be a one-off.

It is the sort of thing that could potentially become a giveaway for subscribers.

201 — 300 Inspo Morsels

Now, we are not going to use those hundred words again. But this time, we will be doing…

wait for it..

Crossover Mania!

Okay, okay, I will provide another example.

Crossover Mania Example

Here is where having a number of characters universes, and situations can come in very handy. But in a moment, I will explain how to get around that if you, personally, do not.

The Obolonks are in a strong, well-developed universe. But Ceilidh O’Malley, from the Real Hub Universe, is a beloved character. And the plot of Mettle, where everything goes to hell in a handcart when the elements of the periodic table start to disappear?

It is a pretty nifty plot, if I do say so myself. But what happens if I combine them?

Since Ceilidh is from the 1880s, I could go to town on the fish out of water aspect as I throw her into more like the 2080s. Or I could ignore that and make her a regular part of that time frame but without losing her personality.

Another idea would be to pull the Obolonk universe into Ceilidh’s time period, where we would have a tripartite (humans, robots, and aliens) society but during the time of Queen Victoria and President Garfield.

Either way, how would people like her cope as the world starts to become less and less familiar?

But What if I Do Not Have That Many Variables to Choose From?

That is totally cool. Just pull from real life. Or from well-known stories.

I am not suggesting committing plagiarism or copyright theft. Rather, I am saying to lift up an aspect of a story and teleport it somewhere else.

Maybe your next-door neighbor and her cat, Freckles, go to El Salvador and end up having to follow the Yellow Brick Road to get home again.

Change a few names and identifying characteristics, and you might just have something there. Can you come up with 100 of these? How many books, films, people, and situations are there?

In short, if you apply yourself to it, you sure as hell will.

301 — 400 Sources of Writing Inspiration (Scintillas of Spark)

Now we will go back to our hundred words.

This time, I want you to remix somewhere between three and seven of them into sentences.

These do not have to be terribly believable sentences. But they need to follow a standard format for a declarative sentence or a question. That is, they need a subject and a predicate (which contains a verb).

Above, I came up with four words: grind, bit, apply, and sit.

Here are a few sentences:

While applying for a job to return to the daily grind, Suzie bit into a peach as she sat in the waiting room.

The miniature horses were so small I could have ground them into dust, so I sat on a stool as I applied my concentration on trying to get a tiny snaffle bit into Flying Cloud’s mouth.

Working as a sitter was so dull that Harry took apart the Wilson family’s coffee grinder, but when it shocked him, it was as if the appliance had bit him.

Weird? Yes. But any of these could potentially turn into a story. Or try to put them together, if you like. Mix and remix them as much as any club DJ does.

401 — 500 Smidgens of Vision

Here is a twist on Crossover Mania. This time, rip it from the headlines for your plot, characters, and location/universe.

Start with using real names, political parties, companies, or whatever but change those if you ever decide to publish anything you come up with. Just in case.

Because you want to cross over, you will need to put people, places, etc. into odd situations. Perhaps your neighbor with a cat ends up in the local paper because she grew the biggest Hubbard squash ever in your county.

Now throw her in a foreign war. And for your plot, grab something from the sports section, where she comes back from an injury or just misses out on a no-hitter, or is traded for a neighbor to be named later.

If you do not like mixing local, international, and sports news, try the consumer affairs column or the TV section, or the weather, or political news, or real estate, or arts, or…

Or whatever you like. The point is to mix things up.

Do you want to add in any of your hundred words? Sure, you can. Or don’t. Surprise me.

More Sources of Writing Inspiration for You and Me, too

I did say 500, now, yes?

Well, there is more out there than what I know and can think of. But there are also plenty of sources right here in this blog.

Here are a few you can check out:

† Inspiration Videos
• The Physical World
† Getting Story Ideas
• The News
† Myths and Legends
• Religion

I also have inspirational posts on everything from TV shows to eavesdropping or using an ideas jar or bank. So far as I am concerned, all sources of writing inspiration are good ones. And, as always, you do you.

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.

This is the case even if it was just someone putting a bandage on a skinned knee. It all counts.

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.

There’s a reason why many soap operas concentrate on doctors and hospitals. It’s not just the allure of wealth and being able to dress characters up in fabulous clothes. It’s also because medical care has drama baked right in.

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 we consider diabetes 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?

What happens when a patient dies on the table during a procedure? And what if that procedure was supposed to be routine?

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.

For example, consider minoxidil, which is used to treat baldness. However, 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

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 and the forces that shape it.

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. Go back far enough in time, and you’ll find that a lot of discoveries in these areas overlap with philosophical pursuits.

Biology, Paleontology/Anthropology, 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 or alternatives.

For an anthropology character, like the characters in African Escape, the drama in the plot can come from discoveries. Or, like in that story, from less than fully legal attempts to get the goods out of the country of origin.

Engineering

Of course, a lot of the more practical end of scientific work comes in the form of engineering. Character Craig Firenze is a former engineer, who ended up going into public relations because he had a gift for gab.

Engineering can also lead to works about inventions, like in the short story Water. Or explore the actions of what are essentially proto-engineers. That is, do you know anyone who takes stuff apart all the time?

That person, even if they’re still a small child, might be a good (eventual) candidate for engineering school.

Astronomy

Beyond discoveries, astronomers may be checking the minutiae of dozens if not hundreds of photographs, to determine if anything has changed or moved. These days, much of this work is done with the assistance of artificial intelligence.

Astronomers may be looking for life on other worlds, or for the worlds themselves. Or, they may be looking for anything which threatens to slam into our planet. Which would make for a rather bad day all around.

There are instruments in orbit around Earth, and there are others in rather remote parts of the globe. Hence your astronomer characters could be traveling at times.

The Art and Science of Medicine

Beyond finding cures or performing routine checks, doctors also handle people at their most vulnerable. And they see the weak, the sick, the dying, and the naked.

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.

Plus, there are people who are essentially chronically troubled.

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

Keep in mind: just because a physician (or nurse practitioner, etc.) doesn’t cure a patient, it does not mean anyone has committed malpractice. Sometimes, there just isn’t a cure. Yet.

Takeaways

So whether your characters are blinded with science or just need to get a sprain treated by the local barber surgeon, 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?

And what about AI?

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!