Orson Scott Card once said, "Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don’t see any." It's true, really. Everywhere you look, there are scenes, settings, stories, characters, all waiting to be transformed. Working in a third-floor office with a full wall window overlooking a hotel, an apartment complex, and shopping center parking lots, hundreds of them pass me by a day. I've had many times when I've stopped and just watched as something interesting happens: fire trucks, construction, police officers, traffic back-ups, barking dogs, limos, dozens of stories happening right under my nose. All those moments are mine and mine alone.
And then I keep them to myself. I store the really interesting ones away, forget others, probably forget some of the interesting ones.
Yesterday, I thought, "Why not share them?"
So starting today and hopefully continuing each week, I'm going to report on my weekly inspirations. All those little moments that lit a small spark, and all of you, dear readers, are welcome to them. Consider everything a prompt that you are welcome to take and twist and develop as your own if you like. Because the moments may have been mine, but there's not reason I can't pass them on to you as well. Some weeks I may have many, some only one or two, but I'll try to have something interesting for you every week.
This week's moments:
- There was a woman walking down the side of the road. At first, I thought she was wearing a purple headscarf that wrapped around her hair and trailed down to her waist, but as I drew nearer, I realized it was her hair, set in small violet braids.
- As I parked in my driveway, a firefly landed on the windshield of my car. I had just been lamenting to myself that I'd yet to see one this season, so it was thrilling to have the first one so close. Only lightly illuminated by the single lamp on the front porch, it didn't know I was there, leaning in over my steering wheel for a closer look. In the minute we both sat there, inches apart, it didn't flash, not once, but there in the darkness, I could see the promise of light inside it, green and pulsating, flashing and roiling around inside it like lightning in a cloud. In that moment, I understood why they're called "lightning bugs."
Cool! My MC has purple hair! I like this idea of jotting down writing inspirations from everyday moments. I had one myself the other day, and then promptly forgot it because I didn't write it down!
ReplyDeleteIt's easy to lose track of those little inspirations. I like to use a draft email or google drive document to keep track of ideas. You can usually access it anywhere and keep it all in one place, so there's less writing notes on receipts or scraps of paper that get thrown out. Just make sure to keep backups!
DeleteI use Evernote to keep track of my ideas, because I can have each thing in its own formatted easily linkable document, but they're easy to organize, and I can edit them from any device and it automatically syncs so I never have to transfer anything or lose anything.
ReplyDeleteYou already know this, but those two things already inspired an entirely new plot bunny!
Funnily enough, it was that same OSC quote that motivated me to create that DPB exercise variation, because I figured it would help with pinning down those moments of inspiration. XD
DeleteErp. Early submit. I actually wanted to say, I thought it would be a cool idea to create a challenge for everyone to do something like this, e.g. for a month or three, share all inspirational moments. I was thinking of doing this myself, and setting a challenge on my forum. Would it be okay if I did that/linked to this post?
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