GOING AFTER INSPIRATION BY DEVELOPING CREATIVE MUSCLE 

By M. M. DeLuca

Writers are frequently asked where their ideas come from. Truth is, finding ideas is not a passive process. As novelist, Jack London said, “You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.” And wielding a club requires muscle. Creative muscle. Regular workouts help to develop it.

I always keep a few beautiful writer’s notebooks around my office and in my car. These become “idea banks” containing story ‘seeds’ in the form of free-writes. Some have grown to become novels, while others have helped enrich works in progress. The following excerpts from an interactive writers’ workshop I led last year, detail a few of my tried and true “writing workouts”.

TAP INTO YOUR EMOTIONS: exploring your own feelings brings emotional depth to your writing: 

• Start with ‘I love…’ and let first thoughts pour onto the paper. If you run out of ideas, try changing to I fear…, I hate…, I’m happy when…, I wish …, I will never…, I worry about…. For a change of pace, find pictures of intriguing people and change the prompt to she hates…, he wishes…

PLACES or SETTINGS can stimulate profound ideas. My curiosity about the beautiful lake houses I used to live opposite, with their hidden gardens and proximity to a wild urban forest, inspired my novel, The Perfect Family Man. 

• Think of an important place from your past that triggers a tingle, a spark, a tremor in you. Sink into it. Inhabit that world. Visualize it, smell it, feel it, taste it. Begin writing with the phrase, I remember….
• Have you or an imaginary character move through and interact with this world, gradually revealing why you or they are there. Introduce other people into it.
• Repeat this with a place you know that has changed. Start with I didn’t recognize the…. My first novel, The Pitman’s Daughter, was inspired by a beautiful valley in County Durham once polluted by coal mines. I imagined Rita, the main character, returning after a long absence, to attend the opening of an outdoor museum where some of the old houses had been transplanted.

PEOPLE: I have a plaque that hangs on my office wall that says, Careful or you’ll end up in my novel. Writers need to be astute ‘people-observers’ to compose fascinating characters from attributes of people they know or have observed.

• Take your writer’s notebook to the park, mall or coffee shop. Pick out interesting individuals or groups. Ask yourself, What’s their story? Tell it in first or third person. Be careful not to stare!!
• Take it a step further. Ask yourself, What’s the PREDICTABLE story of this couple/person? Now what’s an alternate/UNPREDICTABLE/UNEXPECTED story? Try hard to find an out-of-the-box angle or focus. Don’t edit yourself. Consider anything!

HISTORICAL FIGURES. I created an imaginary story of an emotionally unstable, childless woman befriending accused real-life child poisoner, Mary Ann Cotton, in my historical suspense novel, The Savage Instinct.

• Do a Google search of little-known historical figures. Create characters that might have interacted with them. Try to imagine their stories.

WALKING CAN DEVELOP YOUR WRITER’S EYES AND EARS!

In The Perfect Family Man, Olivia’s high school writing teacher advises her to really look at the world to see and hear things she’s never noticed before:

• Take a walk around your neighborhood and record sharp, specific sensory images; ex. a man walks two huskies on short leashes, a gold earring in the mud, sound of goose wings on water. Group clusters of images together that suggest conflict. Link them in short narratives. One of the story threads in The Perfect Family Man was inspired by a house I walked by every day. A young man had died there when he couldn’t escape a basement fire. I always felt overwhelming sadness when I passed by. 
• At the store, work or the gym, record interesting conversation snippets. Comment on tone of voice and the situation. Free write story ideas using them.

FIND MAGIC IN THE MUNDANE: Add conflict to routine activities and rituals and let the magic begin! Find two or three possibilities for each. 

• Holding a garage sale (or car boot sale in the UK).
• Buying a wedding dress.
• Going to a child’s birthday party.

• Hosting a book club meeting.

RANDOM WORD PAIRS: You can find these lists online. Imagine how they might be linked. Here are a couple I’ve used that actually inspired novels:

• Surgeon ballet slipper
• Mercedes midnight
• Teapot lottery ticket

FAMILY AND FRIENDS:

• Invent a history for someone you’ve lost touch with.
• Reimagine an old family story with different characters.
• Find an unusual object in your house and create an alternate history of how an imaginary character came to have it.

‘WHAT IF’ QUESTIONS are the basis of most sci-fi novels. I used one to inspire my YA trilogy, The Forevers. 

• Create a list of ‘what if’ questions that intrigue you about the future; ex. what if the electrical grid failed? What if outer space became a tourist destination?
• Consider each question and list its consequences/impact on humanity/society.

BOOKS/TV/ NEWS

Some novels create a new ‘take’ on a character from literature. Havisham by Ronald Frame imagines an intriguing origin story for Dickens’ famous, Miss Havisham. 

• List secondary but intriguing characters from public domain novels you love. Imagine the obstacles they might have faced before or after the action of the original novel.
• My novel The Secret Sister was inspired by a news story about a respected educational expert who was charged with child porn related offences. Keep a note of cases that intrigue you or scour the net for bizarre news stories that get your brain ticking.

These are just a sample of workouts to develop your creative muscle. Have fun, explore, let your imagination loose and you’ll soon have enough ideas for so many books you won’t know which one to start on first.

—

M. M. DeLuca spent her childhood in Durham City, England. After studying Psychology at the University of London, Goldsmiths College, she moved to Winnipeg, Canada where she worked as a teacher then as a freelance writer. She studied Advanced Creative writing with Pulitzer prizewinning author, Carol Shields and has received several local arts council grants for her work. Her first novel, The Pitman’s Daughter was shortlisted for the Chapters Robertson Davies first novel in Canada award in 2001. She went on to self-publish it on Amazon in 2013 where it reached the Amazon Top 20 in the literary bestseller chart. Her novel The Savage Instinct was shortlisted for the Launchpad Manuscript Contest (USA) in 2017 where it was picked up by independent publisher, Inkshares.

The Perfect Family Man by M.M. DeLuca (Canelo, £8.99) is published on 21st October

Five years ago, my little boy went missing. Now my husband’s vanished, too.
I wish I could say that the tragedy of little Jack disappearing brought me and Nate closer together. But my husband is more distant from me now than he’s ever been. Perhaps that’s why I don’t ask him exactly where he’s going when he sets off on another business trip.

Or perhaps I was too distracted by the woman moving in across the street with bouncing blonde hair and a cherubic toddler boy. He reminds me so much of the child I lost. But his mother doesn’t seem to properly watch him. And I can’t be sure, but I think Nate and this woman share a look of recognition before he leaves.

The first day Nate’s away, things feel okay, even though I know when he returns we’re going to have to discuss what I found in his coat pocket. But one day turns into two, and then three. I don’t want to seem like the crazy wife, but I have to call his work and ask what’s going on. And that’s when they tell me the shocking truth.

Nate hasn’t worked for the company in six months.

Once I’ve found this lie, it’s hard not to pick at the scab of our marriage, see what other secrets lie beneath his apparent love for me. By the end of the week, I hope I might finally learn the truth about my husband, about the woman across the street, and about what really happened to my little boy.

The Perfect Family Man is a jaw-droppingly good rollercoaster ride of a novel with twists that will leave readers going ‘OMG’. Perfect for fans of The Woman in the Window, Ruth Ware and Lisa Jewell.

BUY HERE

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, How To and Tips