I signed up for a Master Class, super excited to complete some of the training programs on creative writing. With writing masters such as Neil Gaiman and N. K. Jemisin there, it was clear I would come out the other end a master writer myself.
Right?
In Neil Gaiman’s course he talked about the source of creative ideas – and mostly he explained that realistically many writers are not sure where their ideas come from. That resonated with me. Because it’s the truth. At least in part.
Every human being on the planet has a super power. And no, I don’t mean laser-shooting eyes or turning invisible.
I wish it were so!
I mean normal human skills: Art. Crafts. Music. Innovation. Creativity. Writing. Singing. Building. Serving. Healing. Fixing. Engineering. Cooking. Listening. Mediation. Leading. And a million other things humans can be good at. Everyone has a special knack for one – sometimes two or three – thing(s) they are naturally really, really good at, without even trying.
The mind of a creative writer is no different. Their brains just naturally think of writing ideas that feel, sometimes, like they came from nowhere.
An example:
We were watching Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2 (I’ve read the book too). In the story they have to break into a high-security vault below Gringotts’ Wizarding Bank – where there is this enormous white dragon guarding it. The goblin in the group shakes a ‘clanker’ to emit a specific sound while explaining how the dragon was trained to expect pain when it hears this. Naturally, Hermione Granger is horrified and calls it “cruel”. Next there is a long scene of them being betrayed, and the treasure in the vault almost drowning them, and having to find a way out. They finally release the white dragon to escape on it.
Through this entire scene in the show the viewers are, of course, biting their nails – will they get out?
But, me?
Sure, I was anxious for them to get away too. But, my mind was also ruminating as follows:
That IS cruel. Poor dragon. How long has it been down there? Is it so white from a lack of sun? Now they are using that poor dragon to get out, as if it didn’t have enough problems. Those selfish kids just jumped off it without removing those chains! I bet the dragon has some serious PTSD. That dragon is now going to need to find a special therapist in Romania who does EMDR so that they can undo the PTSD of the torture and ‘clanker’ sound.
Then I imagined this large therapy office, with the psychologist in a chair and their notepad before them (Looney Tunes style), and the dragon laying on a long chaise recounting all the abuse it suffered – including those three nasty teenagers that used it without permission to escape Gringotts.
And BAM. A story idea just formed itself in my mind.
Another example:
Recently I started reading some of the more popular series of ‘shifter’ books – the Alpha werewolf male who claims the female and says, “you’re mine”, and “Mine!”, and they become possessive of her. I know a lot of people really like those fantasy books.
But me?
I had, have, a hard time getting into it.
First off, folk should read up on real wolf packs in the real world, because the ‘alpha’ in charge isn’t exactly how it works. Secondly, every time the alpha male in these books says, “Mine”, I can only think of the seagulls from Finding Nemo (Mine, Mine, Mine), and then I laugh and it ruins the serious moment in the story.
Third, my mind kept thinking: “Girl! Run! Run! Run! He’s a total control freak!” Then I imagined their marital counseling sessions, or her in divorce court saying, “Well, he wouldn’t even just let me go to the grocery store alone!” or, “Some guy at Starbucks only smiled politely at me and my husband went into a werewolf rage and threw the stranger through a window.”
And, BAM. A story idea just formed in my mind.
And the AI image generator Midjourney makes it SO EASY to imagine these writing ideas…
Why does my mind automatically meander along strange idea threads such as these? I don’t know. It just does. It’s the superpower of creative writers.
Though, sometimes creative writing ideas are akin to how improv works. In improv one person builds on whatever the prior person did. And then the next person builds on that. And so on and so forth, until an entire scene is acted out. Creative minds often work like that too.
Because anyone writing a ‘dragon rider’ story today was absolutely 100% inspired by other dragon rider books before them, and those before them were inspired by ones before that, all the way back to Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern. And, she was certainly inspired by mythological stories of the same before that.
Writers stand on the shoulders of giants.