© Ashwin Kharidehal Abhirama
So often the plots, sub-plots and characters for your stories are conjured up through your imagination. Indeed, it can safely be said that writers have the greatest imaginations around!
Having said this, if at times you’re finding it difficult to take a story forward, either through your imagination or just writing your way through a block, then remember there are other sources of inspiration. Below are 5 ways to inspire the way you write:
1. Work
If you have a fulltime day job and don’t work from home, then it is most likely you spend most of your time at the office. Your office environment can be a wonderful source of inspiration with many personalities interacting with each other. Even your relationships with your colleagues and clients can be just what you need, to help establish the dynamics between the characters in your story.
2. Home Life
At home you might be doing certain activities that are mundane, without thinking twice. It could involve cooking, cleaning, getting the kids ready for school, or paying the bills. When you’re doing such activities, just notice if any incident happens in an unusually different way that you could use in your story. For example, if you forgot to put the washing in the dryer by mistake, you could use this in your writing where the protagonist is experiencing temporary memory loss, as she is keeps forgetting to put washed clothes into the dryer.
3. Travel
One of the best sources of inspiration for your writing can come from travelling. This can include visiting places in your country, or going abroad. Travelling will bring you into contact with new environments, interesting people, cultures and food and drinks. All these different aspects of travelling can provide you with ideas, which you can incorporate into your work. For instance, a trip you had to Cuba and the streets of Old Havana could be used as the setting for your story.
4. Random Thoughts
We all have random thoughts about the most strangest of things during our daily lives. Usually our thoughts are about past events that have already happened or future scenarios that haven’t occurred yet. Usually it is best to bring your attention back to the present moment when you find yourself thinking in this way. This will help to ensure that you are not agitated by the past or the future.
However, these random thoughts may actually have some value in them for your writing. For example, if you’re feeling a little nervous about giving a presentation in the future at work, then perhaps this experience of being slightly anxious in the context of speaking in front of audiences, could be used as a characteristic of one of the characters in your story, if appropriate.
5. Dreams
Dreams when you’re fast asleep can usually be the most intense stories of all. After all, dreams can seem to be so real, until your wake up that is! Dreams can usually be happy or they can be tragic. If you’ve had a dream recently, what was it about and is there anything in it that you can use in your story?
Hiten Vyas is the Founder and Managing Editor of eBooks India. He is also a prolific eBook writer with over 25 titles to his name.