Chasing Inspiration

Where do you get your ideas? No but seriously what do you use for inspiration: art, music, landscape, the news, dreams, family stories . . . ?  

Brenda at the keyboard.

Inspiration. Something intangible that sparks an idea and gets the creative juices flowing. We can't bottle or fully explain it.

When I start writing a crime fiction book or short story, I open my mind to possibilities, trying to find that nugget of an idea on which to hang a plot. Generally, I seek a crime, its motivation and the perpetrator. Once I have this pinned down, I open my laptop to write the opening chapter.

So the question is: where do I find this nugget of an idea?

Most often, a news story sparks the story. I watch the television news pretty much daily and check out a few online sites as well. A lot of what's going on in the world is horrific or unbelievable and not the best fodder, but every so often, an item will spark my interest and have me asking 'what if?' If I keep coming back to the idea, then it begins to have legs.

The same goes for conversations - someone can tell me a story that sticks with me, and I ask 'what if?', brainstorming the initial event into a workable plot idea.

While plot is important to my books, the characters are central. Many people whom I've met over the years, and even those in the news, can turn up in my stories in one form or another. I do not consciously set out to create an exact replica of someone real, but will often incorporate many of their characteristics or traits into the fictional person.

The human condition is universal, and everyone has hopes, desires, fears, connections, high and low moments. For instance, I've had friends who have divorced or been brought up by divorced parents. I've been fortunate not to experience divorce in my family, but this doesn't stop me from reading about it, listening to others' experiences, or imagining its impact. For example, in my latest book When Last Seen, a seventeen-year-old character named Sara shows up. She is a socially awkward girl living with her mother and brother while her father has remarried and has a three-year-old son with his new wife. In her loneliness, she begins to follow her dad and dreams of becoming a PI. Now, I never personally experienced any of this scenario, but I could imagine myself in Sara's shoes, and she became central to the story.

A story idea can also arise from a place. My husband and I visited friends in St. Catharines, Ontario (Niagara Region), and one morning, we went for a walk through some thick woods to Sunset Beach. All the while, my writer mind was thinking, 'this would be a great place for a murder'. This nugget turned into a short story titled "The Final Hit" which you can read in the anthology Cold Canadian Crime.

To sum up, inspiration comes from my past, my present, interactions, observations, news, stories ... the trick is to keep an open mind and latch onto a good idea when it's floating past, imagine the possibilities and start writing.

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