Where to Find Writing Inspiration
When You Think There's Nowhere Left to Look
So you’ve re-read your favorite books, watched
your favorite movies, even started a dream journal – anything to find
inspiration for a new story. But, you’ve found nothing worth writing about.
Before you retire that pen and paper, check
one more time. They say you always find what you’re looking for in the last
place you look, so search a few more places for that pesky inspiration.
Here are my five favorite places to find
writing inspiration. They’re free, easy, and instant, and I always
have something to write about every
time I sit down to write. And now you can too.
Music that tells a story
Take a scroll through your music library. What
do your favorite songs say? Songs tell a story as much
as prose does, so put
your music on shuffle and
really
listen to the lyrics.
You can find an entire story condensed into
the four-minute run time of a song. What does the artist choose to highlight in
those precious few minutes? Let’s look at “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey as
an example. The lyrics present us with vignettes of different scenes. We see
images of midnight trains and busy street corners. We even smell a few of the characters in this song. There’s a lot of life
being lived in the lyrics of “Don’t Stop Believing”.
But, even with so much given to us, there’s a
lot happening under the lyrics. We only see characters for a single verse, but
the chorus of the song connects them all to the same sense of longing — of
looking for more out of life. So what’s happening with these characters? Why
did Journey choose to highlight them? And what do we think happens to them
after the song finishes?
Create character
profiles for the characters in your favorite songs. Tell us what’s
happening to them before and after the four minutes of lyrics we get about
them. Extrapolate a backstory from the information given in the song. Give them
a voice and actions. Put them in new scenarios. When you’re writing, check out
our favorite writing playlists for each genre.
Art with a story
If you’re a writer, you’re an artist. You’re
creating art every time you sit down to write. So, why not look to fine art to
inspire your own? Fine artists often tell a story in their work, leaving the
viewers to decipher it for themselves.
Take Georges Suerat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on
the Island of La Grande Jatte” as an example.
There is a
lot going on here. The longer you look at this painting, the more you see
happening. There are children running around, rowers on the water, and, in the
foreground, a lady with a monkey on a leash. Take the woman standing at the
water’s edge in the yellow hat. Maybe she’s in
conflict with the woman sitting behind her. What could they be
arguing about?
There are thousands of stories waiting to be
seen in this painting. We can only glimpse a fraction of a second of these
people’s lives, so we’re forced to imagine who they are, where they came from,
and what they’ll go on to do.
Take a trip to a local museum or a virtual
tour of one you’ve always wanted to visit and pick something that speaks to
you. What is it saying?
Bonus: Art work is a brilliant thing to
practice your ‘show don’t tell’ skills with. We’re shown so
much in this work – how can you show just as much with prose?
Pictures with a thousands words
to say
Much like art, a photograph can tell you so
much about a person. Take out an old box of photos your
parents actually had
developed, or check out that coffee table photography book. What photos catch
your attention? Take note of why.
This exercise may spark memories of your own
life story, but maybe you find a photograph that you have no background
knowledge on. What does the photo say to you? What do you imagine happening
before and after this photo was taken?
You can even pick a handful of photos and
write a story that links them all together. Include the details that made each
photo stand out to you.
Stories unfolding around you
As writers, our biggest job is to start
noticing. Notice what’s happening around you while you’re out for the day.
Notice the way the grass smells, notice how people do that half-run-half-walk
thing as they cross the street. Go to a cafe and eavesdrop a little on what
people are talking about. Take in as many details about your day as you can.
Take notes of what you notice. Whether you
carry a notebook with you and write things down everywhere you go, or journal
at the end of your day, it’s important to really soak in what you’ve noticed.
Add these details to stories you’re writing, or use them to launch a new
narrative.
Did the clerk at the grocery store say
something that caught you off guard as he was packing your groceries? Maybe the
bank has a distinctive smell of fake leather chairs, pen ink, and hand
sanitizer. That person you overheard on the phone, what’s their life story?
These details are real, and will help bring your prose to life. It may even
help spark your creativity to start writing again.
Inspiration on the go
No matter how you’re collecting inspiration
for your writing, take note of it. Whether in your phone’s
notes apps or in an
analog notebook, keep a running list of what stands out to you during the day.
Do some journaling in this log as well. Write scenes of what’s unfolding around
you, write the story points you’ve uncovered from a photo or song, or scribble
your 3am I-just-woke-up-from-the-weirdest-dream thoughts here.
You’ll create a never-emptying well of ideas
and passages to draw from for a new
short story. The key to this is that this log should be uncensored.
Don’t judge this writing, it’s not for publication — it’s all for you to work
through ideas and keep gold nuggets of inspiration in.
Having an idea log
can save you so much time in your writing sessions. Instead of staring at a
blank page, wondering what in heavens you’ll write today, scan your notes for
anything that jumps out at you at the moment and run with it.
The more you open yourself up to unusual
inspiration, the more you’ll find. As writers, we can’t sit and wait for
inspiration to strike, or we may never write another word again. Go out and
find your own inspiration — and then lock it away in your notes so it can never
escape you.
Savannah Cordova is a writer with
Reedsy, a marketplace that connects self-publishing authors with the world’s
best editors, designers, and marketers. In her spare time, Savannah enjoys
reading contemporary fiction, listening to audiobooks, and writing short stories.
.png)
