Five Sources To Fill Your Creative Well
Authors need to always have a place to find new ways of incorporating ideas. Where do these ideas come from? There are two sources: real life and stories.
Let's start with the obvious. Books. If you weren't expecting this one, please say you're completely sleep deprived and we'll forgive you. Maybe.
Which source is your favourite? What is the most useful to you personally? Which ones have you never heard of? Leave a comment below. If you liked this post, be sure to share, follow and eat chocolate for more content! (Eat chocolate anyway.)
The two of them are the same, but different. Mind blowing, I know. Today's focus is going to be on the latter, stories.
Humans need stories to survive, so how much more do authors need stories? I'll give you the answer: a lot. We're one of the biggest sources of entertainment. To be able to live up to this expectation, our creative well must be stimulated. Here are five sources authors can take from. (I swear this is not just an excuse for me to gush about some of my favourite stories.)
1. Books
 |
| Source: Gif Library |
Like I talked about last week, studying how books are written is hugely beneficial to authors. But you don't always need to be criticising the book. Reading it for pleasure generally lets you enjoy the story more. Consuming books fills both your creative juices and writing skills.
If you're looking for a new book, all you need to do is simply to waltz into your local library and bam, books. If you're looking for classics, most of them are public domain so searching a title up in your search engine has a high chance of bringing up a source you can read from.
2. Movies and TV shows
 |
| Source: Giphy |
Another obvious one. Movies, movies, movies. (Unfortunately, saying TV shows three times doesn't flow quite as well.) They're everywhere.
The beauty about movies and TV shows is how you can actually see the characters and setting without any risk of infodumped descriptions. Not only that, you can actually hear the character speaking, sound effects and music.
While you can't study writing, looking at how the story is told and developed is a suitable job on its own.
Again, I'm not giving specific examples of movies or TV shows. All you need to do is go to Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Stan, whatever streaming service you like and press play on any random show. It's that easy.
3. Graphic Novels and Comics
 |
| Source: Giphy |
Graphic novels and comics are relatively new. I first started reading comics about two-ish years ago so I'm not a real expert in them. However, since finding my first webcomic, I've never looked back.
From my research I did ten seconds ago (yay procrastination!), the difference between graphic novels and comics is that graphic novels tend to be more complicated than comics. Of course, I'm sure there's a whole heap of other differences, but this is not a post to explain that.
Apart from the evident factors like visuals and et cetera, two things that strike me about the specialness of graphic novels and comics are beat sequences and how the art can convey so much in so little space.
Examples
- The Silver Eye by Laura Hollingsworth. Absolutely gorgeous art and loveable characters! You can see the blurb on its About page here.
- The Legend of Ruach by Paige Coffer. This comic is still in its baby stages as of the day I'm writing this, but I'm loving the art and I'm looking forward to where the story goes!
- Kids Are All Right by HP56. It's an adorable story about a little boy going through life. Unlike the first two, the story is completed so there's no pesky cliffhangers.
4. Video Games
 |
| Source: Tenor |
Okay, okay, I hear you. I'm not a gamer! Video games are stupid! I don't have anything to play with! Don't worry, that's what I used to think. As of two months ago, everything I thought about video games have been turned around. They are precious, precious gems.
I'm a baby when it comes to understanding how stories are incorporated in an average video game. I've only watched one series. But it's beautiful. *starry eyes*
Video games are like movies / TV shows except with more user involvement, awkward laughing scenes and questionable flares. But it is a video game so that's to be forgiven. Underneath it all, a good video game will have a strong story with characters you'll fall in love with.
Because I've only seen one video game, so I can only give one example. It has been going on since 2002 and since then, has gained a huge fanbase, which now includes me since two months ago. It is Kingdom Hearts, my current fandom obsession. (Hint hint wink wink leave a comment below! I could gush about this series all day.)
With video games, the thing you want to watch are the cutscenes. I watched the Kingdom Hearts series on the YouTube channel Gamer's Little Playground, but there's loads of other YouTubers and video games if you prefer. What I've learnt so far is to watch the cutscenes and skip everything else. Got it memorised?
5. Music and Musicals
 |
| Source: Giphy |
Last on this list but one of the ways I've been using since my earliest memories is music. By music, I mean songs, or if you want to be technical, pieces. And of course, I have to add musicals.
The music you want to be listening to are ones with lyrics. Unless you listen to classical, almost every other genre will have at least a thousand songs with lyrics. Listen carefully to the lyrics and figure out the five W's.
My go to for music with stories are Celtic music. Celtic Woman, a Celtic-based group of singers, has loads of epic ones I listen to a lot. I can't give any other artists, but I can say with 100% certainty that there are SO many artists out there with stunning music to listen to.
It's no secret I love musicals. Story + Music = Musical. They're basically old Disney movies but usually to have more songs and less cheese.
Some of my favourites include: The Count of Monte Cristo and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (different to its Disney buddy). There's also classics like Les Mis, Jekyll and Hyde, and The Light In The Piazza. Most, if not all, of the musicals I watch come from two YouTubers, The King's Academy (a highschool) and The Show Must Go On (streaming on weekends during the virus season).
Music is one of my favourite parts of planning stories, so why not use it for inspiration? But that's a topic for another day.
Comments
Post a Comment