We often fall in love with fictional stories and books. They capture us, they take away from the monotony of our life, and they make us dream something we wish to be or something we would have desired to be.
In the myriad of stories we read, we rarely take authors’ creative process in consideration. What really lies behind those stories? What generates them? How creativity shapes what we make? Writers and artists need inspiration. Getting inspired might be easy or troublesome, but the best way to trigger it is observing the reality around you. You meet people, you talk to people, you see people all the time. That is your source of ideas. The variety characterising our society is an endless source of characters and situations which we can turn into novels and stories. For example, we never know who the person sat in front of us on the tube, carrying two huge orange bags from Sainsbury’s, could be. At first sight, the traveller might be a married person that needed to buy food on its day off. Maybe, the person has children, and they’ve been waiting for his return at home. That’s an easy and slightly predictable creation – it looks very normal life. What if the person in front of us is the leader of a robbers’ group, instead, and what this individual has in the bags is not either food or drinks, but explosive material for their next robbery. As you can see, the quiet, daily reality turns into a thrilling crime story. Everything can inspire you. An idea can pop in your mind while you’re doing the wash-up or hanging your clothes. Once you have the idea, you have to define and plan what you want to achieve with that. A purpose for what you do is the motivational strength that pushes you to carry out it as best as you are able to. Bearing in mind what you aim to – it doesn’t matter if you desire is publish it or to make a film – is the main motivational energy. Now, after that the idea came out and started buzzing in your head, the world you’ve thought about has to be made. Feelings and emotions are the most important things you absolutely don’t have to overlook. Communicate them, plunge the readers in what you feel and want to deliver. The world you’re creating in a reflection of how you see the reality surrounding you. The reader has to cry when your story makes cry, laugh when something funny happens, get angry when something bad occurs. If you have to borrow an idea from another book, you can do it, but do not forget that doing that is acceptable during your creative process. Copying is not to create. Characters come along with your world. Feeling and emotions have to be the core of their creation, and you have two ways to make them. The first method focuses on the character; you personify the individual you want to create, and you soak it with your emotions in the situation you want him to live. Depending on the medium you’re planning to create the story for, you can or cannot disclose the background of your character – for instance, if you’re writing a short story, the writer can quickly hint some situations happened in the past, without explaining it wholly. If you’re writing a book, you may desire to spend a few more pages and words as to how the character became what he is. The second method, instead, focuses on the background. You, thus, have to define and ponder the main characteristics of your characters and include them in the world you made. Depending on how you thought about them and laid in the story, the characters shape their existence in that determined scenario. The difficult part of the creative work comes at the moment you actually created everything. The story has to be refined and revisited. During this phase, you can realise two things: first, you don’t like what you made, and, second, the project is not as good as you thought. Whatever is your final judgment, do not put your effort in the bin. Instead, lay that on the side for a while – it may be one week or one month – then get back to work on it with a fresher and clearer mind. This can be very useful in finishing your project and completing it properly and successfully. A big thank to Ed Jowett and Leo Cosh of Shades of Vengeance who chaired two intense and interesting panels at the ComicCon London 2018 in October talking about the creative process behind the making of worlds and characters.
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