How I Train My Inspiration — Fiction Writing By Covers
How I Train My Inspiration — Fiction Writing By Covers
ref:
- How to Train Your Inspiration — Achieve Creative Writing Success
- How to Train Your Inspiration Part 2 — Creative Writing
- Writing Fiction: How To Train Your Inspiration — Part III
(What follows are some notes from where these references above left off — And to understand this process better, check out this recent podcast: https://livesensical.com/podcast/living-sensical-elsewhere/writing-fiction-creator-creation-conversation/)
I’m a visual type of guy, so one of my methods for working up inspiration for new books is to get the cover created first. Cover includes title, even though it might/will change.
Put everything into Calibre, creating an empty book and importing the cover into that. Writing the marketing hook starts the description. Calibre generally starts with a default text file. Opening that, adding the title and pen-name, the copy/paste the marketing hook in there so there’s a guide. (Yes, the marketing hook can change, but it’s a guide to start with.)
The first chapter then starts with the story hook. And goes right along from there — the characters start telling your story and you just ask the right questions to keep them talking to you. (Marketing hook is for browsers to get them to preview. Story hook is to get your previewers to read the rest.)
How Covers Bring You Story
For me, I like to look up images on Pixabay.com — they are all public domain, and you can find a lot of great images there. Of course you should “buy coffees” and give attaboys, plus leave links to your books where you used their art. Things like that.
Yesterday, I got onto a search for these. The more I looked, the more I found. And as I found them, I asked my characters for obvious titles, and got snippets of the stories when I did. Situations, characters, wants, etc. Here’s what I came up with, sorted by authors:
C. C. Brower
S. H. Marpel
J. R. Kruze
NaNoWriMo 2018 Entry from Midwest Journal Press
Now, there are a lot of great stories waiting. I left some of those ideas in the photo captions above.
C. C. Brower — except for a single story, this is all about the Hooman Saga — which takes place or deals with a Moon colony — and might be enough stories there to wrap up Book Two, Part 2. If not, I’ll just fill in anything that’s missing. But this is going to be an anthology of sorts, I’ll probably work these up in some sort of chronological order and write them that way. Or not. But it would be easier editing if I did them that way. The exception (Snow Gift 2) actually takes off from where two individual/unrelated stories have started out — both in the snow, both incomplete. Those now become the first two chapters. Then the other chapters proceed with alternating viewpoints — but that’s all I’ve got right now.
S. H. Marpel — has all Ghost Hunter mysteries, or are related to that universe somehow. (Even though the Lazurai stories have been crossing up these universes recently.)
J. R. Kruze — The first three cover metaphysical ideas and writing about them. That last one, “Eliza” is about growing up a mechanical genius (mainly because the artwork was just too engaging to waste, even though the artist didn’t leave enough white space for a title.)
NaNoWriMo — will be an anthology of its own, themed from the short stories written that month — and probably will include all of these authors, though Kruze and Marpel seem to be more appropriate. The trick with an anthology like that is to get the intro’s/transitions right… (Who says it’s only for straight-ahead first-draft novels — I’ve recently compiled a 67K word, 229 page anthology that tells the whole story arc as a collection of short stories, arranged chronologically — the Bradbury/O. Henry/Jack London model...)
Count Those Covers — But Don’t Expect 22 or so Books
Some still won’t make it. Not all inspirations come through. On the other hand, you may have seen how one story (“The Lazurai”) is now an 8-story compilation (“Tales of the Lazurai”) which involved four pen-names in building its anthology, and became a universe of its own.
The thought here is really, “Don’t expect all these books to be born on time, on schedule, or like they are now. Expect these books all to be seeds you plant, and then produce far more new books than you expect.”
Your mind is a fertile garden. Plant your seeds, let them grow. Pick the story to write that week by the loudest voice, the prettiest flower, the heaviest fruit. Eventually, you’ll get around to all of them. But they have a say in when they are ripe. So go ahead, cherry-pick the ones that appeal to you most.
And there you have it. A non-how-to How-to.
My whole little system of coming up with inspiration — what I’ve trained mine to do.
If you want the rest of the background on this, they’re linked above.
Luck to all of us.
Originally published at Living Sensical.
