On the Write Trax – Sounds Like Inspiration

Posted by Ron Williams on Jan 26, 2010 in Writing, Writing | View Comments

Confession time.

I haven’t done a lot of writing over the past few months which is a violation of my goal to do a little bit of writing each day. In my desire to get back into the saddle, I began to rummage through my notes to see what I could develop into a small project to get the juices flowing.  I came across some notes titled “Within Earshot” – if the title sounds familiar it’s a direct lift from a song / snippet by recording artist Kenna.

Immediately I was reminded of a tip from Mike C. about finding inspiration in the very same playlist you’re using while you work.  The gist was to pay attention to the titles in your playlist and pick one to develop a story idea out of.

That’s not new, dude.

You’re right, it isn’t and it’s very likely the story you get from it will be either. This exercise is less about the product and more about the process. You want to develop the habit of piecing together your ideas and shaping them into narratives and then full on stories. These stories may never see the light of day in the final forms you give them for the project. However there’s a good bet that more refined versions of characters & concepts may creep their way into the work that does make it out into public view.

What did you come up with?

I’ll with you the nuts and bolts of  “Within Earshot”, it’s not much but you can at least see how far you can get from a song title.

This particular one brought about 2 different projects technically but at a point I began to experiment with splicing them into one.

One involved a sort Rip Van Winkle situation, life and the people in it sucked so bad for one guy he tries to run away from it only to fall into a coma and sleep through the apocalypse. He wakes up  to find everything he liked and loathed are gone and tries his best to adjust to life as it has become.

Not much orginality there but enough to play with.

The other was  something slightly more original. The story involved someone coming to grips with possibility that their whole life has been a fantasy of their best friend. Yes, an imaginary friend lasts way past the sell-by date and becomes self-aware.

That’s it, one song gives me two stories and enough material to play around with as a daily excercise.

You try it.

Pull out the mp3 player, go through your playlist and take the title of the song that catches your eye and get to writing. Write until you feel you can’t add any more to the idea and then move to another song on the playlist.