Ideas. The most important thing when it comes to writing or any creative endeavor is to have an idea of what you're about to do. This blog was founded on an idea of making something that mixed my two loves of horror and cooking. My stories are founded on ideas of wanting to explore something, maybe a phrase, a thought, a topic, and taking it to its end, unfortunate or not. The easiest and hardest thing to obtain is an idea, so how does one find it in our darker musings? While Nick Nocturne of Night Mind has made a wonderful video focused on how to come up with an idea for a web series (a wonderful watch if you have roughly a half hour to kill as it applies to absolutely anything creative), I find there can be more to this discussion of where muses come from as opposed to just “how do I let ideas enter my mind”. This is a more aggressive approach, requiring some actual effort as opposed to the more passive methodologies he recommends. Not saying at all that his method is bad, but there is more than one way to skin a cat (no offense Nick) and sometimes you can dig down within yourself and pull out the beating heart of an idea.
The first way to do this, is to come up with a list of concepts. Things you've thought on, musings you've had in your day to day life, weird stuff that you read on the news, or maybe that really dark dream you had the other night. The one you still think about and go “holy crap that was terrifying”. Anything that strikes your curiosity, keep a concept list. Now, can you combine any of these concepts? Are any of them easy to translate into a story or any outline? I know I have a few concepts that are burning to get written out into the real world. The story for them? No clue how it will go. I know I've had a few concepts that turned horrible as I started to write them, just went off the rails and not in a fun way but in an “I'm done with you story” sort of way. Those are the ones I save for months later, when I am willing to rip them apart with a fresh set of eyes. The idea here is to have a list of things to work with, and see where they lead you. Good or bad, it is at least something.
What if you cannot think of even a concept? What if you wish to write, but have absolutely no clue as to what you want to write? This is where the internet is your friend. There are plenty of pages and probably a subreddit or two that are dedicated to what is called “writing prompts”. It is pretty much someone saying “here, write about this please” and waits while you work away at what is given to you. There are a lot of great ones out there, but here are a choice few I'm coming up with right now:
“You wake up in a dark room. Something turns on the light.”
“Your phone rings, it just says “HELP” and gives no number.”
“Ambition lead to his downfall, we all saw it coming but we did nothing.”
Now with these prompts, what are your first thoughts? Let's go through that last one together. My first reaction is to ask questions. What happened? Who is he? Who are the “we” mentioned? Was it fame, power, money or something else in terms of ambition? Going in reverse order, I will say “something else”, “His graduate students”, “A Professor of Psychology”, and “Experiments on isolation of willing human volunteers lead to professor getting attacked by the volunteers”. Okay, that's a start, now what? We could write notes on what the situation of the attack was, how gruesome the injuries were or what happened to the volunteers. We could focus on the graduate students, get an idea of how many there were, how long they had known the professor and how they knew exactly what was going to happen. Maybe we focus on the professor. Was it scientific curiosity or an unquenchable thirst for knowledge that was his downfall? What did he look like? Was he an authoritarian or rather relaxed sort of man? As you start asking questions of the prompt, stories emerge of various types.
Like following a tree from a trunk to the tops of one of its branches, there are many possibilities. Did you think of a businessman at first instead of a scientist? Maybe a politician or a military general? A doctor? All valid answers. The vaguer the prompt, the more ideas you can get from it and squeeze it to death till the point where it only on a rare chance represents the original spark.
Another is what all writers recommend to each other: read everything. Do not stop at just the horror section of the library. Drama, comedy, romance, and yes, even the gardening section can give you ideas on what to do in terms of a story. Don't believe me? Think of how every child's fairy tale has some twisted dark version someone has written on the internet. I mean, “Snow, Glass, and Apples” came from Neil Gaiman turning Snow White into a vampire story of horrific means. Read everything, watch everything, and study everything. You never know where inspiration lives.
Where do you find your inspiration? Right now, I find it in new Black Mirror episodes and glitches on the bus that I notice on the way home. Eventually I will write the bus story, but it is a work in progress still. Please feel free to share what inspires you, no matter where it comes from.