I've read a number of interviews with writers, from all parts of the writing world, and one of the most common questions I've seen is (and I'm paraphrasing) "Where do you get your ideas?" Now, I hate to keep going back to the same wells, but in this case I feel that its too good to pass up, so I won't. In the introduction to his Dark Tower series, specifically The Gunslinger, Stephen King says that most of what writers say about their own work (he's talking about introductions, I'm applying it more generally) is bullshit. The truth is, some questions like this don't actually have answers.
For instance, I could say that the original idea for Skyborn came from an Amon Amarth song, but that wouldn't be true. Varyags of Miklagaard did give me an idea. A group of northern warriors under an honor contract to defend the emperor of a southern land. And Nightfall by Blind Guardian gave me the idea that the central character should be one of these warriors, and that the emperor should die. And Courtney gave me the idea that this character should be a woman.
So, alright, I have a bunch of small ideas, but how do they come together? How do they coalesce into a plot? How do I take a female warrior in service to the emperor, an emperor who is murdered at some point, and create a story out of it?
Beats me.
I think the way ideas form, at least initially, is one of the great mysteries of art. I've seen lyrics and poems and all manner of ideas that arose from people I know very well that, frankly, I would never have thought of myself. How'd they come up with that? Nobody knows, dude. I think the way ideas come to a writer seemingly from the ether is one of the great mysteries that still exist in art.
That's where the real magic of it lies.
Sure, you can trace back the genesis of some of those ideas. And then some of them just crash into you. I wrote an entire novel that sets the stage for Eve of the Dragonspeaker about six years after I started it. I was driving back to North Carolina from Christmas break and I got bombarded with one thing after another. I had to pull over and start writing it down just so I could think clearly enough to keep driving down I-95. On the other hand, I'm toying with this idea to make all the chapter titles in Skyborn rock-n-roll or metal songs. I've been fielding this idea for a while and since Skyborn was originally brought to mind by music, and I've thought a great deal about music and how it influences my writing, it seems like a good project to try.
Let's go back to that Prologue story though. I can remember the flood of ideas washing over me, plot details and characters. I knew immediately it was going to be the Empire Strikes Back of that series (there are probably 12 novels worth of plots for that world just swimming around in my brain and notes. My brainnotes), it was going to be terribly dark. I remember a classmate's advice from my first year in college to "kill everyone and leave no room for a sequel". Good advice. Except there are twelve sequels. So, in a way, I wanted to write this as an exercise to prove a point. I'm not sure now what that point was (that fantasy novels always inspire sequels?) but I'm certain at 20 years old it seemed like a good one.
Anyway, moving on.
So I have this idea for a novel where everyone dies that sets the stage for the actual series (something like Robert Jordan's New Spring and how it sets up his Wheel of Time series, only with more means-spirited character killing on my part) and no idea where it came from. But, once that idea shows up, a thousand others come raining out of nothingness like its fucking Space Invaders. Why? Why does one idea (not even necessarily a big one) suddenly open up the flood like a levy in New Orleans?
And why can it be after such a length of time? I haven't looked at or thought about Eve of the Dragonspeaker in three or four years. And yet, randomly, I'll have a spark of inspiration that I just have to jot down because I've suddenly just fixed a plot hole in that novel.
I wish I had the answers. I truly do. I think its one of Stephen King's "tools", that ability to have an idea strike you like a meteorite. But it should give you hope, if you're struggling with a novel of your own (or anything creative, really) and just haven't figured it all out yet. One day, randomly, it will hit you. Where'd it come from? Better off asking where babies came from, sugar.
Quizzically Yours,
-S.R.
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