Headphones and Notebooks

As you may recall from a previous post , I often use visual aids in order to plot my stories. But that’s not all I do; you see, I often use other creative outlets to help inspire my writing. What exactly do I mean by this? It’s simple; I like to spend time creating things that will help me understand my characters or story better. Now, I’m sure many of you will be aware of this sort of thing, but I’m going to explain it for those of you who aren’t as aware. I’m talking about creating playlists for characters or stories, or making mood boards to inspire setting or personality, or even sometimes doodling characters to give me a better idea of their style of clothing, or their hair colour. With me so far? Good. I’m certainly not the only person to create playlists for my stories. Some people prefer to just pick one specific album or artist and listen exclusively to that when writing. I prefer to create a playlist full of different songs and artists to get more of a feel for a pi

One thing I’ve learned is that no story is ever going to be 100% original. Everything has been done before. So sometimes you should embrace that idea, and look to other writers for inspiration on how to handle certain scenes, topics, or characters. Borrowing ideas is always a somewhat tricky thing to navigate though- you can’t just copy something another writer has done and change a few character names. Or, at least, you shouldn’t. And you have to be careful that what you’re writing isn’t too similar to the source material. So how do I go about handling this situation? I tend to look at a few different sources that focus on the sort of thing I’m looking for. Then, I work out what sort of things I liked, and what parts don’t feel right in my story. Sometimes I end up borrowing elements from different writers, or different media- books, television, film. Sometimes I use one set of books, or one television series, and use elements from different books or episodes. But essentiall

If there is one thing I have resigned myself to, it’s that I’m probably never going to be able to compete with the kind of Instagram accounts I love. No, I’m not talking all those super-fashionable ones revolving around models posing beside swimming pools, or food blogs, or people’s pet Instagrams. They don’t interest me (well, maybe the pet one but my cat wholly refuses to cooperate). What I’m talking about is the bookish side of social media; the Instagram accounts full of gorgeous photos of immaculate bookshelves and dozens of popular books. We all know the sorts of accounts I mean. So why am I certain I can’t compete? If you’re familiar with my blog, while you may know I’ve not been reading much recently you’ll also be familiar with the fact I own a lot of books. I spent my undergraduate dissertation rewriting Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein . I have so many books I don’t have enough room for them. The thing is, thinking about these sorts of Instagram accounts conjures the im

There is nothing worse than when you think you can see where a story is going and then the writers throw in a curveball that stirs everything up. Of course, drama and excitement is why we watch television. But we don’t always want things to be stirred up, particularly if there’s a happy ending in sight. For me, the most frustrating thing is that a writer stirring things up causes red flags in my head.   What is the purpose of causing chaos by stirring things up? Why don’t they want to have a happy ending to that plot, or that relationship? Why are they trying to make things more complicated? Is it because they actually have a good idea, or are they doing it out of boredom or because they don’t know where to take the story once that plot point has been wrapped? And it becomes especially frustrating when writers are hinting at one thing happening and then the curveball is that something completely different happens, for no apparent reason. There are a myriad of reasons as to wh