Where do you get your inspiration?

Irishbodhi

First of all, I'm new to the forum so hey!

I'm going to be moving to Washington D.C. this summer and have started applying for internship jobs in media. The thing is, I suppose as I should have expected most people want a writing sample. Now I'm not asking for anyone to give me a direct idea or anything, I'm just having trouble coming up with some inspiration for a piece myself and am wondering where other people get theirs.

So where do you get yours?

Arfan

Everywhere. A particularly rousing song, the obsucre reference made by a friend, the way a leaf feels under my fingers. Not really helpful but I find ideas tend to just happen as I go about my daily business. The only thing I can suggest is going for a walk, you may run into an interesting character or see a poster that sets the wheels turning.

dawvee

I consult a haruspex.

Arfan

Does he get MTV?

af_thefragile

I get my inspiration from almost anywhere. Usually a song. Sometimes just one line from a song will spark my imagination. For instance one of the stories I've got planned up to write, I got the inspiration from this line "I'm telling my troubles to strangers" from the Tom Waits song 'Lucinda'. That line sparked my imagination and I started to visualise a whole scene where a is guy telling his stories to a bunch of interested strangers. That formed the basis of a plot. I then just keep thinking and visualising more themes and subplots to the story. Just letting the imagination flow and run wild!

Apart from songs, movies, cartoons, space, biology, politics, art, anything can inspire one to come up with a story. All you need is a central theme or concept and then start building around it.

The novel I'm working on right now is a sci-fi. I always loved good sci-fi films like 2001 space odyssey and such and I've got a big interest in everything to do with space and universe. I spend a good bit of time on discovery watching astronomy/astrophysics shows and I keep up with most of what NASA is upto. Roger Dean's artwork was another great inspiration on me and I was planning on writing a good hard sci-fi novel for a while. Then I was once in a microbiology lecture learning about bacteria that form very resistant spores along with all the other stuff we had been studying such as recombination of DNA to program bacteria to produce drugs like insulin and such. This was enough to spark my imagination. Nothing new, another "invasion of body snatchers" like story but once you get the central theme, its time to modify it and build around it until you end up with something original the way you imagined it.

damselnat

You could always try looking up those creative writing sites online that give you like a topic or some of sort of theme of something to write x amount of words on, it's not inspiration, but it gets the juices flowing, and you never know what might come from it, different ways of looking at things, aspects of writing you never knew were so good at before, etc

ToasterSparks

damselnat wrote: »

You could always try looking up those creative writing sites online that give you like a topic or some of sort of theme of something to write x amount of words on, it's not inspiration, but it gets the juices flowing, and you never know what might come from it, different ways of looking at things, aspects of writing you never knew were so good at before, etc

I wonder how you could practice your writing like this?

Fancy re-writing Cinderella in the Short Story Competition at the top of the forum? It's a wacky way to get the juices flowing, but it could be worth a shot! Direct link in my signature!

Sometimes just the process of putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) can spark that elusive thought you need to write a good piece.

EileenG

Mostly it just builds on what has gone before. I wrote an entire novel because I loved the lines "You're going to marry a vampire? Over my dead body." "That can be arranged"

And in the end, I never found a good spot to put those lines in.

pickarooney

EileenG wrote: »

Mostly it just builds on what has gone before. I wrote an entire novel because I loved the lines "You're going to marry a vampire? Over my dead body." "That can be arranged"

And in the end, I never found a good spot to put those lines in.

I have a couple of those in a tet file. Lines that were saved from culled chapters that I've been unable to shoehorn in anywhere else

I got my inspiration when half-cut on a bottle of Uvitas with a German friend in a Paraguayan hotel. I dedicated it to the wine.

damselnat

ToasterSparks wrote: »

I wonder how you could practice your writing like this?

Well, what I mean is what you said there:

ToasterSparks wrote: »

Sometimes just the process of putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) can spark that elusive thought you need to write a good piece.

Just that you get a topic/theme/etc, you get writing, then inspiration for other things starts coming into your head, and eventually you've written something else completely

ToasterSparks

I was being sarcastic with the first line, but I don't think sarcasm carries too well in textual form!

Irishbodhi

Cheers for the input everyone. My main problem here is that, while I believe I am pretty decent at writing a story for example, I'm not 100% that's what these kindof jobs want. I feel like what I write should be both professional and powerful, I'm just not sure what topic/genre of writing would allow me to show off my capabilities while not being a fantasy story about swiss chef who likes to fight crime in his spare time as "the iron chef".

EileenG

Write the story that you are passionate about, the one that keeps you awake at night. Then when it's done, you can see if you can sell it as it stands, or if you need to tweak it.

Don't write on the basis of what is fashionable right now. By the time you get your book written, rewritten, edited and published, your Swiss Chef could be just what the market wants.

Irishbodhi

I suppose my problem is, that while I love creative story writing, I am not sure it is what these jobs want as a writing sample.

Irishbodhi

ToasterSparks wrote: »

Fancy re-writing Cinderella in the Short Story Competition at the top of the forum? It's a wacky way to get the juices flowing, but it could be worth a shot! Direct link in my signature!
.

I may just try this!

damselnat

ToasterSparks wrote: »

I was being sarcastic with the first line, but I don't think sarcasm carries too well in textual form!

Sorry, yeah, I get this all the time with my text messages too!! Darn lack of tone of voice...

The Sparrow

EileenG wrote: »

Write the story that you are passionate about, the one that keeps you awake at night. Then when it's done, you can see if you can sell it as it stands, or if you need to tweak it.

Don't write on the basis of what is fashionable right now. By the time you get your book written, rewritten, edited and published, your Swiss Chef could be just what the market wants.

No offence, but that is not great advice on this occasion. The OP is looking for intern work with media companies... it is very unlikely that they are looking for creative writing.

Media companies are looking for journalistic pieces so this thread might be better in the News and Media section as opposed to Creative Writing.

OP, look at the website of these media companies and get a sense of their writing style and the kind of writing that they publish and then try and find an interesting feature that you think would fit in well with what is already there. If you have no experience in journalism, try and find someone who does and ask them to help you.

pickarooney

If this forum existed it would be perfect.