Legend says Keith
Richards, lead guitarist and co-founder of the Rolling Stones, woke in the
early hours of May 7, 1965, turned on a tape recorder and laid down a riff. He
dozed off, and when he woke some time later, hit playback and heard about 30
seconds of music followed by 45 minutes of snoring. He’d played the riff while
half asleep, on an acoustic guitar, at a slow speed. Mick Jagger said it
sounded like country music and not something the Stones would play. Keith refused
to give up and continued playing with the riff. By May 10, 1965, that
half-minute riff was on its way to becoming the Stones’ greatest hit: (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.
Did Keith dream the riff? Did
some rock and roll angel (or alien) implant it in his brain while he slept? Who
knows?
That’s how it happens with
writers, too. JJ and I would be driving to the grocery store and one of us would
say, “Hey, I just had an idea. What if…” And then ideas started bouncing all
over the car.
When back-to-school
supplies were on sale, we’d stock up on spiral notebooks. There are now
notebooks all over the house with parts of scenes, lists of ideas, names for
characters… I keep a small notebook in my purse so I can jot ideas that come to
me when I’m doing errands. Stop at a red light and make a note. Get to a
supermarket parking lot and make a note. Sometimes I spend more time sitting in
the parking lot writing ideas than I do shopping. The other day I sat in the
bank and wrote a full page.
A piece of music can inspire a scene. A cut from
the soundtrack from the video game Mass Effect 3 inspired
the scene where Foster… Oops, no spoilers! JJ typed with her headphones on,
listening to music on You Tube. The group Two Steps from Hell (particularly Archangel) became major inspiration for
both of us. Song lyrics can also inspire a scene or a character’s motivation.
The line “Like a rollin' thunder chasing the wind” from the song Lightning Crashes inspired a description
of a thunderstorm in book 4.
TV shows or movies
inspire. Some shows are incredibly formulaic and predictable. You know exactly
what’s going to happen, and hope the writers took the story in another
direction. They didn’t. So you begin to think, “What would have happened if the
character chose path B instead of path A…” Another great idea.
One of my grade school
teachers posted a picture on the wall or played a piece of classical music, and
we were to write whatever it inspired. We were graded on spelling, grammar and
punctuation rather than subject, and it was fun. A black and white photo
hanging in our living room inspired a scene of a foggy night with pools of
light at the base of street lamps and an old fashioned car on the road. A Michael
Parkes print in my bedroom inspired the beginning of a story about gargoyles.
So to tell you where we
get our ideas, I have a simple answer: I don’t know.
Sometimes we do get some
satisfaction.
