Using Research to Inspire Your Writing
How’s your writing week going?
Mine has been a little slow since I last posted here on the blog with a few family events taking priority but I’m back at the desk, fingers to the keyboard racing towards my January 31 deadline.
That’s not to say it’s all been smooth sailing. I’ve been battling the resistance demons and coming up with all sorts of procrastination methods but I have also been getting words down and inching closer to typing the end.
One thing that has really helped me keep going has been looking up real life examples of the situations my characters find themselves in. This novella was in part inspired by a Facebook post I read sometime last year about the owner of a wildlife sanctuary saving the animals in her care by hiding them in a cave. Even though I thought I’d bookmarked it on my computer do you think I could find it when I actually got up to that part of the story and looked for it for inspiration?
Of course, I couldn’t!
After hours of scrolling (aka procrastination) I mentioned it to my husband who of course found it in about five minutes flat. Re-reading those posts reminded me of what actually triggered the idea in the first place. And the ensuing discussion I had with hubby brought up a further idea which I (okay, ‘we’) then researched and which gave me even more inspiration for writing the next section of the story.
I’m also reading a non-fiction book called Currowan which details bushfires that ravaged the south coast in 2019-2020 and drawing on the events described by author Bronwyn Aldcock to deepen the experiences of my characters.
Doing all of the above has sparked my imagination and allowed me to immerse myself more completely in the story events. And kept me writing So, the lessons learned this week were:
be sure to bookmark anything you think you might need in the future, storing it under a label you will easily find
make use of non-fiction books, articles and posts to deepen your understanding of the experiences your characters find themselves in
discuss your ideas with others and ask for help when you need it
So now it’s on to finishing the draft and knuckling down to some revision, and with a very tight deadline I’ll be doing that this time next week.Have a good one and happy writing.
