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IWSG: My Inspiration for Working on Stories; Book-in-Progress

Logo for the Insecure Writer's Support Group with a lighthouse in the background.


It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) post! In an IWSG post, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems out into the open to share with each other and try to offer solutions. In this monthly blog hop, we are presented with an optional question in which this month’s is When you are working on a story, what inspires you? I’ll answer that one in a little bit. I also have some news on my Book-To-Movie review series and the progress of my upcoming book of short fiction. So, keep reading!


IWSG Question of the Month

Again, the optional IWSG question for May is When you are working on a story, what inspires you? There are several things that inspire me while working on a story. These are anything from my favourite authors in the science fiction and horror genres to movies in those same genres. Because of that last one and my love for the medium of film, I often write as if my story were a movie. That means, while I’m writing, beginning with the first draft and ending with the last round of revisions, I’ll often look at the progression of the story and envision what the characters are doing as if I were watching a film on the big screen. This helps me to better put the words into concrete expressions instead of passive ones. 

Last Month’s Book-To-Movie Review

I’m sorry to say that April’s Book-To-Movie review never happened. Every month I try to post here at my blog a review of a work of prose fiction, usually science fiction or fantasy, and its movie adaptation. However, at the end of last month, I had family come to visit from out of town and I just got so busy that the Book-To-Movie never happened. I hadn’t even gotten around to reading something and viewing its movie version for reviewing. This month, however, there will be a Book-To-Movie for sure. To make up for last month, I’m going to try to come out with a post that’s related to either movie adaptions of books or authors who write screenplays for movies. 

Book-In-Progress: ‘Bad Apps’

I mentioned in my last blog post that I was currently working on getting in the character details for the story that I’m currently working on, a story about a series of murders connected to a teen cult-following of an online roleplaying game. It’s one of the stories that will be included in my upcoming book of short fiction “Bad Apps”. I’m still working in those character details because I also had to restructure the story. 

Then, while I was typing in the grammar and spelling revisions for another story to be included in the collection, I discovered a plausibility problem. It was a problem with a Japanese setting. I had to reset the story in another part of Japan and research that location to make sure it was suitable for the plot.  I talk about these problems in more detail in my newsletter, “Night Creatures’ Call”, which you can subscribe to for free here


That’s all that I have for this month’s blog hop. I’ll try to have more progress on “Bad Apps” here at A Far Out Fantastic Site in the next few weeks. So, keep checking back. 

When you write, do you think in images of the events in your story or do you think more in words? What are your current writing projects and/or what are you currently reading?

Today’s IWSG is brought to you by these super co-hosts:  Joylene Nowell Butler, Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Meka James, Victoria Marie Lees, and M Louise Barbour! IWSG was founded by awesome author Alex Cavanaugh, writer of the Cassa Series of novels!

Until next time . . .


Comments

  1. I've always envisioned my stories as movies while I write them. Like you said, makes it easy to 'see' what is happening.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, I had a feeling you did since you preview and review movies a lot. That's really neat!

      Delete
  2. So interesting! I'm not a very visual person. I wish my brain could create movies in my head, but that just doesn't work. I tend to focus on characters and "feel" my way through a story - it's all about the people and the emotions for me! Love how everyone works differently even though we're all writing stories!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's really neat that you can write your stories based on the emotions of the characters! That's something I have to write several drafts or go through several revision rounds before I can even get to with my characters.

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