This week I'm joined by the fabulous Toby Frost, author of the Space Captain Smith books, some of the funniest scifi on the market at the moment. He's also written for the Warhammer 40K universe.
Inspiration and Originality.
Apparently, authors
often get asked where they find their inspiration. I’ve never been asked this,
but it’s an interesting question: where does the inspiration to write about
going to another planet, or casting magic on dragons, actually come from?
Part of it can’t be
explained at all. There are just some things that appeal more than others. You
probably won’t want to write about a space battle, or a magical duel with a
monster, unless it appeals on some immediate, visceral level. For all that we
talk about SFF being able to impart complex ideas and moral lessons, some
subliminal part of your brain just has to think that this will be more cool
than writing, say, a romance or a western.
That’s fine, and I’m
sure it’s how I ended up choosing SFF as a genre in which to write. However,
there has to be something more than just the sense that you’ve seen cool things
elsewhere and want to do something like that. Every genre has its clichés – or,
more accurately, its familiar tropes. There’s nothing wrong with deploying them
in your own work, but I think that there needs to be something more than what’s
come before. The more niche your genre, the more you need something extra, something
nobody else has quite done before. Otherwise, you’ll risk seeming to be just
shuffling the same small pack of cards. That, I think, is where inspiration
comes in.
History
I’ve always found a
lot of inspiration in real historical events, even if they end up looking
nothing like reality when I put them on the page. For me, one of the most
effective ways of coming up with ideas is to take things from non-SFF sources
and give them a fantastical slant. It clearly works for other writers, too. You
could argue that steampunk and dieselpunk work by taking ideas from their historical
backgrounds and using them as a springboard to inspire all kinds of weirdness.
Take the immense, steam-powered computers of The Difference Engine by William
Gibson and Bruce Sterling, or the occultism of the Nazis, which has fuelled
endless pulp stories, most notably The Raiders of the Lost Ark. Books like The
Island of Doctor Moreau and Frankenstein may seem fantastical now, but they
were prompted by their own times.
My own book, End of
Empires, was partly inspired by an automaton called Tippoo’s Tiger, built by
Tipu Sultan of India to mark his victory in battle over the British Empire. The
automaton, when wound up, makes a noise and appears to claw a model British
soldier. End of Empires is partly about the search for the tomb of a rebellious
warlord. The tomb needed a guardian. Thinking of Tippoo’s Tiger, I came up with
the Mechanical Maneater, a huge robot creature that is part riding beast, part
fighting machine. The end result isn’t much like the historical version at all,
but that’s not the point. The real world acts as a springboard for the
fantastical.
Transferring ideas
One of the risks of only reading in your preferred genre is that you
will either end up being inspired by elements of the genre that have been done
to death. There’s a chance that you might get away with it if your readers want
a novel much like the last one of its sort, but it runs the risk of creating
something stale.
This counts double if your main source of inspiration comes from films
or computer games instead of novels, because they’re usually years behind the
cutting edge in terms of originality: the Matrix, say, uses ideas that were
first being put into print in the 1970s (although not so stylishly!). So if
you’re looking for inspiration that’s strikingly new, I would argue that your
chosen genre might not be the best place to find it.
If I say “a wizard who heals people”, you’ve probably got one of two
stereotypes in your mind: an old hermit with a long beard, or a slightly New
Age woman who knows a lot about herbs. That’s fine, but a magical healer
doesn’t have to be like that. Why should they? Looking outside the genre, think
of all the different ways doctors are portrayed in books and TV shows. If you
want your fantasy healer to be inspired by Dr. House, why not?
Last of all, you
Finally, but importantly, inspiration can come yourself. After all, what
do you personally want to read about? There’s no doubt that The Lord of the
Rings is about themes and ideas that were personally interesting and important
to J.R.R. Tolkien. 1984 and The Handmaid’s Tale reflect the knowlege, and
fears, of their authors. If you want to put it that way, they’re externalisations
of what was bothering the author’s mind. What bothers you in particular – you,
rather than Chosen One Hero Guy, Devious Queen or Old Wizard Mentor, or any
other stock figure? What would that look like translated into SFF terms?
When I was young, I had a book about the Loch Ness Monster. I’ll
probably never forget the cover: two terrified people are sitting in a rowing
boat which looks as if it’s about to capsize, while the monster glares down at
them, having just broken the surface of the Loch. It’s a kind of grey-black
colour, with a head rather like a bull’s, and it’s the size of a dinosaur. In
the background, a castle looms. This stuck with me as a kid, and I knew that it
was going to make an appearance in the fantasy novel that I’ve been writing. I
hope that I’ve been able to convey some of the power that the image holds for
me in my writing.
If the problems of real people seem petty in comparison to space battles
and epic quests, they don’t have to be. Using real-life problems as inspiration
for character motivation can bring a personal element into a story and stop it
being about huge numbers of faceless pawns blowing each other up. Take the
problems of the Skywalker family, for instance. If they were just guys in the
real world, their issues probably wouldn’t have much of an effect on global
politics. But of course Darth is the right hand of the Emperor, and his
feelings for his family could swing the galaxy from one extreme to the other. That personal element brings a new intensity to the story.
Ultimately, being inspired is about discovering out what you personally
want to write. Everyone knows a book, album or film that “shouldn’t” work but
really does, because it’s been made with such a strong vision behind it. Being
really inspired doesn’t just make a story original, but gives it a new level of
power and immediacy.
Links to Toby's books can be found here http://www.amazon.co.uk/Toby-Frost/e/B0034PF4Q8
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