Of course, for the writer, inspiration, content, imagery, character can be taken from anywhere, anyone and any source. The favourite ploy of the night-school creative writing class is the magic bag of inspirational items! Dip in and see what you pull out: 3 things, now link them together and write 200 words: a pink-headed gonk, a postcard from Brighton, and a carrot – for example! I find these little exercises quite fun, but I have never been at a loss for a source for my writing so I never have used them as a tool, but I guess just knowing that you can write something is a mini exercise in keeping the writer’s block at bay.
Anyway, I am ever more convinced that I should be writing this second novel simply because of the stuff I encounter that somehow links intrinsically to the subject matter of the story. It’s like I am being given little signs by some divine muse; or, it’s like when you buy a new car/phone/dress/handbag whatever and then before you know it everyone has got the same; but it’s only because you’ve got what they’ve got that you notice! So I guess, because I know my story, I am subconsciously attuned to look out for the props, and they really are piling up, faster than i can write them in to the plot, for sure.
So this weekend’s Guardian has an article by Julie Bindel about the people that through no fault of their own, happen to stumble across a dead body (or part there of). http://tinyurl.com/mggj4o
I have long been intrigued by this, it’s almost a macabre version of the scene from Austin Powers when one of Dr. Evil’s henchmen gets killed and the news is broken to his wife. No one cares about the body count, or that the body count has family! And so too the same applies to the people that the story isn’t about. They are almost facilitators, or as legal parlance has it, accessories to the fact. But the impact upon these people could be devastating.
In the novel, some one has to find the body, and what impact does it have on them? Does the person that finds the body go on to have a major part, or are they incidental; a plot devise to move the scene on? Did they expect to find the body (are they trained to?) and if they think they are prepared for what they might find, what do they ultimately think? I now have some questions upon which to build some character development (though who I don’t know yet), I have the dead body, but not the finder. This is the trouble with source material, it won’t come at you in the form and stucture your novel will take. It is a series of random occurences that have to be noted and stored for future reference.
