Looking for Writing Inspiration?

by Miller C. Lashbrook

As a writer, I am always looking for sources of inspiration, or things to get my mind going. In this blog post, I am going to share some things that I use as inspiration for writing.

Podcasts

Podcasts are a great source of inspiration for writing. There are of course writing and literature podcasts, these can be inspirations to writing in a technical sense. Personally, I love podcasts about history and mythology for inspiration. My new favorite of these is the Podcast Mythology from Parcast. Learning about our world and its cultures can be a great source of inspiration for creating worlds for fantasy and science fiction.

Music

Music is such a wonderful inspiration for writing. Often times when I am working on a scene or chapter of a story I will create a playlist for the vibe and let it play as I write. Sometimes instrumental tracks will paint pictures for me, other times I will use music with lyrics to really feel the atmosphere in my head. A fun exercise of creativity can also be to create little musicals; when I hear a song I will ask myself, “what character would be singing this?” and from there I create a character that may fit into a larger narrative.

Art

One of my most regular sources of inspiration is artwork. I follow a ton of visual artists on Twitter who often share their work, anything from science fiction characters to fantasy landscapes. When I see a piece that catches my eye, I ask myself what the story is and let the ideas flow from there.

For artists on twitter, look at the #PortfolioDay.

Dungeons and Dragons

Finally, Dungeons and Dragons is an amazing exercise of writing. As a player, D&D gives you the chance to really think about round characters, what they want, and how they plan to get it. As a dungeon master, D&D lets you build worlds, create characters, and test out stories. As the DM you have a wonderful opportunity to test out little pieces of stories like places, characters, and plot points that could get refined and become parts of narratives later on.

I hope this post provided you with some ideas for where to get inspiration. If you are a creator, share in the comments where you get your inspiration from.