Meredith Mansfield, Author

I’ve posted before about how inspiration can come from literally anything.  The other thing about inspiration, especially that first spark of an idea that you build on to make a story, is that it can’t be forced.  At least, I can’t force it.

There are things you can work on, of course.  I have a set of questions that I ask myself about a culture or a place when I’m doing world building.  The thing there is that they all have to integrate, to feel like a cohesive and rational whole.

But the idea itself, that comes from deeper in my brain, from my subconscious.  And it has to bubble up from the depths in its own good time.

This happened recently with SEVEN STARS.  I have the world building pretty well done.  I wrote the first chapter, plus a little.  And then I stopped.  The main character felt too confident, competent, and especially too old for what I wanted this story to be.  He sounded like an old campaigner when he’s supposed to be a kid forced into the role of leader in a stressful situation he’s not really quite ready for.  I wasn’t sure what to do with it.  So, I put it aside for a while, worked on revisions on other projects, and let my subconscious work behind the scenes. 

It paid off a couple of days ago.  I know exactly how to change that first chapter or so to fix my main character and the story.