Everything Bianca

Yesterday, I explored a recent habit of mine regarding my short stories. I tend to take the same group of characters and write several stories involving them in various situations. I called this character reincarnation, because it felt like a group of people constantly encountering each other in different times / worlds. The characters always ended up with the same name and physical description, but different backgrounds.

A friend of mine, Alobar, shared with me his premise that he thought of the different characters that actors play in different movies as having the same soul and also being a type of reincarnation.

This set my wheels to spinning - what if I started doing this more purposefully? Why not create characters as actors? Then, when I create a story, all I need to do is pull from a cast. I'd have a name, a personality, a physical description - and then give that character a role to play.

Instead of accidentally reincarnating the same character, I'd purposely create a talent pool. I could have a short list of other characters this one works great with, who they liked working with in other stories.

*barely containing laughter*

I'm totally doing this.

I'm not sure how much this will actually affect my writing, but I'm 100% positive that it will be fun.

What do I do when I want to write a story but don't have any ideas?

I have three main methods:

1) Freewriting. Just writing down whatever comes to mind and seeing what springs forth.

2) Music. I'll listen to new music and daydream a story to the music. Usually that leads to a decent story.

3) Reading. I'll pick up a book and start asking myself: what would I do differently?

I did that yesterday. I was reading about an inexperienced witch and wrote: well studied sorceress. She was trying to prove herself so I wrote: shy and recluse, not interested in actual practice.

The book continued and so did I until the inexperienced protagonist accidentally conjures a demon. I wrote: moves into a new area and stumbles across a place of power where something live. She forms a relationship with it.

I dropped the book (read: set aside my iPhone) and was furiously writing an expansion to that single idea. After a paragraph of what amounted to a book synopsis. I began writing it.

I'd take a break from writing. Read (while thinking what might come next). Then back to writing.

The two stories are nothing alike. The point isn't to rewrite something I've read, but to twist current ideas to whatever suits me.

As far as idea creation goes, those three have always worked.