Are you struggling to come up with an interesting idea for your imaginative writing piece? Maybe you have writer’s block? Or perhaps creative writing has just never been your strong suit.
Either way, we’re here to share the number one hack on how you can find inspiration for imaginative writing.
Keep reading to find out!
Tip #1: “Good artists borrow and great artists steal”
Tip #2: Get Inspired by Short Films
Tip #3: Use Inspiration from a Character or Event
Tip #1: “Good artists borrow and great artists steal”
In the wise words of the famous Pablo Picasso, “Good artists borrow and great artists steal.”
Although this might sound like plagiarism, the meaning behind this phrase is that artists build on ideas and works of other artists — they take an idea and change it! Perhaps they might add something or take something away, essentially enhancing the idea and making it unique to themselves.
A good example of this is E.L. James, the author of Fifty Shades of Grey, which started out as a Twilight fanfiction. The Fifty Shades of Grey series sold 70 million copies and also became popular in cinemas, bringing in over 100 million dollars!
James essentially used the characters in Twilight and got rid of all the references to Twilight, creating an entirely new series appealing to similar audiences.
It’s this exact idea that you can use to help you with your imaginative writing!
Tip #2: Get Inspired by Short Films
The best starting point is watching a whole load of short films!
The great thing about short films is that they’re all over YouTube, they don’t take a lot of time out of your day, and they’re the perfect size to translate into a short story of about 800 to 1200 words.
Tropfest is a great place for you to find some great short films, with the added bonus of it being a local competition. There are a number of amazing story ideas that you can use and revamp for your imaginative piece.
Once you’ve found a story that stands out to you, and is interesting to you, rewrite the story in your own words. At this initial stage, don’t think about changing the story or characters yet — just focus on your writing and language.
Now that you’re comfortable with the storyline, start to bring in your ideas and changes! Start simple with the character’s names, and their dialogue. Then progress onto bigger components like the location or setting, the conflict, maybe even introduce different character personalities.
Soon you’ll find that using a short film as your basis of inspiration, you’ve created a completely new imaginative piece!
Tip #3: Use Inspiration from a Character or Event
Although short films are a great source of inspiration for imaginative writing, you can still use longer novels and films in a similar way. The only difference is that trying to tell the whole story in about 1000 words isn’t going to happen!
What you can do instead, is choose a specific event that happens in the film or novel to focus on. Alternatively, you might like to focus on one character and write around their experiences.
From here, you want to change some of the main qualities of the characters or some of the details in a certain event when writing the story.
You might even try taking a character and putting it into a different context to look into how this character would behave in a different environment. And vice versa! Taking a new character and putting into the same context.
There you go — you now have a completely new story to use for your imaginative writing!
Get Inspiration, Don’t Plagiarise
One thing to remember is that it’s absolutely crucial that you do not plagiarise. This might sound pretty confusing, but what this means is that you need to still create your own story — you’re just using other stories as a basis for inspiration.
So by changing the characters, adding on different events and bringing in new ideas, you’re making the story your own!
However if you’re still having a hard time with writing and creating a storyline, you can get in touch with the tutoring and mentoring team here at Art of Smart to receive some further guidance in English.
Now that you have some new approaches, get onto your imaginative writing!
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Nandini Dhir is a Content Writer at Art of Smart and is currently studying a Bachelor of Arts (majoring in Marketing) and a Bachelor of Advanced Studies (Media and Communications), as a Dalyell Scholar, at Sydney University. She enjoys covering local issues in her area and writing about current events in the media. Nandini has had one of her pieces published in an article with the Sydney Morning Herald. In her free time, Nandini loves doing calligraphy, ballet, and sewing, or is otherwise found coddling her cats.
