It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) post! In an IWSG post, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems out into the open to share with each other and try to offer solutions. Because this first Wednesday fell right after a holiday here in the US, Independence Day (AKA the Fourth of July), I've started this post late and so I'm just going to limit it to the optional question of the month. For those of you who celebrate it, I hope you all had a happy Fourth of July!
The question of the month is 99% of my [somebody’s, Alex’s?] Story Ideas come from dreams. Where do yours predominantly come from? Whenever I get asked a question like this my answer is always "life". Almost all authors’ work is influenced by their own life experiences and so that's what mine is based on.
However, within that life experience which consists of nearly a universe of experiences as all of our lives do, I have to say that my story ideas are predominantly based on my childhood passion for science fiction and Horror. For me, these two genres came in a multitude of media, but especially television, movies and, of course, books (including comics). I grew up on watching with my dad and uncles science fiction and horror television which ranged from horror-hosted movies aired late Saturday nights to 1960s “Batman” and “Ultra-Man” episodes. In the movie theatres I watched the original “Star Wars” trilogy and its B-rated knockoffs. As far as books went, I was dedicated to listening to child appropriate scary tales that our teachers read to us and I would check out nearly every book in that genre that was available in both my grammar school and town’s libraries. I couldn't love any other genre more than sci fi and horror. I had to explore the strange worlds and get to know the weird characters that both offered and the fear and wonder they conjured up. I loved these genres so much, I just had to write stories of my own in them.
Because of today's blog hop, I'm taking a break next Monday from blogging. I'll be back for sure the following Monday. What influences your story ideas?
Today’s IWSG is brought to you by these super co-hosts: PJ Colando, Kim Lajevardi, Gwen Gardner, Pat Garcia, and Natalie Aguirre! IWSG was founded by awesome author Alex Cavanaugh, writer of the Cassa Series of novels!
Until next time . . .
