Write It Down!

One thing I have become better at is writing stuff down when the inspiration comes.  Generally speaking, inspiration comes when I've already been working at writing -- but it doesn't necessarily come when I'm writing.  I find that a lot of the time, things come to me after I've turned out the lights and gone to bed.  That happened to me several times in the last couple of weeks, and I find that it's always a good idea to get back up and write things down.

If all I've been doing is playing games, then that's what's in my head when I sleep.  That's the part where writing leads to inspiration.  Your mind is very good at solving problems and spontaneously coming up with dialog and story plots when you're no longer thinking on these things, but have been thinking on them recently.  That's why walking is good, too.

I get ideas in the morning while waking up too, but those are not always as good since I'm surfacing from the land of dreams, where nothing makes sense.  Anyway, write stuff down when it occurs to you, that's my advise.  It's helped me a lot.  It may just be quick bits of dialog or sketches of how a scene should go, but it always gives me the kernel of an idea or scene to expand upon later.  Just the act of writing it down means I'll remember what I was thinking about the next day.

Today I'm working on three different story ideas at once, and it's anyone's guess which I'll decide to finish first.  I'm still working on Past Life Sister, one of my stories from last month's Camp NaNo, and I'm working on Where's My Supersuit? and Gate Into Danger, two new ideas from the last couple of days.  Of the three, I have the most written on Past Life Sister and I think I have an ending for it, and I also think I have an ending in mind for Where's My Supersuit? which is a much fluffier silly piece.  I don't really know where I'm going with Gate Into Danger yet, other than some Stargate:  SG1 jokes, but I wrote those down at least.

Where's My Supersuit? is a good example of what I'm talking about though -- writing stuff down when inspiration hits.  Last night I read two reviews of The Amazing Spiderman 2 movie, and among the many plot problems they talked about is the fact that at the precise moment one character becomes a super villain, a door opens up as if by magic containing his costume.  And this happens more than once in the movie, apparently -- hero and villain costumes are just lying around waiting for people to develop powers, or something.  If I remember right, Spiderman's costume in the first movie just kind of appeared with no real explanation.

So I thought, there's a trope waiting for a story, and then Frozone's line from The Incredibles came to me as the perfect title for such a story.  And I wrote it down, before I forgot it!

Actually that's true for Gate Into Danger, too.  I watched another episode of Stargate:  SG1 last night, and I wrote down the jokes that came to me.