Friday, April 18, 2008

The muse works in mysterious ways

The spouse and I went to the garden center this afternoon, to get a few plants for the deer. I know they'll eat most of them, but for now the flower bed I've just finished planting looks really nice. That's beside the point. We were waiting at a stop light and I happened to glance to the side. In the far right-hand lane I saw part of the name on a tradesman's van.

Tevan, it said.

And before I could turn back again, this character pops up in my head and introduces himself. And then another joins him and between them they are starting to write what may turn out to be a short story for the Writers of the Future thingy... or it may turn into something longer. The second character is female and feisty as heck. I think I'm going to write this her first person POV. It'll be fun, because she doesn't really like Tevan very much. But they are a team. And he can't do without her, because she's able to redirect the flashback magic. Don't ask... I don't know what it is either. Not yet. So I have two characters, a vague idea that they use magic to defend their country ( I didn't mention that did I?) and the magic is dangerous in itself. I know a tiny bit about their culture and at the moment I have no plot. It'll be an interesting ride.

The muse surely does work in mysterious ways.

3 comments:

Ben said...

Cool! I've never had an experience like that, but I've gotten many ideas from my dreams. My current WIP features a culture with ritualized duels where the point is to sever the opponent's hand, and nothing else. It was a strange dream.

riotimus said...

I love it when inspiration hits like that. That will be great if some of us are pushing for WotF together.

R.

Anonymous said...

That's cool. I've had something like that happen a couple of times, but not with that kind of direction. I got the name for a villain in one of my fantasy RPGs in a similar way--saw an old sign for a long-since defunct drugstore in a little neighboring town, and the ruthless (if somewhat comical) bandit Heckerby Fonk was born right then.