illustration - devon smith - young women to write about

If anything can inspire a story, it's these illustrations by Devon Smith - women
riddled with melancholy, apathy, determination, suspicion, and yearning.
Devon enjoys reading old science fiction novels.  She relates to two truths that
seem common to most breeds of artist: that you must create for yourself alone,
and that a common struggle will be your audience not matching your
enthusiasm for a work.

Take a look and see if any of her illustrations prompt a story for you...

illustration - write me - dilka bear

Dilka Bear doesn't create stories, per se - she creates characters.
Each of these works is a dense drop of someone she's created, ready
for some storyteller to come along and expand.

Dilka Bear says she likes to portray a world without the things that
bind us.  Smiles make her nervous, which is why she doesn't include
them often; they don't often accurately reflect the world.  Have a
look and see if there's a connection between your work and hers...

photo stories - max wanger

Max Wanger deals with some pretty interesting characters.
Do any of these raise their hands and volunteer a story for
your writing?

The time will come when your characters will write your
stories for you, when your emotions, free of literary cant and
commercial bias, will blast the page and tell the truth.
Remember:  Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow
after your characters have run by on their way to incredible
destinations.  Plot is observed after the fact rather than before.
So, stand aside, forget targets, let the characters, your fingers,
body, blood, and heart do.

- Ray Bradbury, Zen and the Art of Writing

photo stories - dan winters

Dan Winters is great with portraits.  One of my favorite character
development exercises is to imagine: if your character had his or her
portrait taken, what would it look like?  Which postures, eye angles,
clothing, jewelry, visual quirks would capture his or her essence?
What kind of lighting?  Facial expressions?  On and on.  Dreaming
up this kind of snapshot for a character is like creating a tag line for
your novel - it can add clarity and focus, make the person sharper to
you and therefore, to us.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not
characters. A character is a caricature.

- Ernest Hemingway

Gwyneth Paltrow

Johnny Depp

resources - idioms

UsingEnglish.com has a catalog of idioms based on countries (English): Irish,
American, Australian, British, Canadian, Scottish, Indian, and New Zealander.
This can be helpful if, say, you're writing a Scottish character and want to indicate
his or her country of origin with more than "aye" and "ye".

Cat's lick = quick wash
Head is mince = confusion in face of a dilemma
Turn the crack = change the subject

By Absurdite

from unexpected places - character round up

I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not.
I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of.

- Joss Whedon

Do any of these characters belong to you?

Via Mr. Newton

Via Dulceida

from unexpected places - object portraits

Anthology Magazine has a series called Attributes on their website.  It's where they
choose a photographer, writer, et cetra and have them create a portrait of themselves
through objects.  It's a wonderful idea...  and can even encourage us to push deeper
into the characters of our stories.  What would their object portraits look like?

illustration - pettry b

Pettry B most frequently explores pairings of human and beast.
Fantastic stories have come from these relationships - The Golden Compass,
Sailor Moon and Luna, MacDonald's Curdie and Lina, Eragon and Saphira,
Lucy and the Beavers, more recently, Merida and her mother in Brave, and
Pi and the tiger, a story coming to the big screen in November.

What other tales like these are waiting to be told?
Would your protagonist ever be in one of these relationships?

on writing success - chris vogler's memo to disney execs

In the long run, one of the most influential books of the 20th century may turn out to
be Joseph Campbell’s THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES.

The book and the ideas in it are having a major impact on writing and story-telling, but
above all on movie-making.  Filmmakers like John Boorman, George Miller, Steven
Spielberg, George Lucas, and Francis Coppola owe their successes in part to the ageless
patterns that Joseph Campbell identifies in the book.  The ideas Campbell presents in this
and other books are an excellent set of analytical tools.  With them you can almost always
determine what’s wrong with a story that’s floundering; and you can find a better solution
almost any story problem by examining the pattern laid out in the book.

Brave concept art

photo stories - solve sundsbo

A tightrope walker.  I recently saw one while visiting Niagara Falls - an act tinted with magic.
The man who recently crossed the falls on tightrope got his start with the Flying Wallendas,
a group of circus performers spanning seven generations.  What an interesting back story.
Think of all the other characters found at a circus - bearded lady, the ones that lay on beds of
nails, the contortionists, lion tamers, illusionists.  What about some obscure ones, new ones
from our own imaginations?  What are their histories and futures?  What might they dare to do?

Via Man About Town #1 AW 2008

illustration - loonaki

Loonaki illustrates long-haired beauties discovering, breathing, being, loving nature.
What kind of water spirit, mother earth, rainbow girl stories to these inspire?
Let the characters run wild in your mind.

As Ray Bradbury says in Zen in the Art of Writing, Characters would do my work for me,
if I let them alone, if I gave them their heads, which is to say, their fantasies, their frights.

AND

Find a character, like yourself, who will want something or not want something, with
all his heart.  Give him running orders.  Shoot him off.  Then follow as fast as you can go. 
The character, in his great love or hate, will rush you through to the end of the story.

from unexpected places - style clicker

Who is this?

And some character development questions from Rich Taylor:
What is she most ashamed of?
What's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen?
When was the last time she laughed?
Has she experienced anything that she attributed to the supernatural?
Does she have a tick or tell or obvious quirk?
What makes her sad for even a moment each day?

Via Style Clicker

on writing - knowing your characters and stories

See these questions to get to know your characters.  They can help you focus your writing and discover things you didn't previously know about your stories.

Examples:
What kind of distinguishing facial features does your character have?
When and where was your character the happiest?
On what occasions does your character lie?

Also, here are 100 questions to critique your own story.  Lots to think about.
And...  questions to ask after your story's ending.

Happy writing!

By Susan Sorrell Hill