Writing Tips — Art inspires Art

There are many ways artists can inspire one another. A poem may inspire a painting, or a song. I once danced in a space where paintings adorned the walls, and felt the art inspire my movements.

In this week’s story club, my workshop for young writers, we came up with scenes sparked by each other’s characters.

We each chose a character archetype (the victim, the saviour, the persecutor and the trickster). Each person spent ten minutes creating one of these characters. Then we shared our characters with the group. Each person wrote a scene using someone else’s character(s).

One thing I noticed is how we all tended to write a scene focused on a character that was not ours. In my case, I did this because I was curious about writing a character I myself had not come up with. I enjoyed the spark of inspiration someone else gave me.

The consensus was that it was fun to bring someone else’s character to life in a scene. We also enjoyed seeing what another writer did with a character we came up with. The story that began to form was rich with different voices. I enjoyed writing about Mine’s pirate saviour, a strong woman who had lost her crew but not her strength and determination. Mine wrote an incredible villain, based on Mika’s idea of an eyeless girl who spoke in cold monotone, while Mika took my character of Leaf (an alien energy newly manifested as a human teenager) and made him so lovely I wanted to meet them.

I would recommend this type of community writing, especially if you feel you could use a challenge in your character development. This exercise broke us out of our comfort zone and brought new, fresh inspiration to our writing.