one source of inspiration

If you haven’t seen this television show, what have you been waiting for? It’s the FONT of many an inspiration for me, and I know it can be for you, too. Wait! you say. Isn’t that some dorky scifi show about robots?

NO! It is an incredibly nuanced story about life and meaning and honor and tricky, tricky villains. It is about God and gods, it’s about love and hate, it’s about forming alliances between people who may have nothing in common on the surface but underneath it all, they just want a home. And beyond that, the music is amazing, the visual imagery of the show is also spectacular, and most important of all, the characters are incredibly three-dimensional.

For me, watching a really complicated television series awakens my brain. It makes me feel like all my synapses are firing, and all sorts of ideas start sparking all over the place. It doesn’t have to be Battlestar Galactica for you. Maybe it’s The Sopranos or The Walking Dead or whatever — the point is, seeing something amazingly layered unfold over hours and hours can awaken all sorts of inspiration.

I think it can work with movies, too, as long as you are sufficiently drawn into the story to completely forget about your own writing. As soon as you forget, the ideas come.