Inspiration

[jpeek]

How do you find the inspiration/motivation to write? It blows my mind how you can create an entire world, history, and people. How much of your characters and situations are inspired by real life?

[DWHawkin]

Actually, I love to write. I get an idea in my head about a story I want to tell - or I just wing it, sometimes - and I sit down to do it, and it comes out. As far as the setting goes, the story builds it for me sometimes, and sometimes the story requires me to build it before I go any further. I'll get an idea while I'm typing and think "yeah, that's awesome", or sometimes I come to a roadblock and I have to sit down and try and think of what a good, realistic answer would be to a given problem or situation. Sometimes I write the characters into a corner and put myself into their shoes to try and figure a way out of it. I find that it works best for me.

There are most definitely characters inspired by real people. It helps to make them more realistic, and I think the readers enjoy it more. The places, though, come solely from my mind. I don't really have a problem with dreaming up settings, and I try and see the scenes in the book playing out in my head, and mostly it feels like I'm just relaying the information to the reader, in as artful a way as I can manage. I'm getting better at it. I think you'll find that my descriptive abilities have come a long way, and in "A Tool Most Dangerous", the first installment in the series of free Seven Signs shorts, I think you'll be able to see a slight difference in the way I described the scene than in The Sentient Fire.

The battles I definitely used some personal experience in creating. Being in the military, I've seen plenty of fights, and know what it feels like to be in one. I used some of that, coupled with what I think it would be like to fight in The Seven Signs. For the magic, I just try and see it in my head, and put myself in the characters' positions, and try to relay that feeling and experience to the reader.