By
Dora Machado
How the heck did you come up with that?
People ask me this question all the time, in various ways
and regarding different parts and scenes in my books. I suspect that stretching
concepts and ideas is innate to the fantasy writer. It feels very comfortable
to me. My imagination never quits. My mind is always generating ideas. Awake or
asleep, whatever mysterious spot in my brain is accountable for the creative
function is constantly firing shots. Call it a blessing. Call it a curse. It’s
just the way my brain works.
Coming up with distinct concepts or original
adaptations has to do with asking questions. What if I changed this? What if
this happened? What if this other thing happened? I think an author has to be
ruthless about asking questions, even when those questions test our comfort
zones and make us feel uncomfortable.
Yielding to the imagination means exploring the
darkness, embracing the odd and probing the strange. Unleashing the creative
process entails rejecting the easy answers and accepting not only your
characters’ contradictions but also our world and our experiences. There’s
got to be fearlessness to the creative process, a courage requirement; because when we challenge ourselves to ask beyond the obvious, then we can begin to tell original and meaningful stories.
****
Dora Machado is the award-winning author of the epic
fantasy Stonewiser series and her newest novel, The Curse Giver, available
from Twilight Times Books. She grew up in the Dominican Republic, where she
developed a fascination for writing and a taste for Merengue. After a lifetime
of straddling such compelling but different worlds, fantasy is a natural fit to
her stories. She lives in Florida with her indulgent husband and three very
opinionated cats.
When she is not writing fiction, Dora also writes
features for Murder By Four, an award winning blog for people interested in
reading and writing, and Savvy Authors, where writers help writers.
E-mail:Dora@doramachado.com
Website: www.doramachado.com
Newsletter: http://doramachado.com/newsletter.php
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoraMachado101
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DoraMachado
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I love talking about the creative process, Dora! Especially about how stories end up in our brains, twisted with endless variations, and come spewing out onto the screen (paper). Fascinating stuff! Thank you for sharing your thoughts today!
ReplyDeleteThe scariest books are the ones where you're reading and suddenly think, no, it can't go there... and of course, it does. So maybe the scariest writers are the ones wise enough not to tell their imagination you can't go there.
ReplyDeleteI love learning about your processes. Thank you so much for this!
ReplyDeleteI love talking about the creative process too, guys! God knows,it's one of my favorite topics, Aaron. Sheila, you are absolutely right. I still get e-mail from readers who didn't see some of my twists coming. I tell them I didn't see them coming either! LOL. Marsha, it was my pleasure to share. That's what MB4 is all about!
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