 Photographs for Inspiration Working With Writing Prompts Baby Name Sites One idea, which I mentioned in “Choosing a Character Name” is using a baby name website. I prefer this website currently: http://babynamesworld.parentsconnect.com/name-wizard/. This link specifically leads to a section called “Name Wizard.” It has three boxes to enter names. For this example, I will use search criteria I used earlier. I wanted character names, and chose three that I found fitting for my purposes. I entered “John,” “Connor,” and “Riddick.” Toward the middle of the page is the name “Andrew.” It is a boys name with the a Greek and English origin, both meaning man and warrior. It is a from the name Andreas. In this case I am going to go with Andreas, which I find more unusual then Andrew. Andreas will have black hair, black eyes, and an olive complexion as common among Greeks. As a warrior, I will give him an Army background. Perhaps instead of one of the more well known aspects of the Army, such as Special Forces, I will chose standard infantry. He’s enlisted. I plugged “Greek surnames” into a search engine and found: http://genealogy.familyeducation.com/browse/origin/greek. I looked around until I found the last name “Chronis.” It struck me as sounding similar to “Chronos” which refers to time. There are a lot of ways to design a story off of this information. Whether Andreas Chronis be a romantic hero who falls forward or back in time. Or a psi who can manipulate the fabric of time after a fateful accident with a military weapon prototype. Its what comes to my mind. Give it a shot. Free On-line Photographs and Graphics The old cliché “a picture is worth a thousand words” is often very true; hence why it’s a cliché. There are a number of ways to find photographs and graphics. I prefer to use pictures that are freely available. Just a personal preference. This website http://www.freepixels.com/ has various photographs. Buildings, scenery, animals, miscellaneous. A picture of a church inspired the idea for “My Friend David.” I saw the picture and decided I wanted to write a story involving a rural church. It went from there. This site http://classroomclipart.com/cgi-bin/kids/imageFolio.cgi?direct=Scenery/Waterfalls has an annoying habit of bypassing pop-up block. I also was unable to determine if the pictures really are free. I would read the Terms of Service before considering downloading anything. The TOS is rather vague and unhelpful. But there are some gorgeous pictures on this site, including a beautiful Irish castle I found the other day. Backgrounds by Marie: http://www.artistic-designers.com/bkgds/ has graphics for backgrounds. However, they are incredibly beautiful. The links are at the top of the window. They can be hard to see. The site appears to be able to bypass pop-up blocker also. Just click the pop-up’s X. Simply typing in a specific country and the word “photographs” will produce websites with pictures of that particular country. Typing in “archaeology” will get a variety of related photographs. Google has an option to search for images. Basically, anything you could possibly want a picture of from a Peruvian temple to a Chinese dragon should be available somewhere on-line. Look around. Please be respectful of their copyrights. Random Plot Generators There are numerous random plot generators. This one at http://www.archetypewriting.com/muse/generators/plot.htm provides two lines. The first line is the protagonist, as listed. The second line is another character in the story and describes the character with an occupation and a purpose. This site: http://www.gkbledsoe.com/articles/process/writing_prompt_generator.html is for children’s stories; although it can be used for other stories with patience. It includes a number of options including protagonist, antagonist and setting. I have used it for inspiring the adult stories that I have written. For more humorous stories, this one may provide an idea or two: http://www.school-for-champions.com/fiction/random_story.cfm. If not, it is at least funny. As a final example, more are available by searching for “random plot generator.” This site has various random generators: http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. A lot of it is goofy, but I have found that if I randomly generate the max amount of ideas, that I can piece together the good start of a basic idea from the ideas generated. Spreadsheet Random Plot Generator Database The article “Choosing Character Names” has instructions at the bottom on how to create a random generator in a spreadsheet. The basic idea to is to create a list of topics that can be random selected by using the random function in spreadsheets. This option can take a lot of work. I have sat down with a dictionary more then once to enter in possible one word plot ideas. Once I had a database, I could easily randomly select three random plot words or five or fifteen. It only really matters to the specific project. The list should be specific to the writer’s genre. I have plot database for my science fiction that varies from my plot database for contemporary paranormal. It depends entirely on the author and what plot ideas appeal to him or her. |