It doesn’t matter if you write fiction, nonfiction or poetry—writers pretty much base everything upon their own imagination. Imagination is triggered by things we’ve seen, learned or actually experienced.
In the beginning, we have a whole basket full of ideas to be developed, but eventually we work our way through. Then what? How to come up with fresh scenarios and characters? Here are a few questions to ask yourself and steps you can take:
Are you a creature of habit?
It has been aid that you can drive all day long and never leave the boundaries of Los Angeles. So, o you take the same route from place to place every time you travel between destinations? Do you have favorite restaurants and limit yourself to what you know and love? Do you have a definite look in the outfits you wear, tunnel-visioned taste in the authors you like to read…the list could go on and on. People tend to stay with what is comfortable or go to the same places and do the same things because the expectation is predictable--we know where to turn or how something will taste, or we wear the styles because we always feel good in certain types of clothes.
Imagine you’re writing a scene and the area is one that is so familiar you can navigate it with your eyes closed. You drive the same route every time so it’s easy to describe the streets, the houses and where the characters will go. Ah, but now you have a problem. Because you’ve determined that the series will always take place within these boundaries, the fans of your series know it almost as well as you do. That’s becoming boring. There’s nothing unexpected anymore in the surroundings.
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