So Where Do Writers Get Their Ideas From?

I have been waiting to get my hot little hands on the DVD for Inception (see trailer above) since I went to see it at the cinema in July for the second time. Luckily I won't have to wait much longer because it is available on the 6th December and I can't wait because it is a stonking good movie. So what am I waffling on about it for? What has it got to do with writers and where they get their ideas from?

Well, the plot of Inception centres around a group of people led by Leonardo DiCaprio's character Cobb who steal corporate secrets from people's dreams. The consensus being that your dreams are created from your subconscious and its secrets. However, this time they have been asked to implant an idea in someone's mind. Without giving too much away, they attempt this feat by going deep into the mark's dreams and getting him to access his subconscious issues with his father's rejection that are symbolically contained within a large bank safe. They then manipulate whatever Fischer finds in there to implant the idea. Needless to say it is in essence a heist movie. The group have to fight their way past an army of men created in the dream by the mark's subconscious to protect his secrets to be able to break open the safe. Confused? Watch the trailer above. It will help, trust me.

The plot made me wonder about writing and how writers' ideas are generated. Writer's courses, workshops and how to books will tell you that prospective authors should read newspapers and pay attention to the world around them to get story ideas. These are worthy instructions but are they enough to cause inception? Do we really wait for an idea to be planted into our minds from a scandalous piece of news or might we not view this external stimulus as a trigger to engage and germinate the idea already within?

Perhaps when we write we are accessing our safe of hidden truths, secrets, desires and fears that define us as human beings just as Fischer does in the movie and our ideas are born from them. I always think of writing as a waking dream that can become so vivid and real that you are almost consumed by its power of reality as you struggle to get it down on the page.

Whilst writing a scene from my latest novel and listening to music at the same time I found myself lost in a world where my character was riding hard along a beach. I could see the tide coming in , hear the horse galloping on the sand and hear his breath as they headed towards some dark looming rocks and impending danger. It was so real I felt as though I could reach out and touch it all. I believe we are the own architects of our own dreamlike stories in which we spill our hidden truths and secrets for all the world to see when they read it.

Our characters may well be undiscovered aspects of ourselves that we wish to view and interact with in our dream world to learn more about our own inner landscape and the anatomy of our lives. Even our plots and the world in which we set our story will erect symbols and meanings to help us decipher this inner landscape and how this shapes our method of interacting with the external world around us. Might our own stories serve as a trigger to help others engage with their own internal worlds and ideas of self.

Ok, I'm getting a bit deep but hopefully you get the idea??? Maybe we should all have some of that subconscious security training they talk about in the film in case someone decides to break into our dreams, wakeful or otherwise and steal our ideas.

Next time you are stuck for a plot look within for inception and in the words of Eames's character in the film, 'You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.'