Words and Music

As a writer, you're always asked where you get your ideas from. The question has become such a cliche that it's incredible how often we're still asked - but people want to know. They really want to know.

Usually there isn't a simple answer. Stories often spring out of nowhere, or string themselves together from ten or twenty different sources. An anecdote you heard, a book you read, a person you saw at the train station. That really strong cup of coffee you downed that morning.

In the case of my story 'Not The End Of The World' (recently published in The Portland Review), the answer is far simpler than that. For once there's a definite starting point for the words on the page, a source from which the rest flowed. It wasn't a book, or an experience. It wasn't even a person.

It was 'We Used To Wait', from Arcade Fire's album The Suburbs.

To cite a single song as the inspiration for a 5000 word story sounds simplistic, but in this instance it's as close as you're going to get to the truth. The song's lyrics inspired the story's central concept; the song's tone imbued the narrative with its sense of melancholy and loss. I like to think that 'Not The End Of The World' is 'We Used To Wait' coalesced into narrative form. Clearly it's different, but they share the same pulse.

You can check out 'We Used To Wait' here, in a fantastic interactive video app. To read 'Not The End Of The World', get your hands on a copy of the Summer 2013 issue of The Portland Review.

And if you're looking for similar inspiration yourself, here are my top five bands/musicians for inspiring fiction ideas. Somewhere in here there's a story just waiting to be written.

1/ Nick Cave. Okay, so Cave is an author too, and many of his ideas have made it into print already. But what ideas they are. Mean, moody and dripping with atmosphere, many of his songs sound like Gothic thrillers waiting to happen. All they need is your input.

2/ David Bowie. If Cave is too Gothic for your tastes, take a journey into space with Bowie. I've lost count of the number of times I've heard one of his songs and had a flash of inspiration. Literate, packed with imagery, and irrepressibly weird, these should get your creative juices flowing.

3/ Laura Marling. Not as well known as the other names on this list, Marling's songs are nonetheless perfect food for literature. The day she writes a novel, I'm first in line to read it.

4/ Johnny Cash. The Man in Black was one of the greatest songwriters ever, and his grasp of character and narrative is second to none. Throw in some of the weary moodiness of his later recordings, and that's one potent stew.

5/ Arcade Fire. Yes, yes, I've mentioned them already... but they had to make the list. After all, they've just inspired my latest story. What more proof do you need?

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