Inspiration is a funny thing. The more I write, the wider
the range of things that I find inspiring – or, more accurately, the greater
the number of places I take inspiration from.
A lot of science fiction and fantasy draws from history.
Traditionally, much fantasy has been set in a kind of tidied-up medieval Europe
with magical elements (probably derived from Tolkien or Dungeons & Dragons)
put on top with varying levels of subtlety. This is changing, but the stereotype remains strong. SF, too, has borrowed heavily
from other places: Dune uses the Middle East, The Forever War is essentially
about Vietnam, and a lot of military SF stories involve WW2 Germans, US
special forces or the British Empire in space.
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| Like, er, this. |
Not that any of this is necessarily bad. I’ve borrowed
elements from loads of places: partly as parody, partly as inspiration. But
it’s important not to end up using the same set of tired elements in a setting. When writing something like steampunk, which has a pretty narrow set of
archetypes, it’s difficult not to end up just shuffling the same very small
pack of cards as everyone else.
So how do you write something that’s your own? How do you
bring something new to the genre?
Firstly, I think it’s important to avoid obvious pop-culture
references as much as possible when dealing with well-known concepts. If all you know about vampires is taken from
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it’s pretty likely that you are going to create
something that feels excessively derivative. But if you go back into the myths
themselves or the history behind the stereotype, you might well find something that you can develop in a new and
interesting way.
In End of Empires, the tomb of an alien warrior is guarded
by a robot beast called the Mechanical Maneater. This was inspired by Tippoo’s
Tiger, an automaton commissioned by a sultan called Tipu to celebrate his
victory over the British Empire. The fully functional and rather suave version
in End of Empires is a ludicrous exaggeration of the original, but the real-world device served as a sort of springboard from which my imagination could go in
an interesting direction – and one that I’ve not seen before in the steampunk
‘canon’. It still is steampunk, I suppose, but it's a new angle.
Similarly, while researching alchemy for the fantasy novel that I'm currently writing,
I stumbled upon a fascinating detail: several ancient scholars were
said to own brass heads, which would answer questions put to them. Roger Bacon was said to have possessed such a device. This is innately creepy (and
reminiscent of the interrogation of the severed head in Alien). The brass head
found its way into the fantasy novel, in an more disturbing form, as a sort of
arcane radio to relay information. But information from whom?
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| Am I the only person who finds these kinds of picture really sinister? |
Secondly, it’s good to look at other genres than your own to
see how things are done. If you want to write a fantasy story about a group of
adventurers crossing the wilderness, then The Fellowship of the Ring is a good
place to look. But if your story is about betrayal and conspiracy and just
happens to be set in a fantasy kingdom, it might be just as helpful to read
some John le Carre, or watch The Bourne Identity. To me, Neuromancer has quite
a similar feeling to noir stories like those of James M Cain or Raymond
Chandler, or even to the heist movies of the 1970s, even though it is set in
2075 or so.
And thirdly, I think it’s important to write about what you
want to write about. This is easier said than done. It means setting aside
writing as a form of admiration for or tribute to something else. It’s about
working out what things really grip you. Maybe the elements seem like an
unconnected mess: stock car racing; dragons; a kid whose dad has recently died. But
fused together, those elements could be something really unusual.
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