Inspired to Write: Getting inspiration from roleplay games

Hi, everybody! Welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! Can you believe we’re already this close to the end of the month? This means my birthday is right around the corner… and I haven’t even decided what I’ll be doing to celebrate. Yeesh!

Anyway… all month long, we’ve been talking about inspiration. We’ve talked about finding inspiration in our everyday lives, in ways we probably wouldn’t expect. We looked at the inspiration we find from our travels, from television and movies, and even from the music we hear in the background at the store. Our journey took us through books both fiction and nonfiction, and on Tuesday we even discussed getting inspiration from those time-consuming video games, and getting a good use out of that consumed time. ;-) Today, as the finale of our series, I’m going to talk about something I have very little experience with, but something I’m delving into.

Inspired to Write: Getting inspiration from roleplay games

Specifically, I’m thinking of games like Dungeons and Dragons.

Now, like I said, I haven’t actually played DnD yet. I haven’t. So I don’t know precisely what I’m talking about. But I have started watching other people play. I watched through Relics and Rarities on Geek and Sundry’s YouTube page, and I’ve recently started watching Heroes of the Vale—so I at least know how it works, and I’ve seen enough to have actually gotten some inspiration out of that.

Thing is, there’s something really cool in roleplay games, that I don’t think enough authors are utilizing: in roleplay, you, the player, have to take on the role of the character you’re playing. You live as them, for the duration of the game. You have to think like them, behave like them, sometimes even talk and act like them, if your group is fairly hardcore. And that’s something a lot of writers tend to have difficulty doing, especially when they’ve just started out—which is why I really wanted to bring this one up.

For one thing, there’s a whole heaping ton of inspiration to be found just from watching DnD games like the ones I mentioned above (I’ve also heard Critical Role is good, but one of the players annoys me, unfortunately). There’s a lot to be gleaned about thinking through the mind of your character, and being who they are throughout the duration of the story—which, like I said, is something we writers could stand to learn, or, to be inspired from.

So today I give you two options. Either you should try playing roleplay games, and learning what it’s like to delve into a world like this, discover what it’s like to really think through the mind of your character, or start watching videos of roleplay games, so you can see what it’s like for other people to do so, and maybe even get some inspiration from the stories they’re living.

Yes, this one makes more sense if you’re a sci-fi or fantasy writer—but like we’ve been saying this whole time, there’s nothing that says we can’t learn from genres outside our own.

Give it a try! I dare you. I’ll be starting in my own DnD campaign, as soon as I can. When will that be? No idea—but I’ll let you know, when I do.

Again, thank you all so much for reading Too Many Books to Count this month! I’m not sure what we’ll be talking about in July, but I promise it’ll be something really fun. It’s my birthday month, and I’m determined to have as much fun as possible. ;-)

[love]

{Rani Divine}

Inspired to Write: Getting inspiration from video games?!

Hi guys! Welcome back to Too Many Books to Count—I’m so glad you stopped by. I can hardly believe that it’s the last week of June, but that means it’s also the last week in our series! I feel like we only just started… but I really have gotten a lot out of this series, and I’ve been a lot better about remembering to look for inspiration in places where I wouldn’t normally think to look. I hope it’s been a help to you, too.

This month, as you know, we’ve been talking about inspiration. We’ve been discussing the various ways we writers find inspiration, from the books we read to the places we travel in our everyday lives, and this week, we're taking a really fun look at the final two ways I've personally been finding inspiration for my writing.

Inspired to Write: Getting inspiration from video games?!

I know what you’re thinking. Video games tend to be the bane of a writer’s existence, because they take time away from writing. But I’m not saying that you should be gaming instead of writing. No, I’m saying that you’re probably already gaming, so why not use those games as inspiration for the things you’re going to write while you’re not gaming?

See, there are lots of things in video games that can inspire us. Whether it’s inspiration for the choreography of a battle scene, or an idea behind a character you hadn’t quite nailed down yet, video games are a virtual treasure trove of ideas—and, just like with movies and television, it’s not stealing if all you’re getting out of it is inspiration and ideas. After all, like we’ve talked about before, you can’t copyright an idea.

Personally, I have a certain fondness for watching people play video games. Sure, I like playing them, too, but I really love watching other people play. There’s just something extra nostalgic in it for me, in the memory of watching my older brother play video games when we were growing up (don’t worry, he let me play too when I was old enough to know what I was doing). So, for me, it’s more about watching the game than about playing it. And, fortunately, that means I can use things like Twitch and YouTube to get a good video game fix and a hefty dose of inspiration along the way.

I’m sure, however, that a lot of you aren’t like me. In fact, I know it. I know you like to game. How do I know it? Because it’s the thing to do, and it has been since I was a kiddo. Gaming is fun, it’s a great pastime, and it’s honestly a great way to connect with younger generations, which is something we writers really do need to do. But that’s beside the point.

You’re going to be gaming anyway. We all know you are. So why not use that time as an extra time to find some writing inspiration?

I know, a lot of you don’t game in the same genre in which you write, but so what? Who says you can’t get inspiration for a romantic comedy from a horrifying video game? There’s always something to be found, as long as you keep your eyes open to find it.

And trust me, you’ll be glad you opened your eyes to see it.

Be sure to check back in on Thursday, for the finale in our inspirational series!

[love]

{Rani Divine}

Inspired to Write: Getting inspiration from reading nonfiction

Hi everyone! Welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you stopped by. This month, we’ve been talking about inspiration. We’ve been looking at all the inspiration we writers get from the world around us, from popular culture and weird music, from nature and from architecture, from our friends and from our enemies—and this week, we’re discussing one of the simplest of ways for a writer to find inspiration. From reading.

Tuesday, if you’ll recall, we talked fiction. We discussed writers reading fiction for the sake of finding ideas, and why it’s important for us to never stop doing that. Today, let’s look at things from the other side.

Inspired to Write: Getting inspiration from reading nonfiction

If you know me at all, then you know I’m not a nonfiction writer (unless you count the blog). I’m not much of a nonfiction reader either, if I’m being honest, but I’ll be the first to tell you that it plays an incredibly important role in the lives of us fiction writers. I’ll even be the first to tell you that I have a giant stack of nonfiction books exactly for this purpose.

Why? Because, just like fiction books are read for the sake of finding ideas, nonfiction books are read in order to find an answer. And those answers are some of the most important things for us to know, as we delve deep into our writing careers.

See, information is partly the basis behind writing. It’s all information, really. We’re telling a story, we’re making a world, and we’re relaying the story through information about it. We’re showing it through the actions of the characters and the appearance of the world in which they exist—but it’s so much harder to do any of that if we don’t have a basis of nonfiction reading to back us up along the way.

How so?

I’ll use my Earth-Space series as an example. It’s a series of four books (so far), set primarily in space. It partially takes place in our solar system, yes, but it also takes part in one of the Gliese systems, around a planet you’ll just have to wait to find out the name of. What all this meant is that I needed to find out as much as I could about outer space, and the properties of the void. I needed to know how to write about a place like that, because it’s obviously not a place I’ve ever traveled, myself. It’s not really a place where I want to go, personally. It’s beautiful, sure, but there’s enough for me to see down here.

In any case, it meant that I bought all the space books off the bargain book shelves at Barnes & Noble, and I spent hour after hour reading through those books, taking note of the things that might come into play in my story, of the things I might need to know along the way.

And sure, you can use the internet for al lot of this stuff anymore, but there’s really nothing like having a book in your hands, in which you can find the information. Besides, I find it’s best to do some work that’s not on a screen, if for the sake of my eyes alone. Better for the ol’ noggin, you know.

Nonfiction, just like fiction, will always be something we writers need to have a trove of as well. We need to know how the world works, so we can make sure our stories exist properly within it. We need to know the things our characters know, if only so we don’t make our characters look like idiots, accidentally. And the only way to do these things is if we learn, through the power of the one and only nonfiction.

Honestly though, I highly recommend checking out that bargain books section, if you’re looking for some good reference books. I almost always walk away with at least one nonfiction book I’ll need for the road ahead.

Next week, our series finale! And, potentially, my favorite two topics of the week. You’ll just have to wait and see what they are :)

[love]

{Rani Divine}