Where do our ideas go? Creativity inspired by SF&F writing

by  Juliet E. McKenna

Posted: 21 Mar 2014 03:41 AM PDT

‘Where do your ideas come from?’ One of the most common and most genuine questions authors are asked – and one of the hardest to handle since the answer will be the single word, ‘everywhere’, or a ten-hour trawl through everything that writer’s ever read, watched, heard, glimpsed in passing through the window of a car, a train, a house…

So let’s set that aside and look at some examples of creativity inspired by SF&F writing – my own and a few other authors among the many I know and admire. No, I’m not talking about fanfiction. Yes, that’s certainly an expression of the creative urge and I understand that. I also know it’s a hot button topic on both sides, so let’s set it aside for this particular blog post.

Because what really fascinates me is when writing doesn’t beget more writing but inspires creativity in non-writing fields. Transformative responses to the stories we tell.

Artistic interpretations have fascinated me since Geoff Taylor did the covers for my first series. In particular, his vision of Toremal, as seen on The Warrior’s Bond cover – and here’s a good view of the whole picture without titles etc.

You see, I was working from a whole lot of pictures of central European 16th and 17th Century architecture as I wrote the descriptions of that city. I often work from visual references, for places and people. Geoff took my words and created this vista from them. Then someone who knew nothing of my writing and didn’t read fantasy fiction at all, studied the picture for a while and then said thoughtfully, ‘that reminds me of our holiday in Salzburg’. I love the way that sequence of old pictures inspiring words inspiring a new picture came full circle to convey exactly the desired atmosphere.

It’s not only professional artists with cover art commissions who are inspired. Martha Wells’ Raskura books and novellas are well worth reading, for fantasy adventure with substance as well as style in a world of winged and otherwise distinctly different-to-us humanoids. If you’re used to predicting a story’s outcome on the basis of genre traditions or commonly held notions of human nature, think again…

Is the intense strangeness yet convincing reality of this world what’s inspired some fine fan art? I honestly don’t know, not being in the least visually creative myself, but do check out this selection.
There are links to more fan art on Martha’s website Scroll down to the bottom of this page to find them (Check out a few samples of her writing while you’re there too).
Here’s another visual creation – a fauxto. No, I’d never heard of them either, until this was flagged up to me. As the creator explains –

In the early 1990s, Garth Nix went to a flea market in Sydney, Australia and looked through a box of old, early 1900s photographs that were being sold for a dollar a piece. As he flipped through the photos he came across a photograph of a young woman in a military style coat wearing a belt made out of bells and holding a sword. He studied the photo, wondering who this mysterious woman was. He purchased the photo, took it home and promptly wrote the draft for his young adult high-fantasy novel, Sabriel.

THIS DID NOT ACTUALLY HAPPEN. But what if it did? And that, my beautiful friends, is the idea behind this fauxto.

You’ll find a whole lot more fascinating images at The Real Fauxtographer website.

By the by, if you have a reluctant teen reader on your hands, buy them a copy of Sabriel. I’ve lost count of the kids I know who’ve been kickstarted into the reading habit by that book and series.

Then there’s music! Quite possibly one of the coolest emails I’ve ever got from a reader was when Paul Vandervort let me know he’d completed a suite of five pieces inspired by my Tales of Einarinn series. You can find the first piece here, and links to the rest.

Now, I enjoy music. I sing, or at least I used to, as a proficient chorus soprano and alto, and similarly was a reliable orchestral player on cello and viola, but composition has always been a mystery to me. I’m also not one of those writers who’s directly inspired by music, as quite a few of my colleagues are. So the notion that my words can spark that particular creative impulse absolutely intrigues me.

Anyone seen any other noteworthy transformative fanwork they’d like to flag up?