I want to talk about Inspiration.
Some people use Inspiration to mean “a message from a muse.” A quick jolt, a bolt from the blue, the perfect idea that sprouts fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus.
That happens! Of course it happens. It’s one reason I keep waterproof notebooks and a space pen (affiliate links) in my shower. I’ve never had to re-write an idea that bolts me awake at 2 AM, and the moment between being asleep and being fully awake is ripe for brilliance. I keep a voice recorder in my car, and a notepad in my pocket! But, most often it’s the shower.
And some people decry this, saying that if you spend your whole life waiting for the muse, you’ll never write anything. That it’s about perspiration, not inspiration.
Both are true!
But I want to talk about the other kind of inspiration, the little picture kind. The direct kind. Cyberrats was inspired by XCOM and Shadowrun. It started as a Shadowrun hack until I learned about LUMEN. I wrote down the things I liked about Shadowrun (the dice pool! The initiative! The mix of magic and guns!) and I saw how much I could keep while converting to LUMEN. Sadly, initiative didn’t make the cut. I adore Shadowrun’s initiative system (get a big number, every time you act, subtract 10. Go until you drop below 1). But we’re talking about inpiration.
Genre
Little-I Inspiration can come from anywhere. If you’re working within a genre, you should be at least broadly familiar with its tropes so you aren’t presenting well-trodden ideas as shiny and new. I wrote about this idea in my “I am a stranger in these mecha lands” article. But, when looking for inspiration, for things that spark the brain and send the mind a-whir? The genre is the last place you should look. Making a horror game? Steer away from the greats! You are but a pale shadow of what they can do.
(two caveats: one, again, be familiar with them. Study them, learn what they do and why they succeed. But when it’s time to execute? Don’t ape them. Fans can tell.
Two: If you loathe a great, if you think a classic piece of horror is overwrought and undercooked, if you think you can do better, then BY ALL MEANS use that as inspiration! Every time they make a mistake, turn it on its head and show them why they’re wrong. But following directly in their shoes? That’s a mistake for sure).
So, genre. Stray from it. As far outside as possible. Recently I found myself once again drawn to the simple and bright iconography of subway lines and metro maps. There’s a game in there! A couple, even!
Follow your passions as varied as they may be, and let your brains stew the connections together. We are really good at pattern recognition, and what you learn from studying loom-making or the intricacies of shoe construction will color your work in a way entirely unique. What do these things have in common? I don’t know! Not yet! But if you study them, you’ll see bridges between them, like your own personal conspiracy board.
Can I offer you some jam?
Look at game jams. Enter one you aren’t qualified for. Try your best. Fail and get a little better. Find a compelling theme, even if you don’t execute on it. Here’s a podcast where the hosts talk about unique game mechanics, like tearing up cards. Tearing up cards? There’s an entire game (big-I Inspired by the marvelous Balatro) about ruining a deck of cards.
Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can tell your story the way you tell it. No one else has your unique mix of experiences and voice. But — as I’m always saying — the worst idea you get on paper is better than the best idea that lives in your head. The important thing is just to act.
Even this article had been stewing on my to-write pile for ages, spurred into basic notes by Clayton Notestine writing something similar (from the dates, possibly this?). But that blog was months ago, and these notes have been crammed in my maw like a sharpened stick e’er since. Only now am I dislodging them with thick, virulent, coughs. The kind that make my whole body lean and quake like a trailer home in a hurricane. Sometimes, you gotta put pen to paper and just get the idea out there.
Postscript
A call to action
Boy, that would have been a good ending, huh? Too bad I can’t leave well enough alone.
I’ve got a lot more to say about Inspiration, of both kinds. Soon, I’ll be sharing some of my inspiration lists, for Cyberrats: Rise of the Briny Bastards, for Home X Dark (my recently announced game of shapeshifting aliens in 2003. But sike! It’s actually a CW-style teenage soap opera, and we’re all actors), and about my unannounced mecha game (announcement coming late May).
But, first, a request. Listen to your shoes. Just do it.
Take whatever ideas and experiences you’ve got spinning around in that beautiful head of yours and mix them all together. Take what’s been done and remix it. Give it a new paint of coat. Shake it up, and get it out there.
Or toss it in the trash.
The doing is the thing.
Sharing? That’s optional.