THE WRITERS' THINK TANK 
The Writers’ Think Tank is where our authors mull over the challenges of creating their works, in the hope of illuminating readers and maybe helping other writers. 

Where does inspiration come from?
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Welcome to this first session of the Writers’ Think Tank. The topic for this month is inspiration. How do you overcome the dreaded writers’ block?

​But before we begin, let me introduced our experts.
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Kyrian Lyndon is a poet and novelist from New York and is the author of two poetry books and the novel Deadly Veils Book One: Shattering Truths.

Elizabeth M Hurst has always been a voracious reader since her preschool years and has recently left the world of automotive engineering to concentrate full-time on writing romantic and historical novels and on her freelance editing business. She is the author of the ‘Lost Souls’ series.

Sally Dixon is a much-travelled language teacher turned author of two published novels.

Cherise Castle-Blugh writes self-help books for entrepreneurs and is the founder and CEO of The Timely Entrepreneur TM, which offers advice to all independent business people.

Ted Bun describes himself as a retired jack of all trades now living in France, who always has been a story-teller. He is a prolific writer of naturist and other fiction.

Richard Savin is an ex-press agency journalist; throughout the seventies he worked in the Middle East and Asia covering politics, then gave it all up to become a chef restaurateur in London. His first book, non-fiction, was commissioned and published by Canongate. Since then he has written three novels.
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Finally, my name is James Gault and I have written four novels and also some English language textbooks.
 
James: Welcome, panel. The question for today is this: When we are in front of a blank piece of paper, or more likely nowadays an empty computer screen, how do we ever manage to fill it up? In other words, how do we find a plot and how do we fill it with characters? Let’s start with plots. Kyrian, where do your stories come from?
 
Kyrian: There is inspiration everywhere. Whatever I write stems from something I'd witnessed, and my imagination takes over from there. Being inspired, for me, is the easy part. The hard part is putting it all together for maximum effect.
 
Elizabeth: The contemporary timeline for my tales takes place in the fictional English village of Fossbury, which is based on the real-life village of Ettington, outside historic Stratford-upon-Avon. It is an area steeped in history, especially all the Shakespearean associations, so it becomes very difficult, therefore, to choose an appropriate historical narrative to match with the modern romantic plot, purely because there are so many. However, after reading lots of books on folklore in the library, there is usually one snippet of an idea that stands out and nags away in my head. Then I know that's the one I have to write about.
 
James: I find these two quite different responses interesting. Kyrian seems to have a very wide-ranging approach to finding ideas, while Elizabeth does a lot of research, with a much more focussed approach. What about the others? Are you a brainstormer or a researcher when you’re looking for a plot?
 
Ted: My plots come from snippets of conversation within an existing story of my own: Where did X’s brother go … he got mentioned once, what is his story? I also use snippets from conversation in real life, so I always carry a notebook and pencil. And the really important one ... Never hearing the ends of radio-plays and stories while I worked as a Medical Sales Rep, in and out of the car, so I had to fill them in for myself.
Sally: As I write contemporary fiction, I get a lot of my ideas from news stories, either current or fairly recent events. For instance, three stories from this week's news will be incorporated into my WIP. I also research old news stories [and change the names of those involved of course] and incorporate these where needed in a particular storyline.
Cherise: The ideas for my books come from the issues that entrepreneurs are experiencing as they journey toward their success.
 
Richard: I guess I’ve been carrying around a lot of unwritten stories in my head over the years and I’ve now found the time to get them set down. I tend to write about WW2 because I lived through that war and have strong childhood memories of it. There again my latest novel is a psycho-thriller set in America in 2011 and that was inspired by a spooky photo I came across last year.
 
 
 
James: Richard already seems to have all the plots he could ever use. Lucky man! It seems that like Kyrian, Ted and Sally cast their nets widely in the search for stories, while Cherise and Elizabeth are much more focussed, maybe because they have a very clear idea of the kind of books they want to write. But wherever you find the plots, they all need people to bring them alive, so where do you get your characters from?
 
Ted: I like to think that mine are pure imagination, the female characters must be! The male characters probably have lots of me in them. I try hard not to drop people I know, alone and naked into the middle of my weird world!
 
James: I wonder if all of you are so kind to your friends as Ted. 
 
Richard: My characters are driven by the story and its needs. I only start out with one or two; the rest just come along and barge in, shouting and demanding to be heard. Inevitably there are shades of those I know or have known in some of the characters but I try to keep them veiled.
 
James: I suppose in a sense all characters are there to serve the plot, unless it’s the other way round. 
 
Sally: Sometimes my characters are taken from real life, sometimes based on family members or friends. But some are from pure imagination.
 
James: Here’s something that has always intrigued me; if you base a character on people you know, do they ever recognise themselves? Elizabeth, do you put people you know in your books?
 
Elizabeth: No. Each of my strong female characters have become people in their own right, really, although I think it's fair to say that they started life as an extension of different aspects of my own personality. I believe it's rather common, for writers of a series especially, that their characters blossom into much more than they perceived possible at the start of the exercise. I also spend a lot of time watching other people - sometimes it can be something as innocent as the way they flick their hair that will find its way into the story somehow. You just never know how the process is going to develop, sometimes...
 
Kyrian: Each of my characters can be based on one person or more than one person. I've known these people at some point in time. But, again, they provide a foundation, and my imagination will take over over, possibly embellishing to varying degrees. There are a few that were perfect to write about without changing them a bit. I'm at a point now where I also create characters from scratch, inventing their back-stories and everything else. Such fun stuff!
 
James: So there we are, everyone has their own way of ‘getting’ their characters. They can be based on one real person, who might well be the author. They can be an amalgamation of several people, or even entirely a work of imagination. But, as Kyrian and Elizabeth pointed out, inspiration is only the spark that’s sets the writer off. It has to be followed by a lot of work to turn the skeleton of a plot and the outline of its characters into a novel, or even a short story or a novella.
 
A big thanks to all our contributors for their ideas. If you want to know more about the authors who took part, see their books opposite and below, and click on their book covers to find out more. Until next time! 

​When disillusioned detective Charlie Best finds himself the beneficiary of a substantial and unexpected inheritance, it’s his chance to escape from the thankless task of policing the violence and misery of Glasgow’s drug barons. He moves to a sunnier country and a brighter future. But a chance encounter in a Spanish bar and a pretty hitchhiker combine to draw him back into the murky world he had been trying to leave behind.

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​Don Loreto is convinced he is being haunted; bizarre phantoms are reaching out from the depths of his past and Don Loreto is scared. In the office of psychiatrist Lydia Kroll he tells of visitations by an old time carnival act: a small girl, a scarecrow and a harlequin goat. Lydia does not sign up to ghosts. As she digs into Loreto’s dark past it seems to confirm her theory of post traumatic stress disorder; but then strange and unsettling things begin to happen and Lydia is forced to rethink.

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For sixteen-year-old Danielle DeCorso, the old house in Glastonbury was an eerie place to grow up. Coping with mental health challenges exacerbated by a traumatic family dynamic, Danielle watches from the window for two men in a dusty black sedan who keep circling the house and harassing her with phone calls... 

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Three young women, three loves and three lives that are about to be changed forever. Caught up in a dangerous tide of extremism and racial tension, will Marianne, Sadime and Bea find what each of them craves?

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Ever been seduced by a ghost? Emma McVeigh is emotionally adrift. Broken-hearted after her marriage breakup, she has escaped city life and sought solace in a quintessential English village. 
Allowing herself time to regroup seems like the best course of action in her life right now. However, the picture-perfect thatched cottage she moves into hides a secret and is not the sanctuary she was hoping for. Enter her dashing next-door neighbour, Lewis...

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There are ten full-length stories about the Uncovered Policeman, gentle romantic comedies, in which nobody gets killed, maimed or even suffers a splinter.Two other, slightly wry and offbeat, novels about a couple buy a ‘New House’ in France and retire from work.

​A Guide To Intellectual Property will be the only text you need as you seek to understand Intellectual Property as it relates to your business. 
Get answers to your questions about using General Copyright Method, copyright as it pertains to using recipes, quotes from celebrities, Bible quotes and scriptures and much more. 

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