Inspiration + Imagination = Fiction
Writer: Marjorie Klein
How do you explain inspiration? Maybe it arises from everyday observation and experience that may lie dormant until something triggers it, like biting into a honey-drenched biscuit and being flooded with memories of a grandparent (shades of Proust). Or catching a whiff of springtime in the air that reminds you of a long-ago love. Then you take those fleeting memories, infuse them with your (probably overactive) imagination, let them steep in your unconscious, and voila! An idea for a book. Or a character. Or a setting where something (you may have no idea yet) happens. Or a scene that belongs somewhere, but you don’t have a clue where that might be.
Some of my inspiration comes from years of writing non-fiction for publications, often covering amazing real stories that embedded themselves into my subconscious and later emerged as armature for my fiction. Entire scenes in my books can be traced to their origins in articles that I wrote years earlier for the Miami Herald‘s Sunday magazine. My last two books are set in Miami, and I can attribute the inspirational spark for both books to my living in and writing about that city and its people. Turning those experiences into fiction gave reality another dimension for me.
Often, in researching something for a novel, I find that research takes me into territory that changes the direction and plot of my story. Researching early Native Americans in Florida for my book, Time in a Bottle, inspired the creation of a major character in the book. Imagination took over, and she evolved from the history I was reading about those tribes into a strong and mysterious character. Where did she come from? How did she spring to life in my imagination? I don’t know. But here she is, as alive, at least in my mind, as anyone I’ve ever encountered in real life.
Research also led to my development of water as a character of sorts, having its own mini-chapters throughout the book, creating a theme that carried throughout—not too surprisingly, since the book is a contemporary Fountain of Youth story. But water? A character? What inspired that?
Sometimes it’s just the alchemy of disparate objects or experiences meeting and inspiring an idea having nothing to do with its original sources. A scene in Boom! originated from my spontaneously deciding to go to the clearance sale of the contents of the Fountainebleau Hotel before it was gutted to be renovated. What was I going to do with that? I had no idea. But something told me to be there because it was just too weird to pass up. I knew I’d use it somewhere. And I did.
I don’t know if I’d call it inspiration, but when I’m on a writing roll in my fiction, I often feel that I’m just transcribing the movie in my head. It’s all there: the characters, the setting, the dialogue. I can see it all happening, hear what they’re saying, watch my characters do what they do. I hesitate to confess this because it seems a little…hallucinatory. But how else to explain it?
Maybe inspiration isn’t definable. Maybe it’s more in the realm of woo-woo. Sometimes, just when I’m on the cusp of falling asleep, images float on the edge of my consciousness: People I’ve never met, places I’ve never been, scenery totally unfamiliar to my waking self. I watch all this with benign interest, as if I’m on a train that’s traveling through foreign but fascinating territory, lulling me to sleep. I never gave this experience much thought until, in my research on LSD for a book on recreational drugs that I co-authored many years ago, I came across a term, eidetic imagery.
Not to be confused with eidetic memory, also known as photographic memory, eidetic imagery—an interior kaleidoscope of colors, patterns, people and scenes—may materialize under the influence of psychedelics, or when daydreaming or falling asleep. Scientific explanations abound, but perhaps this landscape from another world is really my source of inspiration. So, when asked, where do I get my ideas? I can answer: From the place where dreams begin.
About the Writer
Marjorie Klein’s first novel, Test Pattern (Wm. Morrow Publishers) was a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection. Boom! A Miami Beach Story was published in 2021, and Time in a Bottle was published by Black Rose Writing in Feb. 2023. Her nonfiction has appeared in various publications, and she has taught in university writing programs. Recipient of a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship and an MFA from Florida International University, she served as a judge for the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts for 13 years and is a member of the Flatiron Writers group in Asheville.
Website: marjorieklein.com