Sometimes inspiration comes from the highest and grandest of sources. Sometimes it’s mundane and ordinary. And sometimes, inspiration comes when you’re just playing around.
Recently, Lindsay Schopfer blogged about how a video game initially inspired his Keltin Moore Adventures series. As a gamer/reader/author and fan of the series, I was pretty stoked to read that. Many games are rife with fodder to inspire other artists, and I think they often deserve more credit than they get.
Reading that post reminded me of a story I wrote years ago for an English class in high school. The teacher: Mrs. Jasper. The assignment: Well, I don’t remember specifically, but they were short stories that were spooky in some way. Maybe it was Halloween? Not sure.
Anyway, the short story that I ended up producing for that assignment was similarly inspired by a video game. In this case, “Diablo II.” Specifically, the cut scene where Baal, Lord of Destruction, takes the soul stone from Marius after revealing that it was he disguised at Tyrael the whole time. Specifically, the line “Now, it is time for your reward,” really set off a creative spark.
In the story, a man haplessly leads another up to the location of a lost mass grave, and the man he’s led then draws power from the murdered spirits there and begins summoning an undead army. The guide is then similarly told that the time has come for his reward.
This short piece would ultimately inspire a portion of Rising Storm, and SPOILER ALERT the idea of the guardian being trapped by a spell involving a mass grave and the power of the spirits within it.
I’ve always loved the way that one piece of art inspires another, which then inspires another. There’s probably some theory out there about the “circle of inspiration” or something that goes into depth on this, but it’s just a cool concept for me. Creation begets creation; art begets art—what a wondrous thing.
