Who is Balinovsky - just a writer who enjoys writing.
It is said that writing is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, well I am a writer who disagrees. Writing may be just 1% inspiration, but I find that it is 99% pleasure. Inspiration comes and brings with it the characters, and it is the characters who lead the development of a story. No formula, no blueprint, just the delight of the story evolving on the page until that final moment that the story says it is complete.
However, a story can lead you anywhere, from your own back garden to the ends of the earth, and even into outer space. As you check the backgrounds of your characters, delve further into their motivation, you find your mind - and your world - opens up and leads you to information and places you have never been before.
They say you should write what you know, but is that necessarily true? Did HG Wells know about time travel, or Jules Verne about journeying to the centre of the earth; had George Lucas ever visited Tatooine? From the time of Homer, writers have been writing about things that exist only in their imaginations - could the Cyclops really exist? Well, I read somewhere, some time ago, that the ability to work metal was considered magical and the very earliest blacksmiths placed some kind of mark on their forehead, and it is possible that, as tales were told rather than written, this mark turned into an eye. Time and time again, one reads that a few words, or a chance remark, were the idea behind a great work of literature, for it is not where an author starts that is important, but where they finish.
When we read fiction, watch a play or a film, we willingly suspend our disbelief. It is not true, but it must seem true. Characters appear from out of the blue and each character is worthy of their past, their motivation and their place in the story. And sometimes when you visit somewhere that is truly important to one of those characters, you can find something that really takes that character, and your story, to another level.
