One of the most common questions I get asked as a writer is where I get my inspiration from. The answer to this isn’t a simple one, and the inspiration behind each of my stories to date has come from different places. This subject ties in with another one I want to cover, namely that of dealing with writer’s block. But I also thought it might be of interest to some fans to read what sparked the idea for each of my short stories, so today I want to talk about how I came to write Invoking Hell. I thought I’d start with this piece as it was the first one I chose for my YouTube channel, but I will do a post on each eventually.

‘Invoking Hell’ was my first attempt at flash fiction, so I was quite happy it won first place in Huddersfield Author’s Circle (HAC) annual President’s Competition in 2013. The competition usually runs amidst the chaos of the proofreading work I do for the school which I’ve mentioned previously, so my entries tend to be done last minute. And as flash fiction is by its very nature so short, I was quite daunted by such a tight word count (250 words max, +10%). I had no idea how I was going to get a story in so few words as most of my pieces tend to be very plot driven, and how much plot can you fit into less than 300 words?! Yet I wanted to challenge myself, so I was determined to have a go.

The theme of the competition was letters, notes and lists, but beyond that we were free to write what we wanted. However, I think ‘Invoking Hell’ really came about as a result of a workshop we’d had a few weeks previously at HAC. The theme being our ideas of Heaven or Hell, either in the biblical sense or in the sense of a character’s personal Heaven or Hell. During the workshop I tried to write something a bit different as Hell tends to be a recurrent theme in so much of my work, and that would actually become The Restless months later when I went back to it. But there was much I could have done with that workshop, and it was a couple of weeks afterwards when ‘Invoking Hell’ came to me, late one night.

As I was laid in bed my mind wandered back to the meeting and the various themes I could have explored, such as the personal Hell the victim of a nasty accident might go through, and it was then that the first line came to me. The ‘I’ sounded in my head so strongly that I just knew this would be a piece of raw power and shock value, rather than particularly plot driven, and knew then that it would be my flash fiction piece. Usually when a story idea comes to me I have a sense of how long it needs to be, and I knew this piece would be roughly the right length to fit the word count, and perfectly suited for the flash fiction category.

I feel the fact that it started writing itself in first person and present tense added to the power, so I began scribbling it down on a piece of paper. I let the words continue to flow till it was done, ready to be typed up in the morning and edited accordingly.

When it came to ‘performing’ it for the YouTube video, I wanted to try and get that raw power into my delivery of the piece. I really wanted to read the opening sentence as it first came to me that night, as if the guy in the story is really proud and egotistical, thinking he can mess with demonic forces, and ultimately it’s that pride that’s his undoing. I’m quite happy with the way the video turned out and I enjoyed making it. Hopefully I can do my other pieces justice as I make more videos!

And that’s pretty much it for the story behind ‘Invoking Hell’. I hope you guys enjoyed it, and I’ll talk about my other pieces in the weeks to come.