So you want to play God?

Welcome to creative writing.

That's what they call it anyway. Fiction, stuff you make up, stuff you create.

But do you really, genuinely create when you sit down to write a story? Are you bringing something new into the world, something that has never been seen before?

Well, yes. On one level you are. Your story is unique. Those words, that plot, those characters. They've never appeared together in quite the same way before.

You remembered stories (or true events) you heard about, read about, saw on TV or in movies. And you wrote something similar. Not the same, but similar.

Your characters? Where did they come from? Not out of thin air. Very likely they resemble people you know. Or people you came across in other fiction.

And yet... all you've done is taken words invented by other people and rearranged them.

The building blocks of creation

There are only 26 letters in the English alphabet. Yet everybody from Shakespeare to JK Rowling wrote very different works using only those 26 letters.

There are at least a quarter of a million words in the English language. And new words are being added all the time.

It's an even stranger situation with music. There are only 7 notes in the musical scale. Do re mi fa so la te ... and back to do. Yet with those seven notes, composers have written millions of songs – all different. No two songs are identical.

Gracenote's media database contains over 100 million songs. And that's only those that have been recorded. Even as you read this, there are people all over the world sitting strumming guitars and tinkling pianos, composing songs that may never be heard.

And they're all using those same SEVEN NOTES.

Creating something new

A wise old saying goes: "There's nothing new under the sun."

True or false? Well, it depends.

Is it possible to create something new under the sun? Can you create a piece of writing that's different from anything else that has been written?

Of course you can. Today you probably spoke a sentence that was unique. You used a combination of words that appeared in human speech for the very first time.

You saw today how you can make an image work for your writing. You know what they say: "A picture is worth a thousand words."

Rubbish! A picture can inspire you to create ten times that number. Maybe even a complete novel.

Never, ever sit down to write facing a blank wall. Look at images, look at people.

Change your images regularly. Hang up maps. Let them inspire you into dreaming about foreign places. Or stills from movies: Robin Hood, Pirates of the Caribbean, Prince of Persia. They'll transport you to historical times.

When you have images to inspire you, there'll always be something to write about.