Musing on a challenge

I have completed yet another short story: Shouting Fire. This was another random word challenge. Like all the others, it made me think. But today, it made me really pay attention to the creative process for some reason.

The word was theatre. Nothing special. But it struck as I write just how important the first impression is to the creative flow. For example, my first though with theatre was the phrase 'never shout fire in a crowded theatre' to which my brain automatically responded 'oh I so want to do that now.' As can been seen from Shouting Fire, this had a direct impact on the plot itself. Similiarly, when I wrote Pepper last week my first thought was on the burning aspect rather then the versatility in food and this again carried through to the plot.

It is because of this that we actually need to be careful to be aware of these impressions because other wise it is easy to plagiarise without the intention. A good example of this is the fragments of 'The man from Ironbark' which I have included into the plot. I made a deliberate choice to work more of these in on the basis of a second impression I had from 'theatre'. It brought to mind my yr6 play in school – which is a similar production to what the character John is watching. I could have easily let this influence in without acknowledging it (although with what little I deliberately added it would be hard to accuse me of plagiarism).

This said, in such a short piece would the similarity to 'The man from Ironbark' have even been noticed if I had not gone out of my way to be obvious? This is a very good question.