Get Inspired With Me
- Malana Lane-Topham
- Mar 20, 2023
- 3 min read
Since a very young age, I have wanted to become a writer. At first it was a novelist; then I wanted to become a poet; then a playwright, and finally a screenwriter. The more I have written over the years, the more it has become obvious what inspires me. The reason it becomes obvious is because I used to end up copying it.

I was always very picky with what I read and watched - as a child I read all of my mother’s Enid Blyton, and so naturally my first ideas for a novel were always something about being in boarding school. As a teenager I almost exclusively watched coming of age films, so all of my early film ideas were always frankenstien mix-ups of different John Hughes flicks. While this definitely helped me develop my style of writing and refine things like composure, pacing and dialogue, none of my ideas ever blossomed into something that I finished because they were never my ideas. The media I was choosing to expose myself to was so strictly similar, with very few exceptions, that for such a long time, I had no idea how to really develop and create original, fleshed out ideas.

I began to realise this in college, when I began actually studying film for the first time. I’d wanted to get into filmmaking for a while, but wasn’t sure where to start, and in college, since all our projects had to be solo endeavours, I got to try out everything, but quickly found I liked writing the best. Studying film theory alongside the more practical elements exposed me to so many films I would’ve never picked to watch myself, but that I loved, and find to be a source of inspiration even now.

I’ve found that the best source of consistent inspiration and a great way to keep creativity flowing, even if it's just a small amount, is to constantly watch, read and engage in the widest range of media you possibly can. Different genres, fiction and nonfiction, from non-English speaking countries, from different decades - they all allow insights into such a wide variety of perspectives and ways of experiencing the world, and open up so many possibilities as to how you could show or explore themes through the mixing of different aesthetic aspects of different genres. In the past few years I’ve written screenplays for genres that I would’ve never even thought to watch five years ago, but they’re some of the work’s I’m proudest of, and some that I think would look best actually on screen.

Something else I personally like to engage in to help elevate my writing and creativity are analytical video essays on YouTube. They’re something easy to put on in the background of doing daily tasks, unlike reading or watching a film or TV series - while obviously they are videos, the footage is usually not the essential part, it’s what the essayist is saying. They’re abundant and easy to find, and can delve into a myriad of different facets of film - some explore costuming choices, some include a deep dive into the technical filmmaking, some explore them in line with different sociological theories, or even in how they might explore different philosophies. Personally, I feel that watching more of these, exploring literature as well as film and TV, has helped me think a lot more about what deeper meanings and themes I would want to explore while I’m writing and different ways I can do so without it coming across as too heavy handed or clumsy.
Overall, inspiration is different for everyone of course - that sort of goes without saying, but these are some things that I personally have found have strengthened my writing and helped make my ideas significantly more interesting and original, and are things I would definitely recommend to anybody else who is experiencing or has experienced a creative slump.
Comments