Ice

This is honestly amazing, I love it, I've listened to it many times in the past couple of weeks. I've also checked out the other songs you wrote, and I'm stoked for any future ones.

Ideas don't usually come at random to me, and the ones that do will just be a minor detail which doesn't really matter in the final product or too vague and generic and not something that really helps me form the basis of a story. I have to sit down, ask myself questions along the lines of "what is something I've seen recently that I liked" or "what is a topic I'm interested in creating a story about", and think until I hit something. Then I'll jot down the idea, and possibly others that might immediately come as a result. I'll see if I can further breathe nuance or conflict into what I've written by trying to link it with larger general topics (e.g. society, ecology), by aiming to show different shades (e.g. other kinds of poverty or coping, or related diseases), or by combining it with other concepts I've stumbled on recently. On other occasions, I'll hunt for concepts by reading science articles, watching videos on mysticism, or whatever catches my fancy, and when something clicks as interesting to me in some way I'll write it down. And sometimes I'll scan media I like or have consumed lately for anything which I would consider interesting but was only a minor part of that story or I could handle in a different way that is more appealing to me. Then I follow a similar process to Brandon's, where I keep piling these ideas and concepts, some of them together and some of them alone, and keep brainstorming every day until some of the ideas begin to clash together and form a fascinating greater whole that I want to explore. Sidenote, but I actually suffered a lot of anxiety for years trying to get stories to work and immediately losing interest in them because they had always been done, blaming my supposed lack of creativity. It conditioned me to fear writing for a while. It wasn't until I heard Brandon talk about stories being combinations of many ideas and give examples of his own, read about how long some of his simple ideas sat in a document until they combined in his mind, and learned how much his stories changed from their conception to the final draft, that I was able to overcome this anxiety. So lads, feel free to gather ideas for a long time, look them over once in a while to help you make cool connections, and remember that writing can be an enjoyable and fun experience if you use your own process.