 Welcome to the last unit of this chapter. If you made it up to here, chances are very good, you are really interested in the topic. Therefore here's a little treat for you concerning the question, how to get started. How do you begin to write a story? We asked Cornelia Funke about her approach to starting and creating a story, especially as the national novel writing month, Nano Rimo, is near, starting on the 1st of November. You hopefully benefit from Cornelia's insights. When I start design story, it starts with very different kinds of ideas, sometimes it's just an image or a scene I see in my head, sometimes it is a certain character who suddenly steps into my writing house and wants me to tell his story, sometimes it can really feel like that. You almost feel you can touch them. Sometimes it's a photo that triggers something, an event that happens to me in episode. So that once again is no rule in my opinion. What I do is once I have that moment, is that a test, that moment, image or whatever it is that triggered a story, could this really keep my attention for one or two years, which I take for a novel. If the answer is, well, maybe it's just a short story or maybe something you play with by the side, that can happen easily too. And then sometimes that story may turn out to be much more powerful than you thought it to be. I think to lose that playfulness at the beginning is a very dangerous thing to do. So if you have the time and the freedom to play with several ideas for story with several forms of medium, give yourself the freedom to say maybe this is my most important project, maybe it's a side project, but let me not decide that now. That's of course a wonderful thing. Sometimes we don't have that freedom. So I sometimes like to be given a task. I don't mind a publisher or a TV producer to say to me, Koneja, will you write us a ghost story? If that's for a limited amount of time, that can be a wonderful challenge and it can be a wonderful inspiration. I've written several of my shorter novels like that and TV episodes. In general, for me, very, very important is the location. In my work, mostly location is a major character. It's one of the heroes of the story, one could say. It adds, it gives me the canvas to paint on. And that canvas can change. It can, my heroes may be traveling, so I have to explore many locations. But the longer I work as a writer, the more important research becomes. For a novel, I usually read about 50 books, at least. Not all of them from page one to the last page, but I use them as research material, both for visual material and for the written word. I love to fill in a way a chest with information and with images when I start to work. For ink world, for example, I researched on bookbinders, on martins, on fire eaters. On bookmaniacs, I researched on the Middle Ages to give it a historical taste. And on Liguria, because I wanted to settle it in northern Italy. So that shows already the range of research that's possible. For mirror world, it is even more extravagant by now. It is the 19th century in all of its inventions, historical background, historical events and characters. It is certain countries. It is fairy tales from those countries. So the research by now becomes very intense. I look at characters by looking at old photo albums and stealing faces from the dead, very useful. I have big notebooks in which I gather on certain themes like location, treasures, characters, plants, and inspiration from real characters. All that as much as you can do as a writer to inspire your own creativity and break its limits, because we all have a very limited approach to the world. By having other imaginations, events, locations, etc. Inspire you, the richer your story's telling becomes. Of course, every writer has her or his own different approach to writing and getting started. That can work equally well. I find it very helpful and inspiring, so to see how other writers, and possibly very successful storytellers, work. Conia Funker talked about the importance of other stories, pictures, and overall inspirations to her work. This first chapter, like all following chapters, ends with a creative task that you are not obliged but very much invited to do, and very welcome to share with other participants, if you like. Your creative task for this first week is, please think about what story you have read, seen, played, or experienced in your whole life that has impressed you most. Retell this story by giving a short summary of what you can remember of it. What was it that fascinated you most? Its characters, the locations, the plot? Or maybe even the circumstances of how this story was told to you? Maybe by your parents, grandparents? Maybe it was your first ever self-read book? Write down both, write down the summary of the story, and also what it was about. And then on the other hand, what made this story so special to you that you can still remember it? And by the way, concerning the Nanoraymo, the National Novel Writing Month, in case you always wanted to write or finish a novel, this might be your chance to do it in a great community. I can only really invite you to join, although I have to say, we are not affiliated to the program in any way, I just really like it. So maybe you want to join and accompany your program with our course. You can find information to the annual novel writing project in our links. For now, however, have fun with our first creative task and see you soon. Bis bald und viel Spaß!