Story Germs
Just like a bacteria, stories grow from little tiny germs.
I was on Twitter a few days ago, and I came upon a tweet from Lilith Saintcrow about angels being divine beings that followed orders and demons being divine beings that exercised free will. That got my brain thinking down a fun path, although the end had a fairly boring end. But it also gave me the idea for this post.
As a writer—and I assume it's similar with other writers—I start with a little germ, from which spring other ideas that are fun to play with. It's like being a little kid and getting a fun toy that makes other fun toys. In essence, I think writers all have a little kid inside with imaginary friends with fully realized stories.
But in a lot of ways, it's more complicated than that. I know that when I was little, my imaginary friends' stories were only semi-solid. The stories changed and morphed according to what I was thinking at the moment, which meant they were often conflicting with what the story was prior to that—sometimes only hours before.
Our job as writers is to nail down the stories of our imaginary friends so they make sense and remain interesting. For me, that means using a futuristic world where my friends can live and have things happen to them. You can also include other people to inflict your friends with, not just events. I have a character in my current work that I absolutely hate. If I get it published (when?), it shouldn't be too hard to see what character that is.
One of the best things I've been able to do is to take two disparate elements and smash them together. In a short story I just started, I'm taking the wild west and putting a Lovecraft-style monster in the middle of it. This gives me the chance to include both events that work against my imaginary friend as well as a antagonistic person that he has to work with. All of this, I think, has the seed of a fairly good story, and one that I will try to sell eventually.
I don't have much more to say. My new baby is keeping me up at night, so I'm really tired, and I'm rushing to get this post written before it's supposed to publish, so I hope you forgive me.
Before I finish up, I guess I just want to challenge you. Take two or three elements from this list (or some you come up with), and make something fun out of them for your characters to deal with.
I was on Twitter a few days ago, and I came upon a tweet from Lilith Saintcrow about angels being divine beings that followed orders and demons being divine beings that exercised free will. That got my brain thinking down a fun path, although the end had a fairly boring end. But it also gave me the idea for this post.
As a writer—and I assume it's similar with other writers—I start with a little germ, from which spring other ideas that are fun to play with. It's like being a little kid and getting a fun toy that makes other fun toys. In essence, I think writers all have a little kid inside with imaginary friends with fully realized stories.
But in a lot of ways, it's more complicated than that. I know that when I was little, my imaginary friends' stories were only semi-solid. The stories changed and morphed according to what I was thinking at the moment, which meant they were often conflicting with what the story was prior to that—sometimes only hours before.
Our job as writers is to nail down the stories of our imaginary friends so they make sense and remain interesting. For me, that means using a futuristic world where my friends can live and have things happen to them. You can also include other people to inflict your friends with, not just events. I have a character in my current work that I absolutely hate. If I get it published (when?), it shouldn't be too hard to see what character that is.
One of the best things I've been able to do is to take two disparate elements and smash them together. In a short story I just started, I'm taking the wild west and putting a Lovecraft-style monster in the middle of it. This gives me the chance to include both events that work against my imaginary friend as well as a antagonistic person that he has to work with. All of this, I think, has the seed of a fairly good story, and one that I will try to sell eventually.
I don't have much more to say. My new baby is keeping me up at night, so I'm really tired, and I'm rushing to get this post written before it's supposed to publish, so I hope you forgive me.
Before I finish up, I guess I just want to challenge you. Take two or three elements from this list (or some you come up with), and make something fun out of them for your characters to deal with.
- Dragons
- Technology
- Fire
- Fire demons
- Potty training
- A crazy writer
- Monsters
- Floral wallpaper
- A dishwasher
- Underwear
- A desk
- Soda pop
- A clown
- The corner of a room
- A book
- A woman's hat
- A video camera
- Asia
- An octopus
- The Beatles
- The future
- Napoleon
- Monty Python
- Star Wars
- Baseball
This should give you some material for an interesting (and bizarre) story.
Thanks for wreading!
Jeff
P.S. Happy Pi Day!
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