Getting Story Ideas From Real Life

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Getting Story Ideas From Real Life

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Today [2004 March 04], when I woke up, it was really cold, so when I slid back the metal shutters (a standard feature of the architecture of modern Japanese houses) I was really expecting the snow that we had been promised by the weather forecast.

But there was no snow.

Instead, gray skies, a narrow strip of dry grass (my "lawn") and the world of concrete. And from that occurrence, plus a key word on the news, I got a story idea.

The key word on the news (on CNN-J, the "tweaked for Japan" version of CNN which I get by cable TV) was "snow." And the snow in question was in the troubled region of Kashmir, where they have skifields.

So at this point the story ideas should be pretty obvious. Character X gets disappointed by lack of snow, decides to go to Kashmir. Partner Y opposes this. X, then, has a desire which is in conflict with the opposing desire of Y, and what he does about it is the story arc.

A disappointment (any kind of disappointment) is a perversion of expectations, and any perversion of expectations is a powerful fictional generator.

In my case, obviously, real life accidentally served me up the novel combination that I needed to get an idea. First I got disappointed by the lack of snow and then CNN suddenly delivered a story about snowfields in Kashmir.

(Actually, that's not quite accurate - reality has been distorted to make a better story. In fact, I was lying in bed early this morning, half-asleep, when I half-heard CNN talking about snowfields in Kashmir, and it was only later that I opened the shutters and was disappointed to discover the lawn lying there, snowless, with no weapons of mass destruction anywhere in sight.

(By that time I couldn't for the life of me remember exactly what had been said about Kashmir's snowfields. Given the security situation, however, I don't imagine that the ski resorts are doing big business up there in Kashmir.)

The practical technique in a nutshell, then, for practicing writers:-

(i) Make a note of your disappointments.

("I expected chocolate on my chocolate on my cappuccino, but they've gone and put cinnamon on it!")

(ii) Find a point of reference outside your own frame of reference (otherwise, rather than writing fiction, we're into the world of confessional autobiography or, perhaps, malicious libel.)

(Seen in the newspaper recently: fungus threatens the future of chocolate production on planet Earth. Seen on CNN-J in the last ten minutes: a county somewhere in the United States has banned the use of genetically modified crops in animal feed.)

(iii) Place two (entirely fictional) characters in conflict.

(To be totally satisfied with life, X, who wants it all, must have chocolate on his/her cappuccino. X is associated with Y - a business partner, a spouse, a lover, whatever - who also likes chocolate but who is bitterly opposed to genetically modified food. And X and Y know a money source person Z - parent, business associate, whatever - who is willing to grant X and Y seed capital for a new venture.

(Now, in a world without chocolate, X wants to invest in the production of chocolate from genetically modified soybeans. Y is bitterly opposed to this idea, and the money from Z will only be forthcoming if X and Y are in agreement.)

End of today's entry - more story ideas from real life later.

This morning [2004 March 05] I woke up at 0400, rather earlier than usual.

Is there news on NHK at 0400? I didn't know. So I switched on TV and got the answer: there wasn't. Instead, there was (today) a program about animals in the wilderness in Argentina. I went into the kitchen and there I found, on the sinkbench, a light blue plastic carton with three mushrooms inside and a dark blue ceramic bowl containing five strawberries.

And there's a story-generator right there: an individual makes a timetable change and discovers a less familiar world. Or, alternatively, an unknown world.

Of course, I'm not pretending that this is an original idea. Lots of stories start, for example, with a husband returning home earier than usual.

"Guy comes home early one day and finds - "

You've probably heard this kind of story. If you haven't, I'm certainly not going to tell it online.

Today's theme, continuing yesterday's theme, is getting story ideas for real life.

In my case, today I woke up early and found no news on the main TV channel. Instead, a documentary about animal life in a foreign country. Now, one way to kick off a story would be to change this slightly and have someone wake up at the normal time and find that all the TV channels are showing not their customary news but something weird.

Or someone wakes up early and finds a bizarre assortment of foods laid out in the kitchen.

These are just starting points rather than story arcs. But starting points are valuable.

In my case, the strawberries and mushrooms were the remnants of my dinner, which consisted of strawberries, raw mushrooms, a slice of bread and butter and a generous quantity of gyoza (pork dumplings).

And why did I get up early? Well, because I have a busy day ahead, but I want to make some progress on inputting the text of my fantasy novel THE WORDSMITHS AND THE WARGUILD, which I'm planning to upload to the zenvirus.com website in the next couple of months.

Back when I wrote this novel, I was using a typewriter, so I don't have the text of the novel in any electronic format. I don't have a scanner, and so I'm typing the text into my computer, carefully checking for typos and punctuation bloopers as I go along.

This questing hero novel was first published in 1987, and, stocks of both the hardback and the paperback editions having finally sold out, it seems a good time to put the text online. Meantime, Colin Smythe Ltd, in the UK, still (after all these years) has stocks of some of my 1980s novels available.

If you've living in the UK, you may be able to successfully order some of these 1980s books through your local bookseller. Take a look at Colin Smythe's website.