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In the "Putting ideas together" topic, Eric James Stone described how he took two sets of two ideas each (as part of the Writers of the Future Workshop) and put them together to grow two stories.
This topic is for similar descriptions. How did you grow a story (let's only talk about ones you've completed), and what ideas were the seeds?
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I'm going to start, to give you all an example.
Before my mother was born (the youngest childe in her family), her parents took in a hobo who had hurt his arm quite badly. Before his arm healed completely, my grandfather was injured in a work-related accident, and had to go away to the big city for medical care. While he was gone, the hobo took over running my grandparents' farm, and he proved to be a very good worker who would take no pay. When my grandfather came home and was well enough to work again, the man left, followed by my sobbing aunts and uncles who had grown quite fond of him. He was able to distract them by pointing out something amazing in one direction, and when they turned to look, he hid himself, and they never saw him again.
I wanted to tell that story, and I tried to, but it just wasn't coming together for me.
There was also a story in my mother's family about her having a pet coyote pup when she was very young, though she doesn't remember it.
Then I heard about an anthology of stories that had as its theme magic and music, and I put that theme together with the hobo story and the coyote story (turning the hobo into the Native American trickster, Coyote) and wrote a novelette (over 10,000 words) in a day and a half that I titled "A Song for the Coyotes."
I didn't sell it to the anthology, however, and now I'm thinking about lengthening it into a YA novel.
When the right ideas come together, a story can grow very quickly.
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I've written a story about how Rapunzel found her blind prince and how they went back and dealt with the witch who raised her. I added the idea that virgins can do a different kind of magic than other women can do, and the witch was so angry with her because she wanted her to be able to do the virgin magic for the witch. And what she wanted her to do was trade bodies, so the witch could have the virginal one.
Posts: 603 | Registered: Jul 2005
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I have been writing shorts (less than one thousand words) for some time now. There are two predominate themes. The first, in one way or another involves angels and demons interacting on Earth in the very near future. I am rather fond of wondering what would happen if the Rapture went horribly wrong.
In the second, there are a set of fantastical characters who are obviously not entirely human, yet are comfortable in modern day Amercia.
As can sometimes happen when one mixes volatile materials, they can bleed one into the other with unexpected results.
Under the influence of copious gallons of coffee, very dark chocolate, a sweet old port, and slipstream music I began to expound on one of the shorts. It quickly took on a life of its own, and I began copying entire other shorts into its unfolding plot. After feeding it several of these, I soon had ten thousand words, and spent several months polishing.
The moral of this tale is that not all new stories begin with new ideas; but rather, old ideas and old stories, glued together in new, and perhaps unique voices can take on a power and life of their own.
For example, what would happen if the Archangel Michael met Lillith at a strip club in Manhattan?
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In one of our early flash challenges, the trigger was a photo of a back yard. In it a shaggy dog was chewing at a ratty tetherball.
I immediately had two ideas: firstly, that it was not a tetherball, but a head with long hair, and secondly, that this should be a Western.
Then I had second thoughts. A Western? What kind of Western would have a dog chewing on a head hanging from a pole? Well, the answer was a horror/western, naturally.
Once I accepted this unusual (for me) goal, I had to determine what the conflict was that led to someone's head hanging from a pole. Revenge came to mind, and I just went on from there.
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I had an argument with a friend about whether it's bad to name sports teams after Indians. How would you feel, in the Indians' place? he asked. I said, I'd be a lot more concerned about having 90%+ of my people wiped out by disease and having our land taken away.
...so then I imagined: aliens come and do to us what whites did to the Indians. We're in reservations in the least desirable parts of Earth; how about the North Slope? This gave me Symbiosis, about an alien baby coming to such a human reservation.
C S Lewis said that if Shakespeare is to meet Hamlet, Shakespeare must write himself into the play. This gave me The Glitch (published!), in which the inhabitants of a computer program figure out their world is unreal.
OSC recommends: just go into the world, or read a book, or something, and farm it all for ideas, intentionally.
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I think one of the funniest (and yet worst-written) things I've ever put to paper was inspired by a party.
It was an informal get-together that was going well until A) the hosts ran out of avocado dip, and B) a bunch of fraternity guys crashed it.
They were almost sterotypical: big and bulky and extremely demanding, and as I sat on the couch watching them stumble about, I thought: what if they weren't college students, but aliens in disguise? And stranger still, what if their ships were fueled by avocado dip -- and the party they'd infiltrated had just run out of the stuff?
It was a very silly story, but I enjoyed writing it all the same.
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My favorite combination so far started with a series of conservation of identity paradoxes introduced in my metaphysics class. It basically involved a person going through a teletransporter in circumstance after circumstance, each resulting in the question: "Is this the same person?"
I also was studying American Sign Language, and I got interested in alternative modes of communication, other than verbal. This led me to look at the messages that people in the Victorian era assigned to flowers.
Don't ask me why the two ideas felt right together. But soon I had two planets colonized through teletransportation, two characters that were a lot of fun for me to write, and a story called "A Spray of Cyclamen and Posala". It's got some major problems, still, but I'm going to revisit it soon.
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I was in class taking this boring course on Athens and the death of Pericles, a mistake if I ever made one, because the teacher spent hour after hour recounting what he had told us before for the benefit of those who had skipped the previous lessons. I, being serious, had come to every one of them, and by now I could tell the story by heart. So I started thinking about Athens devastasted by the plague, and Pericles who dies of it, and it got me thinking about what a political upheaval it would be when a plague-ridden city lost its beloved leader. A couple of classes later, I came up with the idea of a sculptor who could render human souls into stones. I placed him inside the city, with his own beloved daughter dying of the plague, and from there I plotted my entire story "Healing Hands", during classes (it was not easy because the teacher kept talking in the background :-) ). To date, this is the only story I have sold, so I suppose the method works. Alas, all my courses so far have been interesting, so I couldn't repeat the experience...
Posts: 1075 | Registered: Sep 2004
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When I first started writing, I piddled around with only two short stories for almost three years, neither of which would go anywhere.
The first was about an old Nazi hunter, who thinks he's going insane. He's being plagued by an acerbic little cherub, who tries to talk him into giving up his obsessive hold on life.
The second was about a mage--burdened by a lifetime of terrible deeds done in his search for power--waiting on the Outer Banks of North Carolina on the worst storm in recorded history.
As soon as I realized these were both part of the same story, I wrote a 200K word epic fantasy. And realized it was only the first part of a six-book series.
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My sci-fi stories are generally sparked from articles in Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, or Discover magazines. I like to think about new technologies and what effects they'd have on society depending on how they're adopted. They also sometimes come from political situations and discussions. My realistic fiction comes from watching people, wondering who they are, what conflicts are going on in their lives, and also from personal experiences, thinking about what my life could have been like if things had gone differently at certain critical points.
Posts: 26 | Registered: Aug 2005
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For about ten years, I used to toy with the idea off and on of what it would feel like to suddenly wake up and realize you didn't know who you were or where you were at. (Apparently about fifty bajillion other writers wonder this same thing, given the number of story starts with this as a premise.) Anyhow, this idea began to grow into a story. Who would find this character? How would her sudden appearance disrupt their life? How would they go about finding her people and her home?
Then the question began to go into deeper subjects. Is WHAT you are actually more important than WHO you are? Does your past really matter in shaping your future? Is there a certain amount of freedom in starting anew?
Along the way I have picked up additional characters who are exploring different facets of the same question. One character is certain he knows what he wants for his life and his future. He's completely satisfied with his plans; only to have his world disrupted and his plans overturned. He then begins to discover that maybe he wants something completely different, after all.
I love the process of writing. It's such a wonderful avenue of exploration, and the fact that my characters continue to surprise me is my greatest delight. I can't wait to find out what else my book is about!
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It happened to me this morning. One minute I was using my newly awakened third eye to track down illusionist assassins, the next it's dark and I have no idea where I am or how I got there.
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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EricJamesStone: I loved your article about "In Memory". Survivor: Just remember you can astral travel instantaneously to wherever you like. It doesn't have to be dark unless you THINK it's dark.
Posts: 2026 | Registered: Mar 2005
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