Probably the most often posed question to any writer is “Where do you get ideas for stories?” I’m guessing the truth for most writers would be that they don’t actually know, at least not in the general sense. If you ask them about specific stories, they can perhaps tell you a little bit. The clues are there, often enough.
Now, I have to admit, I’m not talking about full-blown stories springing forth all at once. I’m talking about nothing more than a thought or the “seed” of an idea. This seed might be nothing more than a line of dialogue, an image, or a title, just a spark to set the flames of creativity burning.
Let me be more specific, and present some examples of how things work, at least as far as my own writing goes.
Two months or so ago I picked up a book of short stories and opened it at random. I generally don’t skip around. I tend to read stories in order. I’ll only skip around if the writer is an established, long-time writer and the collection is bundled stories that have been previously published over the years. This book was the collected stories of Vladimir Nabokov. I have mentioned this book in a previous post.
In any case, the story I chose was called “Recruiting.” In a general sense it is a story of an author wandering around trying to find characters for a book he is writing. I couldn’t help wondering whether the writer on this quest was actually Nabokov, or limited to the fictional narrator/author of the story.
I don’t know whether you are familiar with Nabokov, but reading him (at least in these collected stories) is a lot like reading Kafka. Each story is a strange mix or flow of images that veer in and out of your idea of what the story is about. Reality becomes the surreal and then flows back again to the storyline. Imagine a collage of images framed and hanging on the wall before you. This is the story, within this framework, and as you watch these images they shift and blend together and then separate again. You have conflicting images juxtaposed and then swimming. All the while, as you’re reading, you don’t know whether you are supposed to try and hang onto or make sense of the storyline, or whether you are to just let it all flow over you. It’s like what I would imagine an LSD trip to be like.
This writer/narrator does find a character, a man, and he zeros in on him. The future character of the author’s book is an old man in a suit. This man seems to be struggling all the way through his scenes. He is fat and old and trying to stand, or climb. At one point he is climbing up the steps and onto a bus. Another time you get the impression that he is climbing up out of a manhole. And then you drift into his memories and he seems to be climbing up out of those memories and back to the reality of the story, the simple act of getting on the bus or moving through the crowd. The whole story is bizarre. I’m not even sure now whether I am describing things correctly. These are simply impressions I am left with regarding this story. Reading the story was like experiencing a dream. That is what reading Nabokov is like. His writing is very literary, most of the sentences beautifully constructed with just the perfect words—and English was not his first language, which is even more amazing. Inevitably, you can’t help but have your mind open up to creativity. Your imagination blooms and blossoms, thoughts exploding. For me it was like a breath of fresh air, or a fresh wind whipping through and shifting leaves around. This sparked a hint of an idea, nothing more.
I had been working on a screenplay and was about seventy percent into it. I knew that that was what I should be going back to. That was what I had intended to work on. After all, I was just reading a short story while I had my morning coffee. Well, I thought, perhaps I’ll take a short break from the screenplay and jot down this hint of an idea. Perhaps I’ll just write a few lines.
This hint wasn’t anything major, and really had nothing much to do with the Nabokov story at all. But the hint was there, the itch to write a small scene, a story.
What was this hint, this scene?
Well, nothing more than the image of a well-dressed man moving down a city sidewalk toward a park bench, that was all. The man was old-world, at least in style. He was wearing a suit and perhaps a hat. He had a walking stick or cane. He was going to do as he always did, sit on the park bench and feed the birds. Picture an actor like Christopher Plummer, or perhaps Jeremy Irons (though Jeremy Irons might just be coming to mind due to his having played in the movie version of Nabokov’s Lolita). This man is a widower . . .
And that’s all I had, just that hint of a scene. This man was a gentleman, which prompted the title of the book A Gentleman of Moscow to cross my mind (It’s on my to read list, that’s all.). And so, I started the story. And the park bench had to be a color, green, I thought, and the paint is faded and peeling . . .
The story became “The Green Bench.”
So that’s how the idea for that story started.
And then I jotted down a title for another story. This second story had nothing to do with Nabokov. This story, as is often the case with me, started as just an interesting title. And well, there was the idea of a mysterious mansion on the edge of a small town. The townspeople never see anyone come or go and yet there are groundkeepers who know little more than the others. These caretakers only know what they have been instructed to say when asked who lives there: “Orson Montenegro Resides Here.” And so that is the title of the second story.
The idea of the empty mansion that seems mysteriously absent of the mysterious-millionaire owner, I have to admit, stems in this case from the story of Huegette Clark: The books, The Phantom of Fifth Avenue, and Empty Mansions (both of which are also on my reading list). And I have to admit, as a side note, I would love to write a screenplay of Ms. Clark’s later life, or a similar story, with Angelina Jolie in mind for the role. But alas, my screenwriting capabilities are just beginning to bud, I’m learning as I go.
So, this is the second story. And the title, of course sparks other random thoughts. Orson, of course, brings Orson Wells to mind, which leads to thoughts of the movie Citizen Kane. I even make reference to “Rosebud” in the story. And for me the name Montenegro brings to mind the Rex Stout book Over My Dead Body for the simple reason that Nero Wolfe’s long-lost stepdaughter appears in the story and the name Montenegro springs forth.
I am fascinated by odd or interesting titles, so I often start there. I don’t sit around and work at coming up with odd titles, but if one comes to me, I make no bones about jumping on it. A true master of uniquely odd or notable titles was J.D. Salinger. I mean, who can argue with “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” or “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor.” These two are my absolute favorites. And I don’t even remember what the stories are about.
I’m going to stick with the title as a starting point theme, and jump to the fifth story in what I guess is possibly shaping up to be my next book of short stories. I know exactly where this title came from. It too, is pretty simple. I had just recently read a sort of autobiography of Erskine Caldwell titled Call it Experience. He had written a book called Trouble in July. (Another book on my reading list). For some reason, the title stuck with me. While Caldwell’s book has nothing to do with any idea for my story, I do use the play on words.
My title is “The Trouble with January.” I have yet to write this story. So far, I only have thoughts of a girl of about the age of thirteen to fifteen. She has dirty blonde hair and is wearing a tie-dyed tee shirt and cut-off blue jean shorts. It is perhaps the late 1960s or early 1970s and she is sitting on the hood of an old, pale green Rambler. I’m not quite sure yet what the “trouble” with her is going to turn out to be, but that will come to me once I start the story. For some reason I get the feeling I need to revisit James Michener’s book The Drifters for material for this one.
And now, jumping back to the third story. The title wasn’t the start of this one. The start of this story was just the image of a ten-year-old boy peering through the keyhole of an attic room. What was he expecting to see, ghosts? In any case, he gets a surprise. The story is sort of a humorous fantasy/sci-fi story. The title is simply “Through the Keyhole.”
And the fourth story? Well, this is where there is a very strange coincidence. This is one of those instances similar to when you haven’t thought of someone in months or years and then they are suddenly on your mind and they call, straight out of the blue. Not exactly the same, but—
The story is tentatively titled “Hard-luck Peabody.” To start this story, I had images of a man, perhaps getting close to middle age. He is working as a janitor at the local Junior High. At one time this man was an up-and-coming singer. He had a band, and a style of his own—well, almost—his style did resemble a huge star, a singer. He wasn’t exactly an impersonator (and I imagine you know where I’m going with this) but he found the crowd went wild when he veered away from his own true style and covered the songs of this singer. This was before his downfall, of course. I won’t give away the reasons for his downfall here.
In any case, I was about sixty percent through with this story when a friend texted me that he might go see the new Elvis movie that was opening that weekend. I was floored. What Elvis movie? I hadn’t thought about Elvis in several years, except for watching part of the movie Viva Las Vegas on TV a couple of years back. As I started on the story and came to the part about Elvis, I wondered whether I was going to need to dig up any Elvis documentary or old movie on Netflix or wherever. I wondered whether any would be available. Would I be able to find anything? As I said, I hadn’t thought about Elvis in years. Nor had I heard anyone mention Elvis, etc.
I hadn’t been out and about, except to the grocery store. I hadn’t heard or seen anything about an Elvis movie in the works. This was totally out of the blue. Here I was writing a short story that had Elvis as part of the story . . . and well, this strange coincidence. I always thought the impersonators are a little cheesy, and I guess that is meant to be. I had seen the movie where Nicolas Cage played an Elvis impersonator and I enjoyed it. Was it Honeymoon in Vegas? At least I believe Cage is an impersonator.
Not only do I think the impersonators are cheesy, I never really had an interest in writing a story about anything to do with Elvis. But here it was, I was doing so. I remember lying in bed one morning and wondering why Peabody was down on his luck. I wondered how everything had gone wrong. And Elvis came to mind. That’s it.
Was this like the hundredth monkey rule? You know, where the scientists observed two different sets of monkeys on two different islands that were fifty miles apart . . .and when the monkeys on one island took on a new behavior and the ninety-ninth or one hundredth monkey took on the trait the monkeys on the distant island started to exhibit or take on the same behavior, even though the monkeys hadn’t been in contact with each other.
Not to pull out the tin foil hats or anything, but it does seem bizarre and interesting.
All I can say is Damn what a coincidence! Thoughts through space? Interestingly enough, I had read an old book titled exactly that—Thoughts Through Space—years ago (by Dr. Alexis Carrel?). Again, not to pull out the tinfoil hats, but radio waves were once viewed as something magical. Just a thought.
Perhaps I’ll keep a partially open mind (Pun intended).
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So, okay, back to ideas for stories, and how these ideas come about . . ..
I’m not sure whether I’ll create a story about it, but I did have an interesting dream a couple of months back. Part of the dream had happened in real life, in the past, and that scene appeared in the dream and continued with a fictional dream sequence that reflected on the present. And following this, I dreamed what could become a story. Here it is, from the beginning:
“See, no dead bodies,” Dasha said, fanning her arms out as though she were on some game show and presenting a possible prize, something I might win. She said this with a slightly sardonic smirk. We were just then walking past Gorky Park. She was obviously referring to the Martin Cruz Smith book of the same name (which became the movie with William Hurt).
“I see,” I said, glancing at her with a smirk. Of course, there were no dead bodies. We walked a few more paces before I continued. “Because they’re too busy piling up in Ukraine.”
I could feel her tense up, a slight hesitancy in her step, just for a half second, not enough to be noticeable to the casual observer. A tiny spark glinted ever so briefly in the brisk, dry air. She recovered herself well. I could see her breath coming out through her slightly parted lips, carrying a thought she wanted to express but didn’t dare.
I knew I shouldn’t have said it. I wanted to look around. We both did. Had this been the old days, she, or whoever, whatever female had been there, would have stopped and pulled out a small compact mirror pretending to check her makeup. Unlike the movies, there wasn’t always the convenient reflective storefront window to see who was following, etc. She, of course, in reality would never do that. I could hear her voice in my mind: “I’m not doing that. How ridiculous. And obvious. Everybody knows that trick. Why bother?”
All the same, had there been anyone within earshot? Was there someone sitting in a car along the curb with a parabolic ear? I was certain there wasn’t. But still, there was the unease. The spark of tenseness that had glinted for a second had died. But there was the ridged, rhythmic sound of our footsteps on the sidewalk, the faint sound of our ragged breath. We weren’t moving any more quickly than we had been, but we were no longer relaxed. A tinge of paranoia was creeping in. I could feel the edge of it. Or was it Dasha’s anger?
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So, the first part of this scene is from reality. It happened a few years back. Dasha made the comment about the park, exactly as I describe it, just as we were walking past. And the first part of my response is exactly how I responded at the time. All I said at the time was “I see.” We laughed and continued on our way.
My crack about the bodies piling up in Ukraine was in the dream, following the facts of what had actually happened. In the dream we took a few more steps before I realized that something was off. That’s when I realized that I must be dreaming . . . Why? How did I know. Because the bodies piling up in Ukraine is from today’s events. The Ukraine invasion was happening now. At the time the scene took place, in actuality, Putin wasn’t president of Russia. He was almost exactly two weeks out from becoming president, but at that time he had only been prime minister. He had only been prime minister for four months. Yeltsin was still nominally president at that time.
I woke up then. Now, there is usually a mix of reality and fiction in dreams, as I’m aware. However, I had never noticed such a stark delineation prior to this. That realization was what woke me. It intrigued me that there was such a smooth mix of reality of the past with thoughts of reality of the present—the invasion. So there were events from the past, and fact from the present on display in the dream. And while still on the edges of sleep, but awake enough to know what I was doing, I continued the thought process and the beginnings of a possible story began to take shape. I continued the “movie reel” in my mind and watched where it would lead.
So, the part where Dasha tenses up might have still been part of the dream, I confess. Did the dream Dasha realize that something was wrong? What would her thoughts be today on the subject of the invasion? I’m loathe to hazard a guess. It would probably be fifty-fifty chance on which side she would fall, or at least lean. I know her father had lost his job with the breakup of the Soviet Union and was bitter about it. I know that she is very patriotic, and would defend the state even if she knew that she was being fed lies. She would be pissed about being fed lies, perhaps, but would still defend her nation against foreign views or statements. So, I just don’t know. She is intelligent enough to know the truth, but smart enough to keep it to herself. How long would she profess to believe? That is the sixty-four-million-dollar question. Of course, I could be wrong. She might fight the invasion, protest against it. After all, the Dasha I knew then is probably completely different than the Dasha of today. So who knows? At that time she was young and full of passion and compassion. Not to mention intelligence and wit. She could be opaque and difficult to reach at times, and then suddenly open up completely; much like someone standing in a tub and flinging aside the shower curtain, standing completely naked and exposed. It could be jarring when you weren’t expecting it. I remember her words to me before I left. I was taking the night train up to St. Petersburg. “Be careful,” she admonished. “Watch out for the Gypsies.” Sincerity showed in her face. I knew she was at least halfway serious when she said it, too.
And getting back on track . . .
So, stories can also come from a mix of truth and dreams. As I was writing this post yesterday and I came to the dream part of the post about walking past the park, I continued on into the story. I couldn’t stop. I kept writing. Today I edited the post. I think I had to delete out about a thousand words of story to cut the post back to where I stopped on the dream part.
I didn’t actually delete it. I just removed it from the post. Perhaps I’ll place it on a page that will be accessible from my webpage. The story isn’t completely finished. I did put a little more fact into the story in at least one other spot. Dasha was always generous to the babushkas. On more than one occasion she would press money into the palm of a destitute old lady. I had to include that.
At this point I’m simply calling this group of stories The Green Bench stories. I’m not sure if my Gorky Park story will make it into the final published collection.
And so now you know where story ideas come from, at least for me. If you are an aspiring writer, maybe this helps. Your process might be totally different than mine. The main thing is to just enjoy the process and allow the creativity to flow.