This is an ongoing discussion of the process I use to write short stories…not that there is a set process, as it’s different each time. I started this in “Part One” back on my personal blog, and wanted to continue here to mix up the audience as much as possible.
In part one, I discussed the string of associations that led me from unicorns to penguins, and back again. I also mentioned how I plucked my protagonist out of the mix. Part of his life is based on my own experiences with obsession, collecting, and the way the world misconstrues and misunderstands things that are important to you, no matter who you are.
But having an idea what my protagonist’s life is about is a long way from having a story. Now I am in the stage where I take “what ifs” and line them up next to what I know about him to see where they lead. Sometimes they feel right…like his reaction to some items he comes into possession of. Some of it is still hazy. There has to be a central point to the plot , at least for the best stories.
Our own John Rosenman will remember the long debates we had with editor / author Richard Rowand over “Jesse’s Hair.” The gist of this discussion was, if you have a character who does the same thing for a long period of time, like a serial killer who kills and kills, there needs to be a reason why you pick a particular victim or incident in that character’s life to be your story. Like, the one who changed him, the one who caught him, the one who killed him. The same is true of a character who is obsessed with something. Just writing a story showing that obsession isn’t good enough. There has to be something about the incident in question that is worthy of note.
So that is where I find myself on this story, which will be about unicorns and have nothing (and everything) to do with penguins, that will involve addiction in some form and transformation. I can almost picture the character in my mind. I have built him a large, lonely home. I have given him a couple of well-meaning but clueless relatives. I even – vaguely – have pictured the ending of the story.
Now I move to yet another stage – one that I don’t always engage in, but can’t avoid this time out. Research. I will become this character, basically, or will at least find a way to understand him and know what he might think – and what he might write. Did I mention I also gave him a journal?
Soon I will begin the actual writing. By then I will have a lot of notes, a lot of snippets, and a lot of thoughts that I won’t be using … but might save. Who knows, maybe I’ll become an obsessive collector of snippets and turn THEM into a story of their own.
I intended this to be longer and more involved, but life intruded with a personal family tragedy, so I will leave you thinking about unicorns. Part 3 will show up soon in my blog at http://www.davidniallwilson.com
-DNW
I’m betting you’ll find more authors who agree with how you define the problem or the need in a short story than you will the defining of a solution or a method to create a solution. But then I know you aren’t trying to state hard and fast rules about creativity (which then just beg to be broken).
Getting to know a character is also my favored way of “beginning,” though this tends to happen more in novels for me than in short stories. Very often I’ll spin a story out of an event or a gimmick which then suggests a character whose quirks will complicate the path to a resolution. Michael Crichton used to do it rather well, if formulaically in novels, gathering sets of characters whose personal conflicts created mischief in the plot. E.g. a character who goes blank with flashing lights and is inserted in a nuclear countdown/malfunction where he’ll be incapable of acting owing to flashing lights. Or the grand interplay of who do you want to be trapped in an elevator with, or upside down in a sinking ship, etc. I suspect that those characters were born of need from a plot situation. Thanks for another sterling catalyst, Davey…
– Sully
With me, the story spins from the event also. Once, I was in Champaign-Urbana and I witnessed an incident (not a bad one) in front of a local liquor store. It took me five years to realize what needed to be told. So even though I was doing what you were, Dave, building the large, lonely home, yet not having anything worthwhile on the walls past my own recollections.
–Wayne
Yeah, Sully, this is just a hash of MY method, and as I said, it changes from story to story. This time, for instance, it’s like a themed anthology with no theme – a two author challenge to write a unicorn story – but to make it “real” and meaningful.
Justine Musk must do the same, and I am fairly certain she and I will go about it in absolutely different ways. This story FEELS more like a novel in that it’s getting the sort of extra thought and treatment a novel would in the early stages…
I hope it lives up to its own hype, in the end…
D
Good one, as always. Sorry about the family problem(s). J.