Gerard Houarner

Everyone and Everything Has A Story

 In this season of holidays, it’s easy to remember that everything has a story.  Traditions from every culture layer the days with meaning.   Myths and folklore fill our houses, flow from every medium.

 For many Americans, Halloween was the time to tell each other stories about darkness that were scary, and funny.  At Thanksgiving, folks visited family and friends, entertained,  and told stories about  themselves, each other, those absent and missing.  For Christmas, gifts are wrapped up in tales of what we know about loved ones and what they know about us.  And, of course, we’re bombarded by 12 months worth of big, important stories in the week before New Year’s Eve.

 But what about the rest of the year?  

 Back in the day, of course, we were connected to nature, land, plants, animals, the world through the stories our families, tribe, culture created to give people a place and a meaning in their environment.   Everything and everyone had a story, handed down from one generation to the next, perhaps changing over the decades or centuries as the information was warped by plague or war or natural disaster, or someone with an imagination.

 These days, through the media hubs of our towns, cities, our living rooms, “man caves,” computers and smartphones, our world has greatly expanded.   Everyone and everything still has a story, usually more than one, and our electronic environment tells us what part of which story we should believe at the moment with ads, news, reviews, blogs,  email, twitter, and so on.

 As writers, however, we’re more than passive consumers of gossip, media reality, hastily formed snark opinions masking as critical thinking, and commercials.   Hopefully, we’re more than creators of media bull, too.

 When I think about everyone and everything having a story, I see a number of things.  Opportunity, of course.  But the opportunities are not only in story ideas, but in the possibilities of their development. 

 As I said, the season is about Halloween and Christmas stories.  The traditions around each are rich, and the ways to tweak or outright warp them, even richer.   Listen for the odd news story, watch for the individual characters, who with their particular needs and conflicts perhaps run against tradition’s grain – suddenly two or three stories collide to form something greater than the individual parts.

 In horror, houses have histories, and the characters running into them have their own backgrounds.  Out of that mix ghost stories are born.

 In SF, a piece of technology has a story, and again a set of characters interacts with that technology to resolve individual and global conflicts. 

 In mystery, a death has a story, and if it’s a good mystery, the characters have their own stories to be resolved in the resolution of that death. 

 In the “literary” genre, the threads of a character’s thoughts, emotions, perceptions each have their own story, interacting with the tale’s and reader’s view of our shared “reality” (well, at least that’s one of my interpretations of what the literary genre is about).

 There are family traditions, work cultures, natural events and settings, that are more than just “background.”  Setting a character in a bus depot should evoke a particular reality for that character – he should enter a unique world, which should draw out particular aspects of his character, specific conflicts.  In other words, a meeting of the character’s individual story and the setting or physical/cultural environment can create a third tale combining the two.

 Anything, everything you put into a piece of fiction can and probably should have its own story. 

It should  be there for a reason, however small.  It should have an impact, change and be changed by the other small threads of story coming together in the larger tale.

 If you’re blocked, or stuck on where to go next, perhaps thinking of all the things you might have crammed in your tale can uncover an unappreciated thread  – an overlooked shadow that might have hidden someone or something capable of changing everything.

 Whether watching the world around you for all the individual stories you perceive or participate in, or thinking about a piece you want to write, explore the story threads available to you in the moment.  Respect the stories taking place all around you.  Learn from them.  Use them.

 Sometimes it’s a place.  While revising a piece set in Africa, I researched the west coast countries to find a specific location that would satisfy a set of parameters necessary for the story.  Initially, I’d been a bit vague about the exact setting, taking out a kind of fairy tale license to be somewhat generic in order to focus on the characters and the fantastic series of events.  But an editor waved money and publication in front of me if I’d be more specific (this is after all one of Heinlein’s principles – revise for money).  I narrowed it down to Ghana, and then a specific area in the north east.

 But the really interesting thing I discovered doing this research was the country itself.  It had a phenomenal history, with multiple empires and cultures and languages and religions, highly differentiated geographical areas, fantastic color and legends and people.  You could set a fantasy trilogy in it.  Or use the place as a template to anchor one’s own set of religious and political interests, geographical preferences, etc.

 The place is waiting.  I can see the journey character would take from the coast, through the highlands, to the savanah. 

 And, of course, placing my fantasy in a particular place, with its own set of rules and specific conditions, its own story, made the fantasy richer, deeper. 

 Sometimes it’s a person.

 Come on.  Even without straying into family quagmires (though other people’s families are fun and safer to research), everybody from day job co-workers to random people overheard talking are fair game.  Some writers like a lot of detail and really study their models.  Historical figures brought into a fictional world is a genre by itself.  I like watching people on subways, picking out their physical details, habits, maybe eavesdropping on conversations, and letting my imagination riff on the possible stories these folks might get themselves into.

 Sometimes it’s an object.

 Someone’s holy grail – a car, a diamond ring, a baseball card.  A sword, a gun.  The Cosmic Cube.  An item with some measure of power over people.  Advertising is the most readily accessible source for these objects of irrelevant desires, but so are hobbyists, fans, and other extremely dedicated people.  My old friend the Discovery Channel, along with the History Channels and other documentary-oriented outlets, offer an endless variety of things and places with rich stories aching to be exploited.  Neighborhoods are rich with history, from lamp posts to store fronts that used to be…whatever. 

 Feelings have stories, too.

 I’m a fan of jazz, blues, r&b, latin, etc.  Not a big fan where I know all the performers in a given session, and which take was released.  Not a Peter Straub level fan writing liner notes for albums.  I like to listen to the stuff.  I like to find out where a piece of music came from, sometimes track back the history of recordings, definitely what traditions and influences were at play creating the music and performance.

 So I use music sometimes, from opera to blues, to evoke a feeling, a mood, knowing that not everyone will understand the reference and have a reaction, but for those who do, the piece I’ve picked plays a part for the character and the plot.

  And I’m inspired by music, especially song titles or lyrics.  Of course, they tell stories, and the words and music generate emotions that can lead someplace very different from the intended effect of the original recording.  “She’d Make a Dead Man Crawl,” “Do Nothing till You hear From Me,” “Come Love, Nothing Can Be Done,”and “A Kiss to Build A Dream On” are just some of the horror stories I’ve written to tell an alternative tale to the one the original told.

 I’ll watch freaking Olympic ice curling because the stakes are high and the participants have stories.  (Not for long, but I’ll watch it.)

  My point is leave yourself open to story.  Any story.  Listen.  Watch.  Let your imagination fly, or let curiosity drive your research.  Be receptive.  Let the story be told. 

 Or  strip the stories being told to you to buy, to believe, to participate, and think about what’s really being said, what you’re really hearing.  Insert your own message.  Sift through the constant media stimulation for things that catch your interest and ask, why?  Is that YouTube clip really funny, or is it tragic? 

 I think by paying attention to the stories all around you, different ways of telling that story can also suggest themselves.  Linear third-person narratives about deals with the devil at the crossroads  are fine and commercial, but maybe you’d write a more interesting tale by structuring it from the perspective of the sign-post at the cross-roads.  You never know.  At the very least, by being aware that everything around you, and everything you put into a story, has its own tale to tell might give you an opening to make that story go off in unexpected directions.

 I know.  More pie-in-the-sky ranting.

 I am, alas, my own sad story being told.