Lea Carter's Blog - Posts Tagged "to-read"
No batteries necessary…
One problem with being an author is the way one’s mind begins to work. I can be standing in the grocery section, trying to decide between the hundred and one flavors of chips, when suddenly I’m knee-deep in a mental story. It’s still about picking a bag of chips—but the character is a single woman in a much larger city, an ordinary person to whom something extraordinary is happening. Or about to happen. And that is how my mind works, all of the time.
In fact, it’s not unlike Danny Kaye’s original The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. In one instance, Kaye’s character, Mitty, was waiting for a light to turn green when a “cowboy” rode up next to his car. Yep, on a horse. It took only moments for Mitty to be mentally transported to a fictional world where he was a tough cowboy defending a woman (not his fiancé) against the unwanted advances of another cowboy.
Imagine that happening almost anywhere, anytime. I’m never bored. But it takes some willpower to control these story ideas, to put them to work instead of just indulging in them. Any scrap of paper, my cell phone’s voice recorder, or frequently a blank notepad on my computer is hastily located and I try to record the bare bones of the story. Who, what, where, why, and when has to be translated from the vivid mental image into words. It’s almost like trying to write a book based on a movie.
I discard some story ideas, of course. If every author recorded every story idea s/he ever had, the world wouldn’t be big enough to hold it all. Every author has their own, distinct set of criteria that they (probably subconsciously) compare a story idea to. Here are some of my criteria.
1) Has the story been told and retold until I’m tired of hearing from others, let alone myself?
2) If it doesn’t fall under the first category, is it still too similar to something I can recall having read or seen?
3) Do I really want my name associated with this story? (This is for when a story takes a bad or immoral twist and no matter how hard I try the characters refuse to change. The story exits my head in File 13 fashion.)
4) Would I even read this story?
If a story idea passes my subconscious checklist and gets recorded, there’s still the matter of using it. As a self-published author, I have occasionally blended partial story ideas while writing my books, which is one way to use them. I also compete in a yearly contest hosted by Crowder, a local college. That way approximately four story ideas become short stories every year. Unfortunately, however, I will probably never bring every story idea to light. Just like some Goodreads users have “to read” shelves with hundreds or thousands of titles, many (if not most) authors have notebooks and computer folders crammed with ideas they just don’t have time to get to.
Meanwhile, life goes on. Story ideas keep zapping me like a bolt from the blue (or the yellow or the green*). If I’m in a position to pursue the story, sometimes I’ll just let it play out in my mind. I toss it a conflict or two, perhaps rewrite a character’s lines or adjust their motivation, but mostly I just enjoy it. So the next time you see someone standing in a long waiting line without an electronic device and just smiling, ask yourself, “Is that an author?”
*Quoted from “Scuppers, the Sailor Dog”.
In fact, it’s not unlike Danny Kaye’s original The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. In one instance, Kaye’s character, Mitty, was waiting for a light to turn green when a “cowboy” rode up next to his car. Yep, on a horse. It took only moments for Mitty to be mentally transported to a fictional world where he was a tough cowboy defending a woman (not his fiancé) against the unwanted advances of another cowboy.
Imagine that happening almost anywhere, anytime. I’m never bored. But it takes some willpower to control these story ideas, to put them to work instead of just indulging in them. Any scrap of paper, my cell phone’s voice recorder, or frequently a blank notepad on my computer is hastily located and I try to record the bare bones of the story. Who, what, where, why, and when has to be translated from the vivid mental image into words. It’s almost like trying to write a book based on a movie.
I discard some story ideas, of course. If every author recorded every story idea s/he ever had, the world wouldn’t be big enough to hold it all. Every author has their own, distinct set of criteria that they (probably subconsciously) compare a story idea to. Here are some of my criteria.
1) Has the story been told and retold until I’m tired of hearing from others, let alone myself?
2) If it doesn’t fall under the first category, is it still too similar to something I can recall having read or seen?
3) Do I really want my name associated with this story? (This is for when a story takes a bad or immoral twist and no matter how hard I try the characters refuse to change. The story exits my head in File 13 fashion.)
4) Would I even read this story?
If a story idea passes my subconscious checklist and gets recorded, there’s still the matter of using it. As a self-published author, I have occasionally blended partial story ideas while writing my books, which is one way to use them. I also compete in a yearly contest hosted by Crowder, a local college. That way approximately four story ideas become short stories every year. Unfortunately, however, I will probably never bring every story idea to light. Just like some Goodreads users have “to read” shelves with hundreds or thousands of titles, many (if not most) authors have notebooks and computer folders crammed with ideas they just don’t have time to get to.
Meanwhile, life goes on. Story ideas keep zapping me like a bolt from the blue (or the yellow or the green*). If I’m in a position to pursue the story, sometimes I’ll just let it play out in my mind. I toss it a conflict or two, perhaps rewrite a character’s lines or adjust their motivation, but mostly I just enjoy it. So the next time you see someone standing in a long waiting line without an electronic device and just smiling, ask yourself, “Is that an author?”
*Quoted from “Scuppers, the Sailor Dog”.
