From Idea to Story: Part Two

From Idea to Story: Part One From Idea to Story: Part Three

From Idea to Story: Part Two

Bringing the idea to life.

Last week we looked at how ideas for stories are born, and how to test that your idea is viable. Do you have an idea yet? If not, it’s okay; it will find you when you’re ready. In the meantime, let’s look at how we can start to build upon that initial premise.

Even if the story came from a real-life incident, it has to fulfill the rules of fiction. This means it has to have a beginning, middle, and end. It also needs a sound structure, believable characters, and readable sentences.

The chasm between idea and manuscript

So how do ,you take that most nebulous thing, a thought, and turn it into a manuscript? Let’s look at some examples:

You may have read The Birds by Daphne du Maurier, or at least seen the Hitchcock film that was based on it. Du Maurier lived in Cornwall on the south of England. One day she saw a flock of seagulls following a plough in a neighbouring farm. As writers often do, she started to wonder what if? In this instance, what if the birds attacked? As the Second World War had recently ended, it is likely that du Maurier, like most other Britons of the age, had developed a fear of attacks from the air and she wrote all those fears into the story. There is a direct line between thought and story.

The great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy was inspired to write Anna Karenina when a woman threw herself in front of a train following an unhappy love affair. Tolstoy had known the dead woman, a distant relative of his wife’s, and the man with whom she was involved. He also attended the unfortunate woman’s autopsy. It took him a year before he started writing his novel, and he already knew that the story would end with his heroine’s death. I imagine he spent the previous year putting all the characters and plot together so when the time came he was ready to begin.

Some writers find their stories in dreams. For instance, Robert Louis Stevenson dreamed about a quiet man who transformed into a monster — and so The Strange Tale of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde was born. The dream and subsequent story probably arose from a number of Stevenson’s long-held interests: the nature of good and evil; his friendship with Eugene Chantrelle, a seemingly average man who was eventually hanged for murdering his wife. Stevenson attended the man’s trial and was aghast to learn Chantrelle had probably murdered others before his wife. Following the dream, he wrote the story in a fever with the first draft taking no more than three days, according to Stevenson’s stepson.

Dreams have also inspired Stephen King. In his book On Writing, King says he fell asleep on a transatlantic flight to London and Annie Wilkes came to him in his dreams. (Yikes!) Awake, he wrote on a cocktail napkin, “She speaks earnestly but never quite makes eye contact. A big woman and solid all through; she is an absence of hiatus…” He added that when he reached his hotel and read the scrawled note he wasn’t even sure what it meant. From the dream and the idea came the hard work and Misery was written.

If you’re new to writing, you might feel intimidated by these tales of writers and their imaginations. But in most cases, these works were the result of years of a writer looking out for ideas and honing your craft. You may not be there right now, but you can get there with patience and practice.

As you can probably imagine, the chasm between idea and manuscript is filled with hard work, research, repeated drafts, and did I mention hard work? With that in mind, let’s look at the first steps that you need to take to move forward with your vision.

Knowing your Protagonist

Once you have an idea you need to live with it for a while. Think about your protagonist: who is he? What does he want? What will he sacrifice for it? Stephen Sondheim once said that every musical has an “I wish” moment. This is when the hero or heroine tells you, usually in song, what matters most to them. That’s true in literature, too, although the wish may be expressed more subtly than the show-stopping number complete with dancing girls and full orchestra.

In terms of a literary character telling us what she wants and what she’ll sacrifice to get it, there is no better example than in this declaration by Scarlett O’Hara:

I’m going to live through this and when it’s all over, I’ll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.
‘Gone with the Wind’ by Margaret Mitchell

Of course, in many books, what the hero or heroine wants and what they’ll give for it have to be inferred from their actions rather than their words because people lie, or, sometimes, keep silent. In the quote above, we have seen how determined Scarlett is so we have no difficulty believing what she says, but in most works of fiction a character’s actions often belie their words. Also, some characters aren’t very chatty. What they want and how they’ll get it is something they will keep to themselves. But we don’t need to be told, for instance, that Dracula will kill anyone in order to get the blood he needs to survive, we see it in everything he does.

The protagonist’s objective doesn’t have to be life-or-death. It could be getting into the university of her dreams, winning a race, or even robbing a bank. But what the writer must do is make it clear that the ‘prize’ is of great importance to the hero or heroine. Perhaps it means escape from a life of poverty, or the bullying of classmates. Perhaps it’s a matter of self-respect. Whatever the objective, the reader must be aware of the consequences of failure to the character. If there is no cost, then the objective is meaningless. The goal must mean something.

With the goal, and the reason for the goal, we must have obstacles. The obstacles present the conflict. If the hero wants to date the girl, and she likes him, then happy ever after, right? But if their parents hate each other and are determined to keep the young lovers apart, that’s Romeo and Juliet and the conflict is obvious.

Sometimes the ultimate goal is unrealistic. Consider Stephen King’s Carrie. In a way, this is a Cinderella tale, albeit with a fiendish twist. Carrie, like Cinders, wants to go to the ball — uh, prom. Ultimately, though, she wants to escape her crazy mother, make friends, and live a normal life. The first step here is going to the prom. She seems to be helped by some apparently sympathetic classmates. They make sure she has a gown and a date. But when the cruel prank — the bucket of blood — is dumped on her, all hell breaks loose. There was never going to be a happy ending here, but we’re so captivated by the tale that we can’t wait to see what happens next.

With the protagonist, the goal, and the obstacle(s), you have the beginning of the story. This is also where the ‘true story’ writers often run into trouble. In life, people tend to put up with a lot rather than extend themselves to change the status quo. Real life stories are often anecdotes along the lines of, “I’ve been waiting ages to buy this gadget and, would you believe it, my friend Sal gave me hers for nothing!” That might be great for the recipient of the gift, but there’s no real goal, no cost, just a generous friend. However, if the heroine needs a laptop in order to do her schoolwork, and her family refuse to buy one for her, you have a scenario. What if the heroine gets a part-time job to pay for the laptop? But what if her parents think she’s too young to work? Now, there’s the making of a story.

Also, keep in mind that there is a difference between the small goals along the way to the ultimate prize. In the example above, the student needs the laptop for classes, but she needs the classes so she can graduate from university and build a life away from the small town where she is living with her family. Her family don’t want her to leave. Perhaps she’s an only child and they’ll miss her. Perhaps she’s the eldest of six siblings and her parents want her to help raise them. Or maybe the mother needs nursing care and she wants her daughter to give up her education and stay home to look after her.

Since the major objective is leaving home, the laptop is the first goal. Of course, the parents are going to sabotage the student every chance they get. Every success she achieves is countered by some action by her selfish parents.

Focusing on the fiction

Sometimes the story evolves far beyond the original inspiration, and that’s OK. The idea is simply where you start. Suppose, for instance, you’ve decided your story is about the student we just talked about. But as you’re writing you start to see the selfish mother as a more interesting character. Maybe you decide to make the story about the conflict between the two. Or maybe it’s from the mother’s point of view. Or perhaps it’s from the point of view of the father who is caught between two strong-willed women. Then again, it could begin at a funeral and is told in flashback, and the reader doesn’t find out which of the women has died until the end.

Focus on the tale and not the idea.

My point is that regardless of what inspired the story, once you decide to turn it into fiction, you need to focus on the tale and not the inspiration. Also, as you will have guessed by now, there are many different ways of approaching the tale. We’ll look at more of the specifics next week.

Don’t be fooled by the facts of what really happened unless you’re writing about an historical event. Real life is the diving board, if you will, of the story, but it’s up to you, the writer, to get into that metaphorical swimming pool and look at all the possibilities.

On that note, I should add that while your story should reflect life, it’s not breaking any rules to make your characters larger than life. Is there a more unhinged mother than the one in Carrie? A more insightful detective than Sherlock Holmes? A cooler hero than James Bond?

To summarise, the important points are these:

Every work of fiction must have conflictThe protagonist must have a main objectiveThere may be many small goals on the way to the main objectiveOvercoming each goal must be difficult, and the hero sometimes failsHow the hero deals with failure reveals their characterLiterature abounds with larger than life characters. Don’t be afraid to amp up the drama.

Determining these, at least in part, is an essential part of laying the groundwork for your story. If you’ve decided to write a short story, then one goal is sufficient. For a novel, though, you need smaller conflicts along the way. You do not necessarily need to know all of these before you begin — we will explore that more in coming weeks — but you need to know what the hero wants, why they want it, and what they’ll give for it.

Exercise: Here is a challenge for you. Read James Joyce’s The Dead. It’s a short story that’s part of the Dubliners‘ collection and, I believe, is available online. See if you can figure out the goals of the characters, in particular Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta. The conflicts here are subtle, and there is no right or wrong answer. But in terms of exploring fictional conflict more closely, this is one of the greatest examples in literature.

Next week we’ll look in more depth at the other elements you need to determine before you begin writing: Whose story is it? Whose point of view? Should you write in present or past tense, and so forth. In the meantime, try to determine the elements of the conflict because this is the most essential element.

Finally, look out for No Holidays for Sherlock Holmes:

From the creative team that brought you the Sherlock Holmes: A Year of Mystery series comes an all new anthology featuring Sherlock Holmes stories that connect to holidays throughout the year.

This anthology features some of the best known Sherlock Holmes authors today including David Marcum, Katy Darby, Geri Schear, Shelby Phoenix, Steve Herczeg, Will Murray, Greg Maughn, Sarah Bennett, Kevin Thornton, Derrick Belanger, Lee Shackleford, Hassan Akram, David Stuart Davies, and Gustavo Bondoni

Check out the Kickstarter here.

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Published on January 23, 2024 22:31

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