Yesterday, the start of a new story came to me and I wrote it down - New story.
Today, it occurred to me that you guys may be interested in how 'it' works for me. I am well-aware that I'm fortunate to have the ideas for stories arrive in my head, seemingly unbidden, and not everyone gets the same 'internal email' messages that I do. I can't help that, sorry... the best I can do is give a few prompts through the story-mentor tag.
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Yesterday, we met Dirk and Jamie driving in a truck. Dirk puked and Jamie declared her love for him. Believe it or not, that is exactly as it came to me, playing like a mini-movie in my head. I wrote it as I 'saw' it.
Then, yesterday afternoon, I felt compelled to write more.
Sorry, terrible hand writing
And more...
And more...
Around 5 full pages of handwriting. That makes perhaps 1500 words.
The odd thing is, I kept having to back-track.
Back-tracking...
The story wasn't 'happy' with where I was going with it. I know... weird, right?
I jotted a few paragraphs down to try to start the story, but with each one, I found I wasn't happy with it and went back a little further.
This is the process as I wrote it:
First paragraph
Dirk & Jamie - High school misfit sweethearts.
She is too cool for school - Tomboy, rebellious and confident.
He is a devastatingly gorgeous, but painfully shy introvert, new kid in town.
Nope... not quite there yet...
Second paragraph
(His) First day at school, part way through term, Dirk arrives with his shoes polished, shirt and tie, with blazer and trousers. He looks exactly like he Googled pictures of English Schoolboy and nailed it for Halloween!
I liked where this was going, but it wasn't quite doing it for me. I needed more set-up - backstory if you will... not much, but a little more.
Third paragraph
Mrs Hallam, the once-Homecoming Queen, married to the Football Captain, returned triumphant after college to land a cushy number at her old school as the Principal's PA (over-paid, over-qualified [on paper] trophy PA).
OK, I have a new player in the game... where does she fit in? How does she arrive? I decided I needed a little more.
Fourth paragraph
One glorious, sunny, late-September morning, Mr Pick, the portly, bald, nervous, confirmed-bachelor looked up as Mrs Hallam knocked on his classroom door. He waved her in, more as an excuse to ignore the disruption in class than any other reason. The students became quiet for a change.
From those four paragraphs, a story began to emerge.
I have two main characters (need more for this project), a couple of interesting characters that may become more involved as time goes on, and the idea for a story. How this develops from here will be interesting, but for the moment, I’m not going to write it in episode form, but I will keep you up to date with the progress.
This has prompted me to set another task for the story-mentor group. Write a couple of pages of a new story. Use pen and paper (and the story-mentor tag of course). Share your story… let’s see if this method helps you like it helps me.