Listening To: Over the Garden Wall (Original Television Soundtrack) by The Blasting Company
Music is a big part of my life so I thought I'd start sharing what I'm listening to as I write. If you've never seen the Cartoon Network original animated series Over the Garden Wall, you're missing out. Doesn't matter what age you are, this show is beautiful. Created by Patrick McHale and featuring the voice talents of Elijah Wood, Melanie Lynskey, Christopher Lloyd, and more; ten short episodes tell a beautiful story in a dark fantasy setting. Moreover, the music is as fantastic, bizarre, and heartwarming as the show itself. I dare you to check it out. I think you can buy the season for less than $10 or you could borrow it from your local library.
Secrets of Conjuration
One of the hardest questions for a lot of writers to answer is "Where do your ideas come from?"
The easiest answer to this is for the writer to wave their hand around in the air and say, "Oh, you know..." and then change the subject or walk away. Of course, this leaves the question-asker (and potential reader) deeply unsatisfied.
For a while I thought asking that question of a writer was a little like asking magicians what the secret is behind their tricks. The more I thought about it, the more I realized nothing could be further from the truth. Magicians know exactly where their tricks come from. They practice the same movements over and over again, while at the same time perfecting their banter and ability to distract. A trick can be passed from one magician onto another.
Many writers have no idea where their ideas come from. In fact, writing feels more like magic than magic does. Writers conjure their tricks out of thin air. They make them up as they go along. And while a story can be passed along and toldfor generations, one writer can't pass their story down to another. They could sign over the rights, sure, but we know that's not the same thing. Metaphors are made of loosely bundled string and this one unravels if taken much further.
Carl Jung would have us believe stories are in our blood, deeply encoded in our genetic makeup. I don't think he's wrong. But there's certainly more to it. Right?
Obviously there are influences in our lives that shape the stories we, as writers, tell. How those influences are used and distilled into stories differ from writer to writer. One writer might have had an experience that they feel is worth putting on paper, with or without embellishment. Another may line up story elements, almost formulaically, and put them together to form an engaging story. Still another might see a squirrel bury a nut and think to himself, "What would happen if that nut were to gain sentience, unearth itself, and hunt down the squirrel who buried it?"
Personally, I find the process of story development to be more organic, for lack of a better term. I, like many other writers, have written a story based off of a one-sentence prompt without any idea of where the story came from. It just materializes in my mind as I type or write, depending on my mood. I've been driving on the highway and had an entire story suddenly taking up valuable mental space, blocking out all other thought. In times like this, I'm grateful for modern technology like voice-recognition (Siri is a decent writing assistant). I've had dreams that have inspired story ideas, though fewer than you might think.
Point is, they come from everywhere. I'm typically not the sort of person to have a thing happen to me and then immediately want to put it on paper. For some reason I am adamantly opposed to reality in a lot of my writing. If it happened in real life, I don't want to write about it. This may be why I lean towards horror so much.
The Refinery
What matters more than where the idea comes from is how that idea is treated. Refining is everything.
I'm frequently blown away by how some writers can take a perfectly banal situation, object, or setting and turn it into something fantastic or sinister. How many successful books has Stephen King written about a sentient or lethal (or both) car? At least two. He's really the king (pun unavoidable) of turning the everyday into the nightmarish. There are great stories, by many authors, about killer appliances, killer cockroaches, people stuck in a room, you name it. Die Hard is essentially the story of a man who wants to win his estranged wife back. Michael Crichton created a whole franchise out of the question a billion eight-year-olds have asked themselves: What if dinosaurs were alive today?
The art isn't so much in the idea itself as it is in the telling of the story, the quality of writing, the people on the journey. This isn't to say there aren't some truly unique and amazing stories out there - of course there are! But even an original, amazing story, if poorly told, can crash and burn.
The truly great writers, the kind of writer I aspire to be, can take almost any idea and turn it into a masterpiece. They fill the setting with people we fall in love with (or hate), they make things difficult for those people, and have those people overcome those difficulties or die trying. They go through their finished work and get rid of every self-serving, unnecessary bit of prose or dialogue to ensure we, the readers, are able to enjoy, understand, and engage with the story.
Coming up with ideas is the easy part.
So maybe the question to ask writers is, "How do you refine your story into something worth my time and money?" It's a question I ask myself as a writer every time I sit down at my desk to write a new project or revise an existing one.
Sorry if you were looking for concrete answers. I don't claim to know it all (or much) - I just enjoy the conversation.
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Thanks for stopping by. Have an awesome week!