A Break Through

After a full day of work, I relax in bed by focusing on story ideas.  Sometimes, this is the only time of the day that I am able to really think about my stories.  It is exciting and calming all at the same time.  And unfortunately, most of the time, I am not writing anything down.  It's a way for me to think that I'm making progress without actually making any progress. (More on this bad habit later.) This time, though, I did.

I had a dream a few years ago that lasted for three nights, and on the final night, the mystery was solved.  Most of it didn't make any sense once I woke up, but the world that the characters inhabited stuck with me.  I tried to reconstruct the plot that played out in my dreams and turn it into something that would actually make sense.  That would rive a reader to continue on.  This proved to be difficult.  I had a world, but I didn't seem to have any motivation for my characters.  Why would she leave home?  Why would she need to get to the capitol?  And in this idyllic town, what is actually lurking underneath?  Nothing seemed to piece these things together, and I was left with a world and no plot.

A few months ago, I was inspired by, of all things, a post online.  It was simple, and from that, I began to create a character that would in habit that thought.  She would be different.  And this difference would make her an outcast.  Through this life as a pariah  she would discover that things in her world weren't exactly what they seemed, and her culture, religion, and way of life would all be questioned.  However, I was stalled with creating what exactly her world would look like.  And once she becomes an outcast, what would that mean for her?  Where would she go?

I worked for a while on developing these ideas separately: Going through the history of the fantasy realm first glimpsed in my dream, and slowly piecing together the social interactions of the community in which the outcast lived.  The stories were at a standstill.  The only words on paper were smatterings of ideas, outlines, and source material for more research.  The ideas were growing stale, and I focused on them less and less at night before bed.  I started to shelve them for another time when I was more inspired, and moved on to other ideas.

At the beginning of this week, as I lay in bed, I had a break through: Join the two stories.  World, meet character; character, meet world.  It seems extremely obvious now, seeing both story issues laid out in print, but they were so separate in my head, that when I first had the thought to combine them, I had doubts.  But what about the special differences between the two?  And then I realized, those details were not important, and weren't working anyway.  And when I accepted it, the story jumped ahead, and suddenly I had two different religions, how the passing of a year is marked, a festival, geography, lore, and why my main character would leave home.  There is still a long way to go in shaping characters, creating the world and its history, and planning out key plot points, but it's a start.  It's a start, and I am inspired again.  Will it lead me to finish a novel?  I don't know.  I just can't believe how obvious it is to me now, and why I could not see it before.

So go out and take a look at a few old ideas you have that you have stalled on.  Now turn them around.  Look at them from the ending first.  Combine two ideas to see if they could exist in the same universe.  The goal is to look at them in a different way.  Even if you cling to that dusty old idea, and hate the thought of tearing apart the fragile pieces you've already built up, try it anyway.  I promise, you can go back to the original idea afterwards.  But after imagining the story in a different way, you might not want to.

Writing Exercise: A Chance Meeting

500 words

Take two story ideas that you've shelved.  Take them down, dust them off, and set them up on a crisp, blank page - either on screen or paper.  For both options, this must be an entirely new page, separate from either story idea.

• The main character from each story are the two characters in this scene
• The location is your choice
• Somehow, these characters have come in contact with one another.  The scene can address how they came into contact, or you can choose not to explain.
• Let the scene happen

Happy writing.