Life doesn’t always provide the perfect narrative

We once had a writing student whose narrative just didn’t seem to be working. We suggested she change it for dramatic purposes.

“But I can’t,” she said.

“But why not?” I asked, stressing that we weren’t being prescriptive about how it should be changed, merely that it could work better.

“Because that’s what happened in real life.”
Real life can be a good source of ideas, but we often get stuck in the trap of “what really happened”, forgetting that life, just as it happens, doesn’t always provide us with the perfect narrative.

It was Elbert Hubbard who said life was just “one damned thing after another”. And that’s what we want to avoid at all costs with a narrative.

We recently had another student who struggled to leave her own experiences behind to conceive a story that was purely imaginative. She asked for help in getting the ideas to flow.

All we could do is share some of the things that work for us. There’s no set formula for developing ideas. I sometimes struggle with an aspect of a story for ages. The more relaxed I am, the easier the ideas come.

The initial idea could spark off an image. It’s said that the idea behind Fohn Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman was a visual image of a woman staring out to sea.

Other people begin with the beginnings of a character who fascinates them, or a story scrap. But how do you develop it from there into a fully fledged story? 

Sometimes it can help to let scenarios flow in your head – a bit like daydreaming. Try to “live” them and see what happens. Enjoy the things that “might” happen.

Another trick is to ask yourself open questions. If I went to Turkey, what would I be doing there? What kind of people might I meet? What might happen to me? 

With any brainstorming, it’s important not to be judgmental with yourself. Instead of: “What kind of idiotic idea is that?”, try to think: “Okay maybe, but what else?” Sometimes the best ideas can flow out of ideas that at first seem ridiculous.