Searching for story ideas

Where does a good story come from? What are its core ingredients? I found myself this week seeking inspiration, and little coming. I’ve set myself a goal of two new pieces to produce in the coming six-week push. I haven’t started yet–I’ve been focusing on older projects. What do I need to get me started? What is a story’s seed?

For the nearly two years of the Covid pandemic, my school has been incredibly lucky. We are a residential school, which brings the curse of tight-quarters student housing where disease can spread, and yet the benefit of few close contacts with the community. This time, at the end of winter break, students did not quarantine: government regulations no longer mandate it in Norway. Almost all of the students have been vaccinated, but Omicron has made it here. The last week, our school has gone into a lockdown. Virtual teaching, meal delivery for those with Covid or close contacts, I know for many fellow teachers the world over, this has been the story for two years.

Inspiration

Sometimes, a story starts off with a spark. An idea will come to us seemingly from the air, suddenly emerge in our minds golden. Sometimes, without a currently running project, we snatch that inspiration up and run, thank the muse for the offering, and we begin the long and arduous process of forging it into a story.

But how many times does inspiration strike, and we miss it? We are busy with other writing projects, or life is pulling us in other directions. We let that story go, not even writing the idea down. Other times, I have had the foresight to jot the idea down in an obscure document on my computer, come across it months or a year later–I read, “awkward rose-bud-thorn with students, shows generational disconnect” or just “climbing a mountain.” I see that the inspiration has fled. I’m no longer certain what had me so enamored with those ideas.

Often enough, as in a fever dream or something substance-induced, what seems like the most brilliant idea in the glow of inspiration turns out insipid on the page. Inspiration can be a false mirage. What is it beyond that burst of certainty that makes a story sing?

Persistence and Free-Writing

I have read the idea that inspiration is a trap. Any kind of intuitive thinking (of which artistic inspiration is one type) is ultimately an abstraction, and taking it down into the murky details of real life inevitably blunts the idea’s original magic. We might realize that the idea itself is actually quite weak, or we see that something inspiring to us in no way implies that it will inspire a reader.

Instead, perhaps, the original idea of the story does not matter so much as the skill, persistence, and hard work that we apply to our raw materials. Instead of awaiting inspiration, we should simply write. When we don’t have an idea, we can free-write or use writing prompts to generate material. It is the writer’s close, sustained attention that transforms any idea into a breathing story. A writer can reveal the power of the everyday, of the stories no one thought had been worth telling. The shiny lure of inspiration might keep us from the best writing. We languish waiting for that great idea.

But this too may be too simple. I’ve fallen off the horse of trying to query my first novel–perhaps I will come back to it, but on a couple of occasions, the feedback I received was telling: the writing is strong, but the story isn’t grabbing me. Of course this can be subjective, can be different for one reader to the next, yet what I see is that the story matters. Close attention to the craft of words is only part of what makes a living story. I think of the novels that arrest me with their power, and it is about the way they’re told, but it is also about the movement of the stories themselves. And does that movement come from inspiration? Does it come from somewhere else?

Trust in an idea

Writing is so solitary. Even when we discuss with critique partners, we take their input and bring it back to implement alone, keep working towards that alchemy of words. A project may take us a long time, and the anxiety of worrying about the finished product can preclude the trust that is necessary to keep going. At some point, we choose an idea. We say, “This is the one that I’ll pursue, the one I’ll flesh out, love, invest with time and feeling and hard work.” If we can trust the story, we’ll bring it to life. We have to see it as alive in us though, before we can.

I’ve wondered these last two years where the germs of stories for the future are being sown. The material I’ve been working on is inspired by some of the dark times of my younger years. Sometimes inspiration is a memory that we interrogate ad absurdum, until the assumptions we made at the time about its meaning atrophy, until we’ve relived something so many times we aren’t sure what ideas came first.

I wonder about the literature of the Covid era, what the stories are people will tell. I remember reading about that question in the early months of the pandemic. An essayist wrote that it will be decades before the best literature about the pandemic is written. We don’t see yet what’s important about it. I wonder if that’s true or not. I’ve thought that perhaps I should be rigorously documenting, saving up the shreds of my experiences for later use. We’ll see where these things go. We’ll see what ideas I decide to work with these two months. I’ll get there.

How do you choose ideas to focus on in stories? Where do you think the best stories emerge from? How do you make decisions about which ideas to follow, and which to leave behind? I would love to hear.

Thanks for stopping by. Stay safe, and best wishes for the weeks ahead,
Jimmy