Inspiring A Plot

So we were discussing in class the most difficult part of writing. A general consensus was the plot – coming up with a plot that other people would be interested in, that was a story you liked, and that achieved everything that needs to be achieved for a story to “work.”

In response, then, the professor began to explain a way to come up with a story. For him, the story germinates in a commonplace story that the author then piles conflict upon. He suggested, too, that speaking it out loud was a good way to work the details out. He then proceeded, in class, to come up with an idea, complicate it, and produce the plot of a story. It wasn’t phenomenal, but could easily become so in the writing of it. (After all, “A Man Reading Othello in One Sitting” is a basic idea with no real inherent story – hopefully in the writing of it, I created something you guys enjoyed.)

This interested me, and I began realizing how story ideas come to me, because it was not in this way. I’m not sure what the general way of inspiration comes to authors, but I find myself generally starting with the theme. Now this may sound like a recipe for morality stories of yore; but I don’t transform it into an analogy, where each element is translated directly into a character, and that character does nothing more than illuminate his or her analogous theme. I do work out what kinds of characters portray a certain idea – perhaps one who professes something like Christian ideals, but acts as the hypocrite in not living them out. (Actually, this is the theme of many of my short stories, or is at least one element in them. A very good pastor-friend of mine says that pastors have one sermon, and 52 ways of telling it – I seem to have one theme, and myriad ways of portraying it.)

So, for instance, I have a story that began with the idea of God whispering to us in our “storm,” reassuring us he is there. It came from a line in a Casting Crowns song – and the song’s theme was embodied in that line, that even when we can’t see God at work, He is. In translating it into a story, I tweaked the theme, taking it in the direction of American culture today. I created a blind man whose girlfriend always does a phenomenal job of guiding him where he needs to go. So he should trust her; instead, he finds himself running off on his own. Then, when he gets in trouble, he calls out to her. It reflects, for me, the culture we live in where we kick God out of every social institution we can, then wonder where he is when tragedy strikes – even, sometimes, going so far as the say: “God bless America!” when we see ourselves overcoming something like 9/11. The girlfriend’s line near the end of the story encapsulates, for me, the deep incongruity of this attitude: “Right James; I’m all you think about – when you’re in trouble. But when everything’s fine you do quite well on your own, don’t you?”

Of course, the latter part of her speech is facetious – in the story, he is caught in a storm with a broken leg as she runs off to get help, and in constant pain and fear of his life. And he got there as a result of his “independent soul” as he describes it – in Christianity we might call it a rebellious nature.

Novels are, of course, much more complex of an inspirational journey, and I certainly don’t have the space here to discuss that. But often I find the process is much the same.

And it’s great fun. I haven’t yet received a prompt from you guys for tomorrow, so I may try to recreate a dialogue exercise we did in class last Thursday that was quite fun. See you then.