The Seed of of a Story

I love finding things that start me on a story, but it can be incredibly hard to train yourself to think that way, to actually ask the question “what is the story behind this?”.

For example, A few times when I was walking I passed a few times a bed frame lying at the curb. The first time I didn’t really think about it, though I noticed it. Yesterday though, I thought about it, and actually thought “what is this story?” Did it belong to a child who recently died? Did the child grow up and move out; going to college or married and the parents were finally getting rid of it? Could there be an interesting story there? I think so, though both those scenarios are somewhat mundane, a lot of times a good story can come from something mundane.

The trick is to be ready, and ask about something “is there a story there?” not just about things, but people you see. It's like any habit (well good ones), you learn to do it more by simply doing it.

A few years ago I read a poem by a poet who I had never heard of before. The poem was about an elderly gentleman who turned wayward girls such as “actresses” into birds and kept them. The tone was eerie and yet strikingly beautiful to me, and those elements of tone and transformation inspired a story that I’m working on that is now part of a story collection in progress. (This was before I was aware of the movie Ladyhawke (1985) with Matthew Broderick and Michelle Pfeiffer, an acquaintance told me about this movie when I was talking about my story idea.)

Another recently inspiration for me is art. When looking for story starters I found a deviant art collection (warning: some nudity) for art specifically for generating ideas for stories. One picture of a mermaid I found fascinating and started another story I’m writing (which I think will be part of a collection with the bird story).

I hope this has been helpful, and I’d love to hear if you have other interesting ideas for generating ideas. Now I need to actually finish projects!